We had yet another late start to our drive but we didn’t mind so much since we had to drive 10 hours to Monte Hermoso. Nothing happened today. Everywhere we went had gas, the only problem was that most of the places only accepted cash so it was very frustrating. My advice is to always keep at last AR$1000 in your wallet just in case because many places don’t like to accept credit or debit cards because of the fees. Also, as the gas stations became more frequent they also became much more expensive; we couldn’t find anything under AR$9! It’s very confusing because in Patagonia things were expensive but gas was cheap but as you go north gas becomes more expensive and things become cheaper. So in the end it all balances out, I suppose.
We arrived in Monte Hermoso at 6:30PM and we were recommended (and told by many signs) to go to Camping Americano because it was right on the beach (and we also didn’t see anything else). Well this camping is massive and very, very expensive! For two people with a small tent it cost us AR$220 but we had no other options (in retrospect we should have just kept looking). So we expected this really nice campsite with a lot of amenities…well that’s not what we got. You have to pay for the WiFi and it was AR$30 for 10 hours. They also had a pool but you also had to pay AR$30 per person to use it. And the bathrooms were awful. There was no soap to wash your hands or toilet paper to use and there were only 4 showers and 4 toilets for a very large sector of the campsite, so it was always very crowded.
There were some positives about the campground (but nothing worth the price we paid). They had many activities planned throughout the week for grownups and kids. There were also large sand dunes on the property so almost everyone had an ATV which was cool…until it got really annoying. Since the campground was so big there were “streets” to guide you to where you needed to go, which meant that all the kids used their ATVs all night driving around the campsites. The campground also had a small market and kiosco, both of which were very overpriced.
We never got to see if Monte Hermoso was a city or just something like the Outer Banks where you have to rent houses to go (because that’s the impression we got, we didn’t see any buildings). We were told by many Argentinians that this was the place where they all went to the beach so we were very excited. Well, when we arrived it was late so everyone was already “home” from the beach but we walked around to watch the sunset and we were a bit disappointed (by the beach not the super gorgeous sunset). The beach was very dirty with a lot of garbage, and it was extremely windy which made it difficult to enjoy our walk and it looked too dangerous to swim. We thought maybe it would be better in the morning and less windy so we decided to go to bed and wait until then.
###Map:
###Numbers:
- Left Puerto Madryn @ 7:45AM
- AR$100 = Gas [AR$9.07/L] CASH ONLY so just ¼ of a tank
- AR$100 = Gas [AR$9.07/L] CASH ONLY so just ¼ of a tank
- AR$300 = Gas [AR$9.95/L] finally took credit!
- Arrived in Monte Hermoso @ 6:30PM
- AR$220 = Camping
- AR$40 = ice cream
- Total = AR$760