29th January 2015 –Rio Gallegos to El Chalten

This morning we left Rio Gallegos going north west on Route 40 towards El Chalten. Route 40 is a good sealed highway although only 1 lane wide in each direction with a speed limit of 110k/h. We have 456km to our overnight stop, so it’s a leisurely days drive with plenty of time for stops. Along the way we saw more of the wild lama’s (guanaco’s) and a petrochemical processing plant in the middle of nowhere, not sure what they were making there. We traveled on this road after we left El Calafate 1 week ago when we were on our way south.During the day the brown open desert plains gradually disappeared to reveal lakes, glaciers and the snow capped mountains of the Andes truly breathtaking.We had an interesting lunch stop at the Hotel in La Leona, it’s where Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid hid out for a month after robbing the Bank of London and Tarapaca at Rio Gallegos. There was also a post with distances to capital cities around the world. We were 14,468km from Sydney & 13,754km from London. As we drove along the northern shore of Viedma Lake we could see the Viedma Glacier across the water, Mount Fitzroy which is 3,405 metres high in front of us and another glacier at the foot of Mount Fitzroy. It certainly is a beautiful part of the world. Where we are today is 1 lake north of Perito Moreno glacier on Lake Argentino that we visited 8 days ago.