| Subject: | Day 37 with Pictures: Grand Finale! |
|---|---|
| Date: | Sat, 23 Apr 2011 11:25:51 -0700 |
| From: | J. Coldewey <jcjc@uw.edu> |
| To: | post@posterous.com |
Here's another reposting of our last day on the bikes. Excellent ride...
Day 37 – Saturday April 2 – What a Finale!
In the film version of Ray Bradbury’s The Illustrated Man, starring Rod Steiger, one episode concerns a group of spacemen stranded on a planet where it rained incessantly, unrelentingly, drilling down on their helmets as they make their way through the thick jungle. They were looking for Sun Domes, places that had been constructed where one could get out of the rain. Otherwise you’d go crazy. The wind in Patagonia is like that. It blows constantly through much of the day and night at about 50 or 60 miles an hour, and it gusts to 70 or 80. This is real no man’s land, though indescribably beautiful.
We rose at our camp site, somewhat sheltered from the wind, packed up and prepared to go. We were heading southeast, and the wind always blows out of the northwest, so it was behind us for the most part. Steve Jones went down within the first half mile as we tried to cut across a quartering wind from the right, but then we turned left downwind and pedaled away. The road rose up along cuts in the buttes and disappeared over blind hills. After about 30km we were starting to get used to it. And then the road began descending gradually for almost 40km.
This meant that we had sixty mile-an-hour wind at our backs, gusting to ninety and pushing us along the gravelly, rutted and washboard road. But if you kept your head you could really haul. John clocked the fastest time – almost 57.6km/hour. It was impossible to turn around, of course, but that wasn’t the way we were going anyway. We flew on that road for about 30 miles at that pace, and none of us expects to experience that exhilarating speed and riding pleasure again.
We finally stopped at an intersection of Route 40, which we had to take to get to Bajo Caracoles. Upwind. The truck loaded us up and we arrived in the little village covered in dirt and dust and laughing. .
The settlement Bajo Caracoles is an odd little place, with a gas station and a squat hotel with a bar. Nothing else around, though, for perhaps 75 windy miles. We celebrated and hosed off and celebrated some more. After dinner we collapsed into bed for our trip by bus to El Chalten the next day.
