Saturday: hiding out from ruta 40 headwind

So the riverside fishermen turned out to be quite friendly, if a little noisy and full of beer. Around 9pm just after we'd turned in they finished their catch for the day and turned their attention to cooking and eating and drinking and singing. Unfortunately we'd pitched our tent just the other side of the tree line from the campfire ring, so didn't get a lot of sleep until gone 1. On the plus side, we're now familiar with quite a bit of Argentinian folk song, including one that sounded like "mi perro no quiero".

On waking it was clear we were in for a blustery day, so didn't hurry to leave. Sure enough, despite being told the wind was always from west or southwest in this area, we were treated to a strong northeasterly for the day. Our path for the day of course being 90km of north bound road. Another day of crawling at 5mph and regular adhoc refuges under thus road. Gone midday, we stopped for shelter behind a works depot and found a tent with two sleeping cyclists inside. When they stirred they introduced themselves as Mike and Kerry from USA, heading southbound but had had to stop due to the sidewind pushing them into the traffic. As we were heading in the opposite direction it was merely trying to push us off the road - much safer! We sat for a couple hours and had a good chat, giving advice to one another of what to expect ahead. Turns out Mike is from mountain view California, which I know from work trips, so we also swapped tales of the cycling around that area.

Late afternoon we left them and pressed on a bit more, finding a restaurant with camping field by the river to stay in. 42km covered in 6hrs, plus 4hrs stopped! The restaurant appears to be run by resting mountaineers, mostly existing on coach coffee stops and occasional group stays. But they're very friendly and welcoming, and hopefully we'll get a quieter night's sleep too!

 map of route