So why the reference to Butch and Sundance?

Well today we passed by and had glimpses of the ranch house they built when they moved to Argentina around 1901. The place is on private land, not part of any national park or monument so we could not get any closer. We read a brief version of the story of their South American adventures in our guide book - it was all news to us. The house is next to Argentina highway 71 about 8 km north of the town of Cholila.

We had a nice time in Bariloche, and really enjoyed this beautiful place. But it's time to move on. We retraced our pre Christmas route south to El Bolson, and just south of that town turned west onto highway 71. This was the beginning of what we expect to be a few weeks of mostly gravel roads. We travelled through farming country for a number of miles, passing the old homestead as mentioned above. South of the town of Cholila we entered the northern end of Parque Nacional Los Alerces which sits right up against the border with Chile. This park is famous for its pristine lakes and rivers and a species of tree (the Alerce) some specimens of which are 4,000 years old. The largest (according to the guide book) are 4m wide at the base, 50m high and grow 1 cm every 20 years. BUT - we did not see any as they are all at the western end of the lakes and require a boat journey to reach them.

By 5:00 pm it was overcast and raining in true Washington fashion so we stopped a little earlier than we had intended hoping tomorrow would be better weather for seeing the rest of this park.