Today is one of the longer days in the itinerary so we made sure to stop a couple of times. Finding diesel has been a challenge - not all stations carry it and even when we find a station, they may not always be open or stocked. We managed to get 20L from the estancia owners and 15L from a gas station in Bajo Caracoles. Thank goodness.
We stopped at a great place for lunch. Zach pulled over on the side of the road just outside of Bajo Caracoles on Ruta 41. We hiked up to the top of the hill and picnicked on all sorts of goodies. There was no wind and it was deafeningly quiet. We had a couple of mates before setting off on the next stage.
About twenty minutes down the road I asked "Where's Spot?". Spot is not a little running dog. Spot is the GPS tracking device Zach has installed to send updates of our location to his blog so people can track us. He'd taken it out at lunch and forgotten about it. We drove off without it and had to drive back to find it. Thank goodness it's orange! It was a bit further down the road from where we'd stopped before and there was definite evidence of impact at speed! Fortunately Spot survived the blow and we all resumed the journey.
Ruta 41 shows up as white on the map which means 'only useable when dry'. That's the road we took through to the Chilean border. It was a twisty windy road with beautiful landscapes hiding around every corner. I thoroughly enjoyed the scenery and Zach was having fun negotiating the roads.
This isn't a well trodden road so the Argentinian border crossing was a little hut where they wrote our names in pen in a little paper ledger! How quaint! We then entered No-Man's-Land and drove on a fair bit before getting to the Chilean border station.
Not two seconds in the door and the guarda says that we can't enter Chile - the vehicle is right-hand drive. Zach calmly explained that he'd been back and forth in to Chile three times now and it wasn't a problem. The guy seemed adamant but agreed to check. I wasn't sure which way it was going to go and time passed more slowly as we waited.
Eventually he came back and said that he was sorry but he couldn't let us through! Zach tried his last argument that we didn't have enough fuel to go back the way we came; we're running low! The guy didn't budge and instead showed us another route through Argentina that we'll have to take tomorrow.
Gulp! I knew there'd be some hiccups on this trip but I didn't expect them so soon! At least the guarda agreed to let us camp on-site since it was already after 20h.
We parked the truck next to a building that would shelter us from the prevailing winds and set up camp. We cooked up what food we had but given we knew we can't take fruit, vegetables, dairy or meat through the border, we were a bit lean on selection!
We're both very curious about what will happen tomorrow. Maybe if the guarda sleeps on it he'll relent or maybe we'll have better luck at the next border crossing north of here. Either way, tonight we're camping at the border station in Pasa Roballo - between Argentina and Chile what I've christened Argentilly! This is proving to be a fabulously unscripted adventure full of all sorts of surprises! Just what I signed up for!
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