After ignoring our own rule to not drive in the dark we were happy to have a quiet spot next to the lagoon. Before we went to bed I quickly left the van to switch on the gas, so I don’t have to do it next morning for the coffee. When I entered back into the van I found huge thorns in my shoes and we were wondering where they come from, because I had not seen any thorn bushes. Once I again I postponed that to future Björn…and after a good nights sleep he really found out. We had managed to pick to only spot on a huge lawn right under a parrots nest and this kind of parrot built built their nests typically from branches with long thorns and they were sticking next morning in our shoes and in Rosis wheels. I was once again happy for the enforced and thick off-road wheels. Since we drove until late we decided for a very slow start in the day. Linda took the bike for a short trip around the lake (and a Geocash on the way) and I did some sport. After that we took a bath in the lake and used Rosis outdoor shower to rinse off the salty lagoon water…. That was cold, but it felt so good.
After carefully removing thorns in front of Rosis way, we started to make our way further south and stopped when we finally left the province of Buenos Aires and entered the Province of Rio Negro in Viedma for a short lunch break stop at some food trucks. But a few kilometers before leaving the province we had to pass one of the few „fruit and meat checkpoints“. I also could not believe it, but we were asked if we had any fresh fruit or meat with us. Honestly, I answered that we don’t have any meat and just had a few bananas and apples. The answer was, that bananas were fine, but the apple we have to consume right now…. I was funnily surprised but obeyed, because we did not want to discuss with the authorities. So we did as told, parked our van next to the checkpoint and ate our last apple to „legally“ pass through this checkpoint..Our spot for the night was an empty car park on a cliff in Balneario El condor and even before the Sunset we saw hundreds of parrots. Not the small green ones with the thorn-nests. Bigger ones and way more colourful with green red and yellow feathers. They were everywhere. Later we found out that this is the world’s largest colony of burrowing parrots with over 39.000 pairs. They were everywhere and it was an incredible spectacle to watch and listen to them. Funnily enough they only spent the day in their nesting holes at the cliff and leave for the night in big swarms so we had another quiet night until they came back the next morning. From there we made our way the next day to a close by Loberia with hundreds and hundreds of sea lions. It was incredibly windy but still very impressive to see these huge amounts of Sea Lions. You could smell and hear them although they were so far away.
After the Loberia we did again some driving and found a nice overnight spot in the Dunes next to the village Las Grutas. We arrived early enough for a quick workout and than we did our first barbecue of the trip. We hooked up the Skotti grill to one of our gas bottles and had an amazing barbecue right in the dunes. To catch the amazing sunset evening mood we wanted to start our little drone, but quickly realised that our camp spot was right next to a sport airport, so that it was not possible to fly the Drone…I am sure there will still be a lot more options for that. Protected from the wind in the dunes we fell asleep pretty fast.
The next day we made our way to our first larger goal on the trip: The unesco world heritage park peninsula Valdes.
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