We had another long day of riding ahead of us with 355km total distance and really strong side winds forecast – only good news was that it was supposed to be all sealed roads. We added stickers with Ruta 40 onto our bikes before we left feeling like we deserved to display that we have ridden Ruta 40 after surviving the previous day.

It was a very long day of riding with a petrol stop at Baja Caracoles and just no pictures taken only some video footage of the “sealed road” which in sections had potholes so deep that the semi-trailers drove on the gravel next to the road and there were also sections were there was no bitumen at all and back to ripio with lose gravel. We did not stop due to the ridiculously strong winds – I prefer a bad gravel road over riding in the gusty strong side winds any day – who would have thought I would ever say that 😂 – the wind really gets to me – the gusts that are unpredictable and strong enough to blow you off the road or into oncoming traffic are not fun.

We rode into Perito Moreno and my phone, which we use for navigation, had no charge left and we parked on the side of the road trying to charge it from the solar panel and the wind was so strong that everything blew off, the bikes almost blew over and I lost my cool – annoyed with myself that I did not charge the phone while we were at the petrol station chatting with other riders earlier and not being able to remember the hotel name or having sent it to Andrew whose phone always lasts the entire day without running out of charge. We were literally only two blocks away from the hotel I had booked on the same street. We parked in front of the hotel and before I went to check in, Andrew’s bike fell over and petrol poured out. He had to get all the luggage off before we could attempt to pick it up – I realised that the petrol was leaking from the fuel cap and tightened it which stopped the petrol leak – as we had the luggage off a guy came over from across the street to help us pick the bike up. We checked into the hotel and were directed to a gravel back yard to park the bikes. The room was small and the only window in the room was into a storage room with an exercise bike. The other peculiarity about the room was that the water in the bathroom sink would leak out at the floor – so all the water used when turning on the tap, accumulated on the bathroom floor – strange way to encourage saving water 😂.

We wanted an early dinner but as in most places restaurants only open at 8:00pm for dinner so we booked a table in the hotel next door and went for a walk to a lake (Laguna de los Cisnes), saw some gauchos on their horses and got some water and powerade from a small grocery store before having our dinner. When we ate dinner, there was a bus parked outside and it looked like there was a tv screen on the the bus televising a soccer match – they love their soccer here – in reality it was just a reflection of the tv screen inside the restaurant, but it had both of us fooled for a moment – we did have a long, tough day of riding 😉😂