The Patagonian steppe has a way of making distance feel abstract. Today's run down Ruta Nacional 3 covers around 550 kilometres of largely unbroken tableland — low scrub, wind, and a sky that seems wider than it has any right to be. The road is the spine of this coast, and the day has the quality of a long, deliberate southward push, with a stop at one of the most historically weighted ports in South America and a brief pause at a roadside viewpoint that turns out to mark something geologically extraordinary.
The Drive South
The day begins at 9:00 am from Comodoro Rivadavia. The Chenque hill rises behind the city as you leave — at 212 metres, it offers a sweeping view back over the San Jorge Gulf that's worth the climb if you have the morning for it, but the road south calls. Ruta 3 pushes straight through the edge of town and opens almost immediately into the steppe.
The landscape between Comodoro and the Santa Cruz provincial border is classic Patagonian meseta: flat-topped plateaus stepping down toward the Atlantic, the vegetation sparse and low, the horizon improbably distant. The wind is a constant. At around km 2114 of Ruta 3, the small settlement of Tres Cerros appears — a fuel stop in every practical sense, with a YPF station serving travellers on this long coastal run. It's worth filling the tank here; services south of this point thin out.
The road continues through the meseta, crossing into Santa Cruz Province and descending gradually toward the Atlantic coast. By mid-morning, the turn-off for Puerto San Julián appears — the town sits three kilometres east of the highway, on a natural harbour shaped between Cabo Curioso and Punta Desengaño.