We are travelling as rapidly north as possible, towards Buenos Aires on a fairly good all-sealed highway, and today was from St Julian to Comodora Rivadavia, and fairly large town.
We had breakfast in the hotel as usual, at 7am but only Rahn and Paul were there and they were not in a mind to be particularly communicative at that hour, which is fine of course. As a result, I decided to leave on my own ( as JC said we could here ) and rode out at 07:30am. This turned out to be a wonderful decision as there was no wind for an hour! "El Pampero" the eternal wind that blows across the Steppe here, and the Pampas further north did not get really started until about 09:30am.
Then it seriously blew. Gusts were clearly over 60 knots at many points, and to make matters worse, there were a lot of animals on the road. After I fuelled up, I ran swiftly out of the YPF gas station and almost directly into two wild horses in the middle of the road! Later I passed large mobs of guanacos and actually had to stop twice for very large groups. I also saw hawks on a kill, and bin chickens (nunods) like small emus plus larger hares.
I stopped at the rare and second YPF gas station, filled up and had a cortado and an empanada. It was very peaceful out of the wind. Our hotel had changed over night, as I later found out that the previous one had cancelled one of our rooms! Apparently this is a common problem in Arentina. Anyway we stayed at the new WAM Hotel which had a pool and all - and a good restaurant, where most of us sat and whiled-away the afternoon. I had a one hour sleep as well, which was very enjoyable. Unfortunately my washing did not get done as planned so sits in a bag stinking the place out until I can get is all done tomorrow night in Madryn.
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