Patagonia and Beyond
2 March, Esquel Our hire car, a little red VW, was not really designed for the trip we took today. The Parque Nacional Los Alerces is about 30 km out of Esquel. The road to the park Information Centre was reasonably good, but beyond that point the surface became gravel, which the Argentinians call “rip rap” and, while some of this was ok, large sections probably required a 4x4. As a result, for most of the 120 plus kilometres we did inside the park, we were restricted to 30 km/hr. The poor little Vdub shook, rattled and rolled, but she took must of the punishment reasonably well and got us home safely. Throughout large parts of the park the walking tracks were closed due to recent fires, so we were restricted to just a couple of options. Try as we might, we could not find the starting point for one walk, until we realised it was just a stroll along the lake shore. We did manage to find a couple of other points of interest, but poor signage throughout the park left us a little fr