Road tripping down Route 40...

So we rented a car on tuesday morning to make our way down to El Calafate via Route 40, which is partly paved, partly dirt road. We arrived at the office and were given a bloody Ford Palio Weekend, station wagon, awful car to be taking down Route 40.
Anyway, we left Bariloche around 1pm and started our tripon a nice paved road towards El Bolson, where everything was closed. You thought siesta was bad in France, where everything is closed from 12 to 2! Come to Patagonia, where everything is closed from 11 to 5, and even then you're not garantied they'll open because it's winter! We actually wanted to buy one of those camping stoves but had to keep going to the next town, which was Esquel and where we arrived at about 6pm. We bought a stove and a pot and kept driving, the road turned into a gravel road and was very bumpy.  The scenery was pretty beautiful at this point, with mountains and autumn colours. At night, there were wild horse running along the road and out in front of the car which wasn't fun, at one point there was a huge cow just standing in the middle of the road! We stopped in the middle of nowhere, in pitch darkness and made soup in our new kitchen. Those flash lights from Arutam came in handy! After dinner, we kept driving and stopped in Perito Moreno at about 5am and had a comfy and warm (!!!) sleep in the car.
At about 9am, we woke up and kept going. From this point on, the scenery was pretty boring, very deserted. The road was mainly gravel, they are actually building a paved road so parts of it are paved but then there's massive holes in the road where they're putting pipes beneath the road. We stopped at one point for a break and Michael tried running after a gazelle with a pack of cookies to intice it and his new knife to kill it! He was not successful!
We wanted to stop again to have breakfast, porridge, hmm my favorite!! But there was absolutely nowhere we could stop apart from in the middle of nowhere but it was pretty windy. So we stopped the car and Michael opened the door and WHACK!! The door flew open in a split second! He quickly shut it and we kept driving. There's no way we could cook in that wind! We later realised the door had a dent on it from being flung open! Oh oh! We came up to a work site and stopped to ask if we could cook somewhere out of the wind. Turns out its where they cook for all the road workers. We used their kitchen, they gave us potatoes they had already cooked for the workers and even washed our dishes!
We kept on driving and at some point the road turned into a paved one. It was nice to have a smooth ride for a little bit. And all of a sudden the paved road turned into fresh wet tar! The left side of the car was covered!! Ai Ai Ai!  All of a sudden we loved the gravel road!
We arrived in El Chalten in the evening where we spent the night in a homestay hostel. We cooked soupe and corn for dinner. The next day (Thursday) was a beautiful day, yes it was cold but the sun was out, so we took the car and drove up to El Lago Desierto, where Liv and Michael skinny dipped! Of course I didn't, it was absolutely freezing! We drove back to El Chalten in the afternoon, where we coincidently ran into Chad, to find a mecanic who could clean the car but he wanted to charge us 200 pesos. So we went to the hardware store and bought the liquid for 30 pesos and did it ourselves! Thankfully the tar came off pretty easily. We must have looked life absolute retards cleaning the car in freezing cold and darkness!
On Friday, we set off to do a 6h hike up to Cerro Torre and Lagune Torre. The weather was not as nice this day, it was bucketing it down and very windy! We walked for about 30 minutes and Liv and I turned back because we were already soacked! Michael and Chad kept going. Liv and I went back to town and stopped in a hostel to use their showers! It was one of the best hot shower I've had on this trip! The boys came back at around 3pm, the weather still the same, maybe worse.
We left El Chalten and drove to El Calafate, on a dry paved road! We checked into our hostel, had a few drinks and ate steak which was quite dissapointing.
Today, we're off to see the moving Perito Moreno Glaciar, 80 km from town. Yay!