Well, It's Not The End Of The World ... Anymore

We have been making a lot of ground in the last several days, and we are no longer at The End Of The World

 
You may recall that's how they refer to Tierra del Fuego down at the bottom of South America:  The End of the World.  Which, basically it is - it's as far south as you can get.  Geographically speaking, it is the end of the world. 

But now we are further north and the landscape is beginning to change.  We are about to leave Patagonia, our time here has been wonderful. Many of the places we've seen were truly magnificent.  It's certainly an amazing part of the planet.

 
But we've got a long way to go, and we're entering a new phase.  Tonight we find ourselves back in Argentina, in a resort lake town called Bariloche (bar-ee-LOW-chay).  The weather is warm and sunny.  

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We've been driving hard, and according to my figures - out of our total travel, we have driven about 700 miles on dirt (mud) and gravel roads. Essentially, driving on most dirt roads down here is like driving ... off-road.  I know, that's ironic ...

Driving that far on poor roads takes time.  It's a bouncy, rough, and rather slow process.  You probably average maybe 40 miles an hour.  Takes forever to get somewhere.  But that's part of the adventure, eh?

Here's an example:  We're barreling along on a dirt track, (at 40 miles an hour?) with heavy rocks and loose footing, and we come to a warning sign that there is work ahead.  There are some guys working and they motion for us to slow ... way ... down.  

And we come to this old bridge, which looks creeky and worn out and very unsafe.  Keep in mind that large rigs and trucks use this same road.  So we ease over the bridge and I had to walk back and snap a picture.  

And here below, is the rain swelled cascade that is threatening to wash out the whole bridge.  This kind of stuff can make you uneasy about the remaining 100 miles of dirt road ahead through the wilderness.  

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So we are here in Bariloche, Argentina, and there is a lot to see and do here.  There is a beautiful church here, and it's a pretty fair sized city, the largest we've seen yet.  

  
And inside that church is a bunch of iconography, including this sculpture of when Christ was carrying the cross and the two ladies met him in his suffering. 

This was interesting because the artwork above looks big, but it was only about twelve inches tall, with incredible detail.