Sunday 12 March 2023 – 354Km
After a 2 night stay in El Calafate, I am riding to Puerta Natales, today is a mainly tarmac ride through a desert like landscape. Southern Patagonia is described as an arid plateau with a very low average rainfall of 200 to 300mm per year. This fact seems at odds with the fact that El Calafate sits on the shores of Lago Argentino, the largest fresh water lake in Argentina, the answer to this conundrum? The lake is filled with melt water from the many glaziers in the area and from mountain snow. Once I head South and move away from the lakes of Patagonia you see the effects of such a low rainfall, and arid landscape sparsely populated by people. The main occupants I see are Guanacos, a member of the Camelid family and closely related to Llama’s along with Rheas, a flightless bird similar to an Ostrich.
Wandering around El Calafate yesterday afternoon it started me thinking about the many dogs you see wandering the streets. I am a dog lover, despite this I am very cautious around dogs abroad, being bitten can be a very serious, medical facilities and treatment for rabies may not be available. The dogs in El Calafate and other towns in this area wander free, from what I can see the people of the town look after them, they don’t belong in the main to any one person or family. Many of them seem to have adopted a particular restaurant or shop and wait around outside to be fed, they don’t go inside, they sit patiently at the door wagging their tail with that face that tugs at our heart strings. I didn’t see one dog that was remotely aggressive, they were always friendly and no one ever treated them with caution or avoided contact, they just hang around and are part of the towns community. At certain times of the day they play a game of “chicken with cars and bikes, running in front of them, at first I was nervous riding a bike seeing a dog rushing at me. I soon got used to their game and just maintained a steady speed and after a few seconds they turned there attention to the next vehicle. Scary on many levels not least that the dog was going to get injured.
