Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

I'd planned this as a rest day some time ago - unusual for a Sunday - because I was expecting to be on a bus from 6.45am to 9pm, on the first leg of the trip to the deep south, from Bariloche to Perito Moreno. (It turned out we got in just after 7 - presumably because there's less dirt road than there once was - and if I'd still had a streak going I would have had time to squeeze something in, but I don't so I didn't).

This was the first day of a two-day trip down Ruta 40, a road of legendary status in Argentina which runs the entire length of the country (all 5000km of it) roughly tracking along the eastern foot of the Andes. The Patagonian component of it used to have a reputation of being a local equivalent of one of our outback tracks, but all but about 20km of today's stretch was bitumen and that remainder is under construction. (I don't know whether this has anything to do with this being the President's home turf). Those who've come from the opposite direction tell me there's still some old-school stuff to look forward to tomorrow.

There was quite a bit of life on the streets of Bariloche at 6.30 on a Sunday morning (almost exclusively consisting of people for whom it was the morning after the night before). From there, it was mountain country for 300 kilometres or so - a few too many clouds around for good photos but still beautiful - before we got into the really barren and remote country, flat and treeless with just low saltbush-type growth, not even really grass except in the valleys - could easily have been a colder version of the SA outback (at least in those places where the snowcapped mountains to the west were out of sight). There were a few one-horse towns (actually, in the town where we had lunch I saw two horses), and a larger place, Rio Mayo, which managed to have the sense of a one-horse town despite a four-figure population.

Perito Moreno is more substantial than that (its main streets are paved for a start). The hotel's pretty basic but will do the job; I'm also getting my first introduction to something which will become very familiar over the next couple of weeks, Patagonian westerly winds. There was another Australian on the next table at dinner, which meant I was able to clear the second-last hurdle to casting my postal vote (getting a qualified witness to sign the envelope); just need to find a post office now...

(Originality does not appear to be a strong point in Argentine street names; this is the third place out of four where I've stayed on San Martin. Others which make regular appearances include 25 de Mayo, 9 de Julio, Juan Peron, Belgrano, and of course Islas Malvinas or variations thereof).

C • San Martin 4

Took a very long time to get to sleep last night (like sometime after 2), and with no opportunity to sleep in because of a 6am OA board meeting (it's something of a miracle of modern technology that I can run these from the mountains of Argentina), I thought today might be a bit of a struggle.

Nonetheless, I stuck to my original plan of getting the bus up to the Cerro Catedral ski resort and then running back via the back road, which I thought would be about 2 hours. Started off reasonably well (with the help of a solid downhill from 2-6k which accounted for all of the net elevation loss), and enjoyed being on dirt for the first 10k - except for the bit through a village which raked very high on the loose dogs quota. Not such attractive immediate surrounds on the second half along a reasonably substantial road (though with a good verge), but the views were still good. Toughest part of the course was the last 5k, with a solid climb followed by a watch-your-quads descent into town. Certainly not as good a run as last week's long one, but not too bad.

After a couple of hours I decided I was in sufficient shape to do one of the other local highlights - renting a bike and riding around the Circuito Chico, an intermittently spectacular and always hilly 25km loop. Unsurprisingly found this hard work (up the hills anyway) on the rental bike - quads finally gave out on the last climb (and the rest of me on the bus back to town). I'll sleep well tonight, I expect. The circuit circumnavigates Lake Perito Moreno, not to be confused with the town of Perito Moreno (where I'll be staying tomorrow night), the Perito Moreno Glacier (currently planned for next Friday) and the Perito Moreno National Park (an exceedingly remote place I won't make it to). Sr. Moreno was a noted 19th century explorer of Patagonia so it's not really any different to the proliferation of Humes, Sturts and Eyres on the relevant corridors in Australia (to say nothing of Major Mitchell).

I set off further south first thing tomorrow morning. Bariloche is technically in Patagonia (as is Neuquen), but I'll feel as if I'm really getting into it properly once south of here.

Getting to explore Bariloche in more detail (and feeling better) than yesterday. The major objective was to get to the top of the ridge behind the town to see the next range properly, and this objective was achieved, through what was a pretty solid climb for the first 4k. Didn't feel stunning, but certainly better than the last couple of days. Crispest running conditions I've been in for a while - brilliantly sunny but chilly in a Canberra September sense (it was -0.5 overnight, though got close to 20 today).

One slightly annoying feature of the run was the large number of loose dogs (I've seen this before a bit in South America, but not to this extent) - only a couple gave any sort of trouble but still a bit disconcerting. I'm told there are many more in Chile (though Chile is also rabies-free which takes one issue out of the equation). Somewhat to my surprise, most of the residential streets outside the immediate town centre are gravel (even though the housing quality suggests that many served reasonably well-off areas; maybe this comes from the East Ivanhoe Boulevard school of traffic calming).

As I expected, the more ambitious walks from here were off the agenda because of too much snow cover (the snowline is at about 1600m) and/or because they're served by summer-only buses which aren't running yet, but I still managed to get a nice one in along the top of the ridge next to town, about 600m above (accessed via chairlift) - lots of stunning views. (That said, if I understand the course directions correctly, a lot of the under-snow ones feature in this race to be run on Sunday, especially in the 80k and 50k).

Other items on today's agenda included making acquisitions from one of Bariloche's famous array of chocolate shops, and being only partially successful in the latest stage of my bid to cast a vote in the Victorian election. (I've received my ballot papers, but the declaration envelope needs to be witnessed by either an Australian citizen or a local government official/police officer; I haven't found any of the former yet, and the latter will only do it through a specific office for certifications which doesn't open again until Tuesday - it's a long weekend here - by which time I'll be long gone. I think I've got a decent chance of finding a fellow citizen in El Chalten, but whether the vote will then make it back from such a remote place in time to be counted - 11 days after polling day is the magic number, I think - is anyone's guess).

C • More boxes ticked 3

I didn't sleep that much on the bus. It was one of the less plush ones I've been on (though still better than home), was quite full, and they stuck to the original meal schedule in terms of place (buses here normally give you food on board rather than stop for meals), so we had dinner at 3am.

We got to Neuquen (or so I thought) around 4.30. I'd booked (and paid for) a hotel there and thought about going out there to see if anyone was awake to check me in and get maybe three or four hours' sleep before the next leg, but the taxi driver at the bus station, who was perhaps waiting for a booking, didn't seem terribly interested in me (he might have been more interested if he'd known how big a fare he was going to get - see below), so I settled into to try to keep myself awake for five hours at the bus station. As bus stations go it seemed pretty good - clean and felt safe in the pre-dawn hours (many don't), though smaller than I expected in a place of Neuquen's size, and there was a cafe there which accepted US$ at the unofficial rate. (If you don't want to chance dealing with the dodgy street dealers who can be found on any tourist-area street saying 'Cambio, Cambio', another less dodgy way to do exchange deals is to find a place which accepts US$, as many restaurants do, pay more than you need to and get your change in pesos at the unofficial rate - which at the moment is about 13 compared with the official rate of 8.5).

Held out until the arrival of the next bus, albeit with some moments which felt like I imagine 5am must feel like on a rogaine. The staff seemed a bit puzzled by my ticket but let me on. It wasn't until I'd been on the bus for about 15 minutes that it dawned on me - I'd got off in the wrong town (the town on the other side of the river to Neuquen, about 10km away) - and it was fortunate that my connecting bus also stopped there. Probably fell on my feet in that sense because the small-town terminal was a nicer place to wait in the early hours than I expect Neuquen's would have been.

Unsurprisingly, I was asleep pretty quickly on the Bariloche bus, but did wake in time to experience the last 250 kilometres - starting with arid saltbush country which wouldn't have been out of place in Woomera, gradually becoming hillier but still barren, then a stunningly scenic last 100km which made me wonder if I'd been asleep for a very long time and ended up in Queenstown. If this is what Patagonia is going to be like it's going to be a fun couple of weeks.

The run, done not too long after I arrived, was rubbish, but what do you expect? Achilles, again to my less than overwhelming surprise, was particularly touchy today but eventually settled down in the second half.

C • I can confirm your suspicions. 1

Longer run this morning, up to the local peak with the aim of getting a good early-morning view of the Andes - turns out you don't really get a view of the main range there, just the initial range which is quite impressive enough. It was almost continuously uphill for the first 6.5km but never steeply so (250 metres climb in total), to the summit of Cerro de la Gloria, renamed some decades ago in honour of a military campaign (at least they didn't call it Cerro Malvinas Argentinas). Felt OK, if somewhat grinding, on the climb, but pretty ordinary on the descent (with a diversion past the Mendoza meteorological observatory), and ended up going not quite as far as planned.

The reason for this ordinariness manifested itself as soon as I cooled down - something strained in my upper back (not the usual spot). I was thinking "could be fun trying to haul a pack around with this", but it seemed to settle down more or less by the end of the day.

The main agenda item for the day was a long bus trip - a bit of a nothing leg to an overnight stop in Neuquen, ahead of a connection to Bariloche the next morning. With a 10pm scheduled arrival it always looked like a long day, particularly when we left 30 minutes late.

I'd seen a march when I arrived in Mendoza which I gathered was something to do with objections to a mine and its potential effect on downstream water supplies (important in a region which depends on irrigation), and there were a few more relevant signs on the road south (my Spanish may be limited but you don't need much to work out what's going on with "NO A LA MINA" and "AGUA CONTAMINADA"). It got a bit more serious when we were held up for about 45 minutes coming into General Alvear, a town about 300km south of Mendoza, by a protest, but that turned out to be only the warm-up.

The next stop was about 10km out of town on the way south. Here there was a kilometre-long line of heavy vehicles (cars were finding other ways around) whose cause we all worked out pretty quickly, and it was apparent it was going nowhere in a hurry (word was it had already been going for four hours). It did get nowhere in a hurry; we were eventually stuck there for six hours, stretching well into the evening. I was thinking this trip wouldn't be complete without colliding with South American street politics at some point, and this was it. After the first couple of hours most of us spilled out onto the road which made it hard to tell who was involved in the protest and who wasn't (by this point a secondary blockade had appeared pretty well next to our bus). It was all quite a festive atmosphere with only two bits of aggro that I saw (and only one piece of horn-blowing) - surprising me a bit as patience isn't really part of the Latin American stereotypes you think of. (I suspect the protest had overwhelming local support, including from the police who were nowhere to be seen until it was pretty much all over). There were a couple of Brits on the bus so at least I had someone to talk about the situation with.

Once it became apparent that we were going to be several hours late, I was quietly hoping that it would drag on for a couple more (on the grounds that I'd rather spend most of a night on a bus than half of it on a bus and half in a bus station). We eventually got moving again shortly after 10, with six or seven hours still ahead of us. In what was to be the first of several surreal moments of the coming hours, as we went past the main protest site the crowd cheered us passing as if we were a football team bringing home some important silverware.

Next step was a test of my counting skills in Spanish - the bus bingo game (won by one of the Brits - I wouldn't have been able to do anything with the prize, a bottle of Mendoza's finest, anyway).

Overnight buses here are definitely a much more pleasant experience than they are in Australia (it occurred to me today that I'm now only a few hundred kilometres away from the volcano which was responsible for my most recent overnight bus trip in Australia). That said, travelling overnight meant one significant negative - ruling the morning out as a running possibility.

With no sign of the 'chance of a thunderstorm' turning into anything substantive and the temperature sitting on 35 degrees, I headed out in the late afternoon into the Mendoza sun. A shorter, faster session was the least unsuited to these conditions (and it was about time I did something faster anyway), so did a 10x1 minute on the town side of the San Martin park - which was at least shady. (Looking forward to the Andes views, which were impressive on the way into town, from the highest parts of this park tomorrow morning). Felt horrible on the warm-up and still only modestly functioning during the reps themselves, but managed to get through which will do me for today. Probably better going uphill than down (there was a slight slope to the place where I was doing them).

Mendoza is an arid place which functions on irrigation (a bit like Mildura, though the main agricultural activity here is wine), and there are irrigation channels along a lot of the streets (not things you would want to fall into). Lots of trees on the streets too, at least in the parts of town I've been in. It's the last large city I'll be in for a while.

Going to/from the park. Horrible going up, better (but still rather hot and bothered) coming back.

Was looking up sunrise/sunset times earlier on. In effect Argentina has permanent daylight saving (its time zone is GMT-3 when its longitude fits GMT-4, even GMT-5 in western parts). One consequence of this is that in winter, sunrise isn't until 8.30 in Mendoza (and 10 in Ushuaia).

From a comments thread on the Poll Bludger blog: "Family First have preferenced the Australian Sex Party last in the Victorian state election. Obviously no-one's had the talk to them yet about how families get started".

Weird orienteering and meteorology (combined) dreams department: the one which involved 165 (a very precise number) millimetres of rain falling in Launceston in a few hours and washing away the crossings of the gorge before the World Cup prologue. (In reality, nothing close to this amount of rain has ever fallen in Launceston, one of the least likely places in the country to get that sort of extreme short-period rain; their big floods, and they've had a few, come when there are big dumps in the north-east highlands which make their way down the South and North Esk).

Certainly knew I'd been for a run yesterday when I got up this morning. Achilles was tight (as it was every time I got up during the day after sitting for any length of time), and so were quads, but both loosened up quickly and the run was a reasonable one thereafter.

Once again headed to the Puerto Madero docklands, mostly in the name of minimising road crossings (though the traffic wasn't quite as crazy as I was expecting it to be). It's one of numerous affluent areas of the city; on the basis of what I've seen on this visit, you certainly wouldn't think you were in an economic basket case. The rich areas in Brazil are probably as rich or richer, but the very visible security there gives you a barbarians-at-the-gate sense you don't get here (the only electric fences I've seen so far in Argentina are the sort with cows on the other side of them). I'm well aware, though, that there is extreme poverty here too, some of it not too many kilometres away on the outer fringe of the city where running water and electricity are luxury items.

Did a bit of a double-take towards the end on spotting someone who bore a very striking resemblance to Asha as she was three or four years ago, walking down the street in a white lab coat. (On rounding the corner it became apparent that the white lab coat was the uniform for the local school).

It was another warm run, although with a nice breeze on the waterfront. I have two days of summer remaining (for now); the forecasts for my route are 37 for Mendoza on Tuesday, 11 for Bariloche on Thursday.

Had another pleasant day exploring various bits of Buenos Aires (including a trip out to the science museum which demonstrated that kids get as excited about dinosaurs here as they do at home), before getting on the bus for Mendoza.