Neuquen, Plottier y Villa el Chocon

I arrived in Neuquen from Puerto Madryn on Tuesday morning, after a long night on the bus we had to wait for three hours as the only road with access to the city was blocked by a "piquete" from the fruit plantations workers.

The "piquete" is a very typical Argentinian "tradition" as I am learning along my journey, where people just decide to make their voices heard by blocking important roads for hours, burn a few tires and make some noise.....

Neuquen is a fairly big city and the capital of the region which mainly lives on tourism and the exports of apples, pears and other fruits to the all country and abroad.

I cycled to the riverside to discover that all the campings were not campings anymore, due to the fact that the local government had changed the minimum requirements making them all inaccessible.

I spent a few hours in the ex-camping municipal talking to Antonio and his family, drinking mate and waiting for the sun to be less hot, before cycling 20km to the next town of Plottier where I could camp by the riverside for the night.

The camping in Plottier was very basic but in a very nice location by the river, there I met Luis, David and Pilvio, three guys who were travelling around Argentina with their backpacks.

Luis (or Luigi) is from Argentina, David from Spain and Pilvio from Italy....the best mix for a trip in a country where three quarters of the population are of Spanish or Italian origin. We spent a few good hours together, talking about our trips and many other things, eating and trying (succesfully....) to heat up some water for our mate' in a plastic bottle on the fire (a real Boy Scouts trick....).

I left early in the morning (but not as early as I planned) and cycled about 60km to the lakeside town of Villa el Chocon, home to the Museo Paleontológico Ernesto Bachman, where some of the remainings of the biggest carnivorous dinosaur ever found are kept.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giganotosaurus)

Villa el Chocon is a small town located on the artificial lake which was created with the construction of the largest dam in Argentine Patagonia in the 60s, on the River Limay. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Choc%C3%B3n_Dam)

I spent my first evening in the camping, resting from the windy and hot ride and then visited the museum on the next day.

In the afternoon, after gathering some information about the route to follow in town, I cycled to the dam (and over it....) and went for some real mountain biking on the other side of the lake to admire the fantastic landscape and to arrive at the Acantilados Los Gigantes, a breathtaking spot over the cliffs.