Today was pretty much an uneventful riding day “to cover ground”. Leaving town Duane caught a picture of a motorcycle police team. She was riding a BMW F650GS just like ours!
The scenery along the way was beautiful but it was getting kind of hot.
It was at about 3:30 when we arrived at Malargue and decided it was too early to stop. We should go another 200 kms to the next town on the map with large print which was Buta Ranquil.
En route we stopped at the Rio Grande to take a couple of pictures and along came a couple of other adventure motorcyclists. They stopped to chat and we found out they were from Spain. One of them is planning a trip from Montreal to Alaska next year.
That 200 kms took us 6 hours and we arrived at about 9:30 PM. The road consisted of soupy gravel, desert “flour”, drifting sand and broken up hard-top. It is a good thing we are far enough south that it was still light out. Ahhh just like June in Calgary! Being a long-time sufferer of SAD it is nice to have avoided the short sunlight days of winter this year. I love it!
Despite the bold print on the map, the town of Buta Ranquil has a population of about 500 personas and looked pretty bleak. The only hotel in town was a refurbished building of some sort. It had just opened 3 months ago, and the young entrepreneur was glowing with pride. It was sad to see the poor workmanship and lack of maintenance even at this early stage. Give it a couple of years and it will be in disrepair. Should we tell him where he is failing? No, it would only insult this eager owner.
