Along the Ruta 40

One of the main stops along here is to visit Cueva de Las Manos, a cave and cliff with ancient hand printings!
We decided to access here through the Patagonia national park which looked a smoother road to take, although we didn't realize we had to walk a trail that descended 2km and ascended another 2km via a canyon to get to the caves. Never the less, it was worth it to see the ancient hand painting. The park has very similar infrastructure to the chile side but much quieter! We stayed in a lovely free park campsite for the night.

Most of the Ruta 40 along here is open flat road all the way to the horizon. Our days consisted of mainly driving and stopping at small dusty tumbleweed villages on route for petrol and some fresh bread and facturas (pastries). Some of the towns we stopped at included Gobernador Gregores, Bajo Caracoles, Perito Moreno, Rio Mayo and Gobernador Costa where we found a cheap municipal campground for the night.

Outside Rio Mayo, we met a nice argentinian man Daniel who took videos of the van swaying in the strong wind. We kept bumping into Daniel on route and with our limited Spanish we chatted about our road trips. He was also on a big trip heading home to his hometown Mar del Plata on the north east argentinian coast from the marble caves in Chile. He was easy to spot on the road with his kayak overhanging on top of his small car!

On route to El Bolson, we hit 6000km in the van on 28th march.Read more