Travel

Day 10 – Day trip to Glacier Grosse and Puerto Guadal

Friday, January 10th

Distance – 193KM, 100% ripio

Given that Martyn cannot get down here until later in the day, we head off to see the local glacier. However, we don’t get off without a hiccup. Rob’s bike, will once again not start. The leads are checked but they are okay. The battery is dead.

Rob back in the battery case again

Given the high compression ratios and big pistons, these bikes are not easy to bump start. The guys came up with a brilliant way to start the bikes. Think of it as a two wheeled starter.

95hp motogp starter

The trip up to the glacier presented us with a waterfall to view.

Andean waterfall.
There was a bit of a hike up to see the glacier.  It was cool to see all the moraine that the glacier was leaving behind. Mixed in amongst the rock were huge chunks of blue ice.

Mac and Hoggy hanging out on the viewing platform.

Once we got back to town, it was of course lunch time. After lunch, Charlie, Simon and I rode out of town to the west, looking to visit the next pueblo. However, our estimates of 20-30KM were wildly off based on a guidebook map and a map of the whole country. However, the lake was beautiful and we just kept saying we’ll go a little further.

Puerto Guadal

Finally, we made it to Puerto Guadal with an obligatory stop for coffee at the Gringo Cafe.

El Gringo Cafe

We got a couple of picture stops in on the way back.

Lake General Carrera (or Lake Argentina across the border)

The view back towards Puerto Tranquillo was stunning.

By the time we got back, Martyn had made it into town and packed off George’s bike. Rob and Mac had also swapped the batteries in their bikes to determine whether it was the charging system or the battery that was bad.

We were all set to get back on the road. However, given we had in effect lost a couple of days, the plan was to turn around and head back northbound over some of the roads we’d come down on.