Leaving Perito Moreno, my next destination was El Calafate. This bus ride was along RN40, or as it is known in Spanish, Ruta Quarenta, with some detours added. Now, RN40 is quite a special road in Argentina. It goes from Río Gallegos, the southernmost town on the Argentinian mainland, up to La Quiaca on the Bolivian border, in the western interior of Argentina, running for a total of 5000 km. Part of the magic is that in the past many parts of the road were difficult to travel being unpaved roads in so-so condition, and in the north there is a passage as high as 5000 metres above sea-level. I have not travelled the full distance myself, but I have been riding on the bus or driving a car on parts of it. I recall when I travelled in Argentina in 1997 that I was on a bus from Puerto Natales in Chile to El Calafate, we rode on a stretch of RN40 that was in terrible shape.
This is changing, as there is a now a commitment to pave RN40 in its entirety, which will remove some of the magic of Ruta Quarenta. It seems to me that there is a lot more paved then when lsat time I was in Argentina, but as we shalle see there are still unpaved sections. (And that includes the stretch that I mentioned above. However, this time the bus to Puerto Natales skipped that part, and made a long detour to stick to paved roads.)
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