1st February 2015 – Perito Moreno to Gobernador Costa

We left Perito Moreno at 9 today after calling into the local panaderia (bakery) to pick up morning tea. We only have a 360km drive north on Route 40 which is suppose to be sealed all the way but in reality there were a couple of stretches of rocky dirt road where road works are in progress, about 25km in total so not too bad although it wasn’t always flat.Today we are driving through an area called Pampa Verdun on the map which I would describe as a wide open plain with tufts of shrubs. We are seeing foxes, sheep, rhea and guanaco. The good news is it’s not as windy today as it was yesterday which makes driving much easier. Blue B had more problems today, so the distributor was changed and the motor re-timed on the side of the road and we were on our way again with the car running smoothly. Many hands make light work.25 opinions with 1 solution!  After our lunch stop we started driving through Sierra de San Bernardo so we have the Pampa on our left and Sierra on our right.  Gobernador Costa is a small town with 1 service station for petrol and a queue that is taking 50 minutes to work through. It’s quite common to see long queues for fuel in Argentina, but it’s the first time we’ve had to sit in one. I guess we’ve been lucky to date. We’re also being challenged getting money out of the ATM’s sometimes they work and other times they don’t. There are 2 exchange rates here 1 official and the other what ever deal you can get at shops, restaurants or Cambio (Money changer) with $US being their preferred currency.  The Argentinian way of disposing of their unwanted vehicles is to leave them in the street until they rot away. We’ve seen buses, trucks and cars abandoned on the side of the road as you can see these cars below have been abandoned taking up valuable parking spots in some cases.It’s taken us a while to get used to the siesta process. We went to the supremacado (supermarket) this afternoon, although it was not so super, more mini, and it was closed until 6pm and it was then open until 11pm. We self catered tonight as we had an outdoor couch & table to sit at and we chatted to some other travelers from Chile & Argentina as best we could.  We were eating ham, cheese, olives and bread with our $5.25 bottle of Malbec and finished off with a beautiful nectarine.