One Apple A Day #165
El Maitén, January 5th, 2017
El Maitén is a small and quiet town. The main road is empty at this time of the day. The wind carries the dust around the low buildings. We feel like we just entered the set of a western movie.
The movie feeling becomes even stronger when we park before the train station. A wooden building coming straight from the nineteen century.
El Maitén is one of two places where you can experience a trip on “El Viejo Expreso Patagónico”, one of the rare steam locomotives still operating.
The train is also called “El Trochita”. This name come from the “Trocha”, the Spanish name for the gauge or the gap between the train tracks. This train used a narrow gauge of only 75 cm, hence the name.
Unfortunately, there is no train departing from this station this morning, and we don’t want to wait for the one in the afternoon. So, we decide to leave for Esquel, the second town from where the train departs.
We don’t want to drive back 30 km to return on the Ruta40, so we decide to follow the yellow line on our map connecting El Maitén directly with Esquel.
This choice gifts us with two valuable lessons:
In Patagonia, any road traced on the map, no matter the colour or the size can be a white road
White roads are a lot funnier than the asphalt ones
Let the rumpus begins!