The Andean foothills recede quickly on this day. By the time Esquel's ski slopes have disappeared in the rearview mirror, the road has already turned toward a different kind of country — the broad, wind-scraped steppe of central Chubut, where the distances between things feel larger than anywhere earlier in the trip. It is a long transit day, and an honest one: the landscape does the work.
Leaving the Mountains
A 9:00 am departure from Esquel onto the Ruta Nacional 40, heading south. The road climbs briefly before opening into the wide valley corridor that separates the Andes from the steppe. The pavement is good through this stretch. Some 100 kilometres south, the road passes through Tecka, a small service town in the Languiñeo department sitting at about 935 metres (3,070 ft) in a fertile river valley — a brief stop if fuel or coffee is needed. The name is said to derive from the cry of the bandurria, a Patagonian bird whose call sounds something like trec-ka. At a junction just south of town, Ruta 25 peels off eastward toward Trelew and the Atlantic coast; the route continues south. A mausoleum in Tecka commemorates Cacique Inakayal, the Mapuche-Huilliche leader who played a central role in the history of northern Chubut during the Conquista del Desierto — the nineteenth-century military campaigns through which the Argentine state seized control of Patagonia.