3rd February 2015 – Esquel to Bariloche

We had a slow start this morning enjoying a lovely breakfast with Veronica and George.After the obligatory photo shoot we headed to El Bolso for our lunch meeting with Klaus, who organized our vehicles insurance in South America. El Bolso is at parallel 42 , so we’re at the same latitude as Hobart.  After lunch we had a stroll through a local market where they sell artifacts before getting on the road to our overnight stop at Bariloche.  We are now driving along the eastern side of the Andes with lakes to the east and north of us in National Parks. The roads are windy and we climbed to 1070 meters at one stage and the skies got very dark. Before we know it as Kay is driving around the mountain road we had driven into a thunder and lightning storm. The rain got so heavy we had to pull over as we lost sight of where the road was going. There are 2 other MG’s parked off the side of the road with us to wait for the storm to clear. The thunder, lightning and rain kept up and then we heard continuous thunder, which was of great concern. We looked up at the cliff to our left & there was a mud slide coming down the side of the mountain with rushing muddy water full of rocks and tree trunks.  The mud & rocks had only come across a quarter of the road, so we quickly started up the engine, radioed the other 2 cars to get going, so with Michael behind the wheel now we drove off as quick as we could, the other 2 cars closely behind us.  A few hundred meters up the road we came across another mudslide that was completely across the road, so Michael, with adrenalin pumping at this stage, drove into the flowing muddy water and picked his way through the rocks & logs, fortunately it wasn’t very deep. All 3 cars made it through OK.  As we continued a little way along the road the traffic came to a complete stop. We have about 20 cars ahead of us and in front of the 1st car the road is completely blocked for about 15-20 meters with rock piled 1-2 meters high. We have been told emergency vehicles are on the way to clear the road.We can now hear sirens and the police have turned up, so here’s hoping we will get to our hotel tonight as we only have 38km to go.  Shades of our drive to Whitfield in the King Valley late one night when the road out of Mansfield was completely blocked by a huge fallen tree! Only this time we can’t go back and around another road as the road behind us is also blocked. We’re trapped between 2 mudslides, we don’t know how many cars are behind us but there are a lot of people walking up & down the road.  We’ve been here for about 45 minutes and the thunder continues to rumble, but the rain has eased, although sitting here on the road on the side of a hill is a bit uneasy watching for more mud slides. It does take my mind off wanting a wee though, so that’s a positive, oh to be a male.  We’ve just been told it will be about midnight before the road is cleared, it’s now 6pm, so we wait and read our books.At 7pm a grader turns up and at 7:30 a front end loader turns up.We’ve been told the road will be cleared in an hour and a couple of us girls managed a wee behind some bushes with Michael on guard.  At 8:10 the police come along to tell us that we would be leaving soon, so that has given us much relief. As we drive over the road that was blocked, there is still a lot of muddy water to drive through as the mud is still flowing down the mountain, but the rubble has been pushed to one side of the road. We are very relieved to be finally driving to our hotel after 3.5 hours.   The Argentinian emergency services, national parks personnel and police did a great job, they kept us informed all the time, even though their English was limited. Given that they had to get a truck with a front end loader on it up to the blocked road, which was 38 km from Bariloche, they did it very quickly, as their initial estimate to clear the road was 5 to 6 hours.  We suspect they may have done this before!  We thank them very much as the prospect of sleeping in the MG wasn’t appealing, as much as we love our little car.  May our adventure continue, but in a much less exciting way.