I’ll be heading to Patagonia tomorrow for several SOTA activations.
I plan to operate portable and QRP from a few summits, depending on weather and access.
More details and alerts will follow.
Hope to catch many of you on the air. 73, Manu.
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In my mind this name almost immediatelly resembles the Jules Verne’s «Les enfants du captaine Grant» classics:
“Patagonia!” exclaimed Lady Helena.
“Undoubtedly.”
“But is Patagonia crossed by the 37th parallel?” asked the Major.
“That is easily ascertained,” said the captain, opening a map of South America. “Yes, it is; Patagonia just touches the 37th parallel. It cuts through Araucania, goes along over the Pampas to the north, and loses itself in the Atlantic.”
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I’ll be very interested in your reports from this trip!
I’ve got family connections in the Welsh part of Patagonia, around Esquel and Trevelin. I’ve visited twice already and will go again at some point in the next few years.
When you do your report could you include info on logistics, like getting your local license etc.
Thanks and good luck.
Gerald
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Suerte en el periplo y cuidate mucho de las avispas y tábanos, que durante el verano se ponen insoportables!
Río Negro o Neuquén?
73 de JP3PPL
I love Patagonia! On my high‑school graduation trip, a friend and I decided not to go with the rest of our classmates to Bariloche (a beautiful Patagonian city in the Andean region). Instead, we bought ourselves bicycles and made that our graduation trip.
From Buenos Aires we loaded the bikes onto a rickety old train, and after 12 hours to cover just 600 km, we arrived in Bahía Blanca, where we would begin pedaling along the iconic National Route 3 and get to Puerto Madryn
The Patagonian steppe is one of the loneliest and most beautiful places at the same time. Pedaling while guanacos ran alongside us, or suddenly seeing rheas or armadillos dart away as we approached, made me think of how Charles Darwin must have observed these animals.
Both the real stories and the novels inspired by Patagonia are absolutely captivating.
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Absolutely agree! I’ve driven over 600km across the steppe on Route 25 from the Andes to Trelew. Spectacular scenery.
Impressed at you cycling out there. Vast distances between places.
One trip we did was a tour by minibus from El Calafate, north on Route 40 to Bariloche, over several days. Not sure if it’s still the same now, but a lot of the road was still gravel then making for slow, rough and dusty progress. Quite an adventure.
One particular memory was the night we got a clear view of Comet McNaught in January 2007.
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Beautiful and terrific pictures of the comet!!!
You probably won’t believe me, but I’ll tell it anyway in case you do. There was a stretch of almost 200 km where there was absolutely nothing, and since it was summer, we were running out of water. About 100 meters off the road we saw a rundown little store, so we headed toward it hoping someone would be there.
What caught my attention was that the window glass had turned opaque from wind erosion, and the floor was just packed dirt. One wall was “decorated” with the hubcaps that many drivers had surely lost along the road. There was only a single refrigerator, but no one inside.
My friend and I started talking, and after a moment a woman suddenly appeared holding a shotgun!!! We were stunned!!! She asked us, “What do you want?!?!”
I happened to see the fridge and, stuttering, I said, “A Teem… a Teem!!!”
It was the most bitter and least refreshing Teem I’ve ever had in my life hahaha.
As for the legendary Route 40, that long gravel section is known as ¨Los 73 Malditos¨ (The Cursed 73) — 73 km of gravel that, depending on God’s mood, can be easy to ride… or pure hell.
Beautiful memories!
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