After a couple of days in Viedma I decided to leave and cycle the Camino de la Costa on my own, stopping at the Balneario El Condor for one night and then continue on the unpaved route to Las Grutas.
El Condor is the first town on the coast, 30km outside Viedma, next to where the Rio Negro throws itself in the Atlantic Ocean, it is a very nice and quiet town (at least before the high season kicks in) and has a huge beach.
I stayed in a camping a few metres away from the beach, where I met a guy from Czech Republic who had been studying in Buenos Aires and was now travelling across Argentina.
In the morning I bought plenty of water and food and left for my next destination, La Loberia, where thousands of tourists come every year to see a permanent colony of sea lions.
After the 30km on the paved route to La Loberia, I bought more water and decided to cycle a bit longer and stop along the coast for the night.
The next town was 70km away, and after passing by some amazing places and seeing beatiful beaches and animals of all sorts (turtles, armadillos, eagles, parrots...) I managed to get there as the sun was disappearing into the sea.
I had been caught out by a storm in the middle of the road, I did not know what to do and the all experience lasted about 15 minutes and was quite scary....as soon as I saw the black clouds and the thunders started to appear I was quite worried, but what could I do in the middle of nowhere?
I decided to cycle a bit more, thinking that if I kept moving I could have avoided the rain and most of all the thunders.....but when it started raining slightly I stopped and tried to put my tent up to avoid getting myself and all my stuff completely soaked.
It was a nightmare, I almost got swept away by the wind with the all tent and could not avoid getting wet in any way....it was a terrible 15 minutes, I stood on top of the tent to prevent losing it and waited for the storm to end.
And it did.......
I got in Bahia Creek still a bit wet and started talking to the guys outside the only kiosko in town, after 5 minutes they had already invited me for dinner.
Three of them were working at the small camping, building a new site before the high season started and before I could put the tent up they insisted I should sleep in their "house", have a shower and have dinner with them, on the menu: pasta and "milanesa de guanaco" (guanaco escalope) , for those of you who don't know what a guanaco is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guanaco.
They were very friendly and we ate, drunk and joked for a couple of hours but for 5 minutes the situation got a bit out of control, when two of the builders started arguing and one of them stood up, took his knife and placed it on the table, just in case.....I was shitting myself !!!!
The food was great and after my 100km ride a full stomach, a shower and a "bed" was all I could ask for.....
I woke up at 7am and the heat was already very strong, I had a look at the fantastic beach, metres away from the village and left to continue my ride along the coast, with plenty of water to get by for two days.
I cycled for another 65km but got caught out by storms twice and got very wet, unfortunately this time the sun didn't really come out after the rain and a coldish wind was blowing.
I stopped at a fisherman's shed on the beach to ask for directions and ended up staying in there for three hours warming up, eating crackers and drinking hot tea, the man was looking after some boats and living in the shed for days, only to return to San Antonio every now and then,.
He clearly had been alone for a while as he was in need to talk to someone and was happy to have me listening to him as he talked for three hours about at least a hundred different people, his family, his friends, his colleagues.....I only understood half the stuff he was telling me but that didn't really matter to him, he just needed to talk to a person rather than fishes or birds I guess !!!!
I was happy to be warming up as I was waiting for his friend to come back with his pick-up van and take me to San Antonio del Oeste, where I stayed in a cheap hotel, had a shower and slept....I was really tired.
In the morning I cycled in a terrible wind to Las Grutas where I found a nice camping and had a nice Parrilla, while talking to two guys from Bahia Blanca who were staying in the seaside resort for the high season, looking for a job to pay for their holidays.
We spent the all day together, playing with the Metegol (table football) they were painting for the camping owner, in exchange for the fee.
I visited the centre of town and the beaches, which shrink to a few metres as the high tide forces people to move their deck chairs on the street and extend to almost 500 metres when there is low tide (watch the pictures of the same beach in my Italian post).
In the evening we went for a walk on the beach and were able to see the caves in the rocks, which a few hours earlier were completely covered by the water.
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