Day 4 – The Camper

It is a beautiful and adventurous drive from Neuquén to San Carlos De Bariloche – the scenery is spectacular and the tropical storm-force cross winds will keep everyone awake. The road parallels Rio Limay as it climbs through the desert into the mountains around Bariloche. There are fewer trucks on the road, but more tourist excursion buses that are also bound for Bariloche.
That’s our rental camper in the picture – the vehicle is a 2 year old Ford Ranger King Cab with a 3 Liter Turbo Diesel, 4 wheel drive, manual transmission, and few frills; and the bolted on camper body contains a double bed, a dining table, stove, refrigerator, sink, shower, potty, and some storage – it’s not real spacious in there but we’re getting used to it and it’s got everything we need. The bed is surprisingly comfortable. The truck has a 20 gallon fuel tank and gets about 20 miles/gallon or 400 mile range, and we have an extra 5 gal can for another 100 miles.

I had an exciting 7 seconds today while driving the camper and trying to pass one of those double-decker excursion buses on the two lane highway – the suction from bus’s huge bow wave pulled us back and tried to keep us from passing, while the cross winds tried to knock us off the far side of the road. The only way the experience could have been more intense is if there was a car hurtling at us in the oncoming lane.

We got into Bariloche at a decent time and found out there is plenty of camping here – no wild goose chases all over town and we found a great place right away. Bariloche is a beautiful tourist area by a huge deep blue lake with snow-capped mountains on the far side, and we hope to stay at least a day. It is definitely fall here as the trees have color and the air temperature is cool.

Our disaster de jour with the camper when we stopped for the day was to find milk pouring out of the door, as another inside compartment had opened and spilled its contents – including two boxes of milk – all over the floor. We are learning that the design of this camper allows zero margin of error for securing compartments … we’ll need to batten down the hatches from now on like a navy ship going into a hurricane.

Oh yeah, meant to mention we’ve driven about a thousand miles from Buenos Aires to Bariloche, and also that an hour out of town we hit Ruta Nacional 40 (National Route 40) … our highway for at least the next week.