A hot day and full of groceries, trying to get a ride!
Finally an hour later, after trying mutiple techniques of dancing, thumbing, and waving, we got a ride! It was from a tatoo artist from Buenos Aires, who used to live in the area and had actually heard of the small town! He said he could not take us there, but instead would get us to a much better spot to hitchike toward the highway we needed to get there. He dropped us off and again, we bagan thumbing! We were reluctant to come upon a semi driver, who just had stopped at a check station, and decided to give us a ride. I had never been in a semi truck before, but the bed/backseat is super plush for hitchhiking and Bob and I made good conversation with the spanish we know. Luckily, upon coming to an intersection, I realized he was turning the wrong way and misunderstood our final destination, as it is a very small town. Bob and I, saddened that we were going to have to hitch another time in the heat were reluctant to find out that the trucker immediatly radio'd the truck behind him and got us a direct hitch to Villa Llanquin, no thumbing needed! We finally arrived and walked aross the foot bridge since the ferry across the river only runs a few hours a day.
WE MADE IT!!
The foot bridge, from the Villa Llanquin side of the Limay River.
We found a beautiful campsite on the river owned by Pancho and Clari (or Lefty as we wished her name was). They had a nice lawn and cooking area and we could pitch our tent under the shade of cherry trees which ended up being our nemesis. But the cherries were delicious (just don't let Lefty see you eat them... she will charge 1 peso per cherry)!!
We were even able to buy 2 dozen fresh eggs from Lefty for breakfast!
The town was very Gaucho as people told us, and had a church, a small grocery store, and a school, not even a bar! Many of the people in the town were ranchers and rode around on horse.
We climbed most days on the very featured red volcanic rock....
We caught many small fish and drank many big beers. Although we had no problem cathing the small fish with our montana fly boxes, we later learned from a fishing guide that the larger fish escape the Limay River in the heart of summer to the deep lakes and return again in the fall, oh well, we still had a hoot wet wading, watching the little guys sip our dries off of the crystal clear blue waters!
Sadly though after 5 days, our time in Villa Llanquin needed to come to and end. So we set off to hitch a ride back to Bariloche, which we hoped would be a much easier hitch since it is a very large town...
We were right!! and after only 5 min we had a ride in the back of a ranch truck all the way to Bariloche, PERFECT!
Aparently it isn't legal to ride in the back of trucks. (I guess were not in Montana anymore).
Back to hitching after a 1/2 way ride and we got a ride quickly within 10 min once again! This time we threw our bags in the truck bed and piled in the cab, to find out that our driver was the resturant owner from the meal the previous night! Crazy! He was headed to town to get more beer and saw us thumbing our way home!
What a fun adventure!!!
Back in Bariloche it is time to catch up with society and start planning the next 2 weeks of my trip, Bob sadly leaves tomorrow, and once again I will be on my own out to try and find climbing and adventure partners! It is full on summer here though and too hot to climb today, maybe some deep water soloing... who knows?
Caio for now!
Newly aquired chaco tan... a good sign of summer!
This all looks like incredible trip Brad. Super stoked for you! Enjoying the updates, keep them coming and keep climbing hard.Yeah buddy!
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