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We had a bit of time left before our flights out so we decided to drive south to Sarmiento and stayed for three nights at Lago Muster. The nights were dropping below freezing and the days were bitterly cold aswell.
We drove out to a petrified forest called José Ormachea which meant more slow-going gravel road. The entrance into the forest was free and we went on a self guided walk. It used to be a forest of fern and conifers with a swamp area. Over millions of years the dry air blowing across from Chile with clouds that shed their water on the Chilean side and then continued across Argentina without further rain, gradually dried out the trees and created the petrified forest. We walked for around 1.5 hours along a sand track strewn with what looked like wood chips but they are actually petrified wood and are like stone. It's amazing that this valley was here at the time of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.
We headed back north and stayed in El Bolsón for 6 nights with Klaus and Claudia who own the camping area. We saw them in Hamburg around 16 years ago when they did a slide show about their 16 year trip on motorbikes around the world. So it was very interesting to meet them properly and chat to them about our respective adventures.
We spent our time sorting everything out and the last three days cleaning up the motor home and getting it ready for storage. We reversed into a garage the night before and Klaus gave us a lift to the bus station early the next morning for our three day journey north for the summer. It was certainly getting too cold in South America!
We took two buses, one to San Carlos de Bariloche which was very late and took over two hours and then a 19 hour overnight bus from Bariloche across the border and up to Santiago de Chile. We were late getting there and also saw that our flights were one hour earlier than we thought!! So we got off one stop early and found a taxi driver who understood the urgency and got us to the airport in record time.
We'd been on the road for 72 hours when we had to walk the last 5 miles because it was 5-20am and there were no taxis. We finally got to Winnie at 7am and started sorting everything out. Fortunately, Winnie had survived the winter but we were so exhausted that we just did enough so that we could put out the solar panel to charge the battery, make the bed and go for a much needed sleep!
