In Argentina, an old highway root travels at the base of the Andes, from the North to the South.

You can pick up the highway from any section and see a very different part of the country.

We choose one that takes us through deserts, lakes, forests, and an Indian community.

It's reminiscent of our old road, Route 66.

Funding for In the Americas with David Yetman was provided by Agnese Haury.

In Western Argentina, there's a highway that connects the northwest to the southwest for about 2,000 miles it's called Ruta Quarante, or Route 40.

It's similar to what the U.S. 66 used to be two generations ago.

It connects the middle part, the province of Mendoza to the province of Neuquen.

It's desert country.

(Spanish) He's asking what you know about Rute Quarante.

What is Ruta Quarante?

It is a road that connects all of Argentina from the north to the south.

(Spanish) Ruta Quarante crosses through all of Argentina from north to south along the Andes.

(Spanish) I would add that it represents adventure, romanticism, vacations.

Recently it has changed because of asphalt improvements.

Trips used to require a lot of logistical planning.

(Spanish) The road climbs then it goes down and climbs again and then it goes up again.

It's kind of like a rollercoaster.

(Spanish) It connects all of the provinces along the Andean corridor.

(Spanish) We spent a full day driving Ruta Quarante, visiting the lakes and taking in the spectacular landscape.

We survived Ruta Quarante from Mendoza.

Yes, we came from Mendoza and our recommendation to you my friend, is the best.

Gorgeous landscapes.

Everything along the road is worth seeing.

Beautiful.

Worth-seeing.

(Spanish) I think it is a great way to connect a large part of Argentina with this one road.

It is used by a large number of tourists and Argentines from one extreme to the other in Argentina.

A marvelous road, with gorgeous vistas.

My friend Bill Beezley is a specialist in Latin American history.

He teaches it and he was as curious as I was about Ruta Quarante.

In our section, we headed to Bariloche in Patagonia.

It's 1,000 km to the south.

Back in the '30's the U.S. government decided to construct U.S. 66 to assist traffic moving to the Midwest to the West coast that needed that because so many people were traveling back and forth and encouraged that.

In Argentina, it's almost as though the government discouraged anything like that.

Because of the rivalry between Buenos Aires and various cities in the West, Buenos Aires controlled that by controlling first cart roads and then later railroads that only were like spokes from Buenos Aires and to the different cities to the west and so there was an isolation between cities that were maybe only 150 - 200 miles apart.

They'd have to come back to Buenos Aires, go east and then go West.

Exactly.

It would be almost as though, if to go to Seattle to Los Angeles, you have to drive through Chicago.

Exactly, and so this was a political as well as an economic strategy that worked well for Buenos Aires and made it truly the capital, then somebody sort of got the idea, actually I think it was members of the automobile club... That makes sense.

That yes there's great trips that we can take and so they pushed for better roads out in the west and connecting roads.

You can often tell when you're in Patagonia because the wind seems to be unceasing, but from up here you can see what's called the beginnings the Lake District, the route of seven lakes.

It's really marked by the volcano called Lanin, which from all sides appears to be the same or symmetrical around it are many lakes found off in the Patagonia region.

This is Laguna Blanca, it is an internationally recognized place for water follies.

It's a basin lake, it's closed so water comes in, but doesn't get out.

The edge of the old shoreline here, there's big pieces of lava and my guess is it blew these little gobs of lava over here and over the eons the level of the lake rose and fell, it probably was much higher than this and just the lapping of the shores smoothed it off.

There are flamingos here and there are, I can see two or three of the famous black necked swans, if you want to see black necked swans nesting you have to come here to Laguna Blanca.

The water is brackish, so the flamingos like that, but it's also safe from predators and there goes a swan ducking, I'm told that in nesting season and in August and September, there will be 2,000 nesting pairs here Following along the base of the Andes, towns are few, until all of the sudden you're in a sophisticated resort.

This is the small city of San Martin de los Andes.

It's hard to believe that 25 miles to the east, we were out in the desert in the Patagonian step with its brutal winds.

Here we are in a village of Swiss chalets with lakes, trout streams, world class skiing.

It's two different worlds both contained in Patagonia.

(Spanish) It's a very important road.

The longest in the whole country.

The road transports one to the various communities along the way.

It has changed throughout the years.

It used to be all dirt.

There wasn't the infrastructure that there is now.

It has changed completely.

In Latin America, it's customary to begin the town's name with a saint, Saint Carlos, Saint Francisco, this is San Martin de los Andes, but it's not a saint.

This is like a double saint.

It's San Martin, the Christian saint and then Jose de San Martin, one of the three great liberators in Latin American history.

San Martin was so passionate about the liberation of Argentina that he left Spain, where he was in the army and he came back here and directed the movement for independence and he more than Bolivar in Northern South America, more than Hidalgo in Mexico had real military skills that led to success in the southern part of South America.

Here in the plaza of San Martin de los Andes, we get a chance to see the buff colored Ibis.

It's a rare bird and they are grazing out on this grass as if it were their home.

There's continuous forest from here a thousand miles up to the north in the tropics.

Departing San Martin de los Andes, Ruta Quarante leaves the deserts behind for a while.

Among the lakes and in the forests, we find a community of people whose ancestors lived here long before Argentina became a country.

The province of Neoquen is home to most of the indigenous Mapuche people of Argentina, about 40,000 of them.

They live in various communities, mostly in the Andes and around the lakes.

They are trying as many indigenous groups are to retain their culture, to get back to their roots, and learn the language.

The teachers they have in the schools are almost all of them non-Mapuches.

There's one here from Buenos Aires, a huge city whose come to this tiny town.

(Spanish) What is traditionally taught in the schools are things like what has life and what is lifeless.

The Mapuches don't see it like this.

Everything for them has life and energy to help us with everything, to get up in the morning, to eat, to get healthy, to come into balance with everything around us.

We are not a part from everything else.

We are not special in that sense.

This is a culturally rich way to look at things, to take care of everything around us.

The language is a difficult subject.

For a long time now ever since colonization began, the Mapuche language has been disappearing.

The younger ones are embarrassed to speak their language because the schools frowned upon it.

Others made fun of those trying to speak it and with the evangelizing of the natives the language continued to disappear.

This is very unfortunate.

(Spanish) The Mapuche language and culture is stronger in Chile.

There the language is still present, more accepted than here.

Here in this school, we make an effort to strengthen the Mapuche identity.

Through music, we try to strengthen not just a Mapuche identity, but also one that ties us to Argentina and Latin America.

(Spanish) This is a more or less traditional loom, the Mapuche use.

It's now used almost entirely by women.

There is an attempt here to try to bring back the weaving that was so prominent a hundred years ago.

The distinctive feature here is that the loom is vertical and they can use gravity then to tap down the weft and the colors are a mixture of the natural colors of the sheep and the colors, which are made from vegetable sources, roots and from leaves.

So this is a work of which is of great local pride and it is an experiment trying to bring back this tradition.

We say goodbye to the Mapuches and follow the highway, skirting a nearly continuous string of lakes and rivers.

Lake Nahuel Huapi and the resort city of Bariloche are Argentina's most famous attractions.

I'm crossing my fingers, I want to take a long sailboat ride, but this is Patagonia.

It's notorious for its wind and I have to start from near the east end.

This is Lake Correntoso, it's one of the marvelous seven lakes in the region.

It connects by a river to Lake Nahuel Huapi.

The river is 200 meters long; it's considered to be the shortest river in the world.

The western end of the lake is where the forests are dense and there's a lot of rain.

The rain usually stays there, but the wind continues and gets stronger and stronger the farther east you go.

It's a drying wind, but it sure does pick up the waves.

This is fresh water.

This is not ocean.

It's not a huge lake, but enough to get waves that will get you very, very wet.

The temperature is about 50 degrees right now and a month from now it will be about 10-15 degrees colder and just as windy.

Lake Nahuel Huapi is the crown jewel of the lakes in Argentina and the Andes.

It's sort of like Lake Tahoe to Argentines.

It's startlingly similar.

It is about 400-450 meters feet deep.

It's sixty miles, 90 kilometers long.

It has seven arms.

It's big enough to create its own micro-climate and at times the waves can get so fierce as to make boating perilous.

It also has its own lockness monster.

The name, Nahuelito.

Lake Nahuel Huapi and Bariloche have, well, their own mystique.

(Singing Spanish) In Bariloche, you will find the richness of the soil.

The skies are the color of eyes and snow that you can see, with Nahuel Huapi Lake with its distinct colors.

With the smell of the flowers, of roses that we want, I say it with my way never looking back.

I could be considered the best trobadour.

I represent the Rio de mai, singing like a flower.

It's great to run into a poetic gaucho who looks at his life in terms of the poetry he can create.

(Spanish) I will now say goodbye, not to bore you anymore.

To my mother who lived to be 85 years and then one day I am the oldest son, taking care of our soil.

I am an Argentine gaucho born in Rio de Mai.

We're having lunch, which is equivalent to the Argentine dinner in a place called El Boliche Dejo, which means the old tavern.

The owners claim with some good basis that this was a place that was visited by Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid and their flight from the law.

They went from here to the north in Bolivia, where they were ultimately captured and executed.

In all probability, the scene would be where Butch Cassidy was sitting over here and the Sundance kid was sitting over here and they were packing heat.

We are packing Malbec.

Traveling from a Butch Cassidy hangout in rural Patagonia into Bariloche is like moving from the 19th century into a sophisticated European resort.

It's been a century since the first European observed that Bariloche and Lake Nahuel Huapi would be the next Switzerland.

I think there's something about mountains, lakes and the opportunity to come for a weekend.

Even the romantic poets in England rushed off to Switzerland to see this kind of place.

And we are here close to 800 miles away from Buenos Aires, and the Portenos flock here as well as Europeans.

I think the great burst of settlement here in Bariloche came with the completion of Route 7 from Buenos Aires... Yeah, from the east From the east, going over to Mendoza and then Route 40 south to here, so suddenly there was this gateway to this wonderful tourist area.

It has a maybe superficial resemblance to Lake Geneva or some Swiss town.

It reminds me of Banff or some place in Colorado, they have this whole mountain atmosphere...

But, they sell chocolate.

They sell chocolate.

So, let's check it out.

I see dark chocolate there, it's mostly milk but... Is it really, I think it's like Malbec and chocolate, there's nothing better than wine and chocolate.

You do a good job.

Bariloche has not only has a great lake and great mountains, but they have terrific music and this place El Jarro named jar for the way they collect money, it's a tavern and the locale around here called la peña de Bariloche.

We have three musicians who've played together a long time.

Two on the guitar, and one on the barlione.

(Music) By now the wind has died down enough that we can get on the sailboat.

Well, Bill we're going to go sailing today on Lake Nahuel Huapi and it's calm now, but it's going to get choppy later on.

This is Alvin, Alvin.

(Spanish) I'm unfurling, no, I'm furling without my assistance here the boat would capsize, we'll be stranded in the waters of Lake Nahuel Huapi and probably some of us never seen again.

(Spanish) So the wind is always this way, 80% of the time at least and it comes from the west, which is the Patagonian wind.

So we're in March now, beginning of autumn and it's not always this cold, but let me tell you, it's chilly and if I let go of my hat, it's out on the lake.

The advantages, it's fresh water and we can drink it.

So, we're on a sail boat, which fortunately has a motor out on one of the southwestern arms of Lake Nahuel Huapi, Nahuel means tiger in the Mapuche language, and Huapi means island.

(Spanish) So we're going to go to a place called Puerto Bless, which is the very south western or western tip of the lake.

It is only about three or four kilometers from the Chilean border and he's also going to take us to a waterfall.

You know it's one thing to look at the lake from above, it looks tranquil, a place of nearly pristine beauty, but being on it is a very different thing.

It has it's own personality and it's usually angry.

At the very eastern end of the lake, the rainfall each year is maybe between 10 and 15 inches.

At the western end, it's 150-160 inches and that's all thanks to the huge atmospheric circulation coming from the Antarctic that brings vast amounts of water in.

These mountains, the Andes caps the water and because of it we have this marvelous lake.

(Spanish) I drink Mata tea in the morning and throughout the day at distinct times and places.

I've got Mata on the boat and at my house.

That will keep me awake the rest of the morning.

Gracias.

This is a fine example of the Valdivian rainforest, here the rain falls between 150 - 160 inches a year.

This rich forest is found only at the west end of the lake in over into Chile.

Where you see the difference in the color here is because the river is coming into the lake, bringing down glacial sediments.

Some people believe that if you drink that water, you will live longer.

This boat is both a tourist boat and a passenger boat.

Tourists come here to go to the west end of the lake and back to Bariloche, but passengers can buy a ticket there and go on to the end of lake and get out and go ten miles and they are in Chile.

There's only one other place in the Americas where you can find a huge glacially, sculpted canyons with unusually dense forests and streams everywhere.

That's Yosemite National Park.

Both places have huge cliffs, vast open expanses of pure granite.

The best known tree here in the rainforest at the west end of the lake is the Alerce.

It's comparable with the California redwood.

It needs a lot of moisture and it grows only one millimeter a year, which means it takes 25 years to grow an inch.

The old timers of the Alerces will be an excess of 2,000 years old.

To the tree's great misfortune it is excellent lumbar and by over a hundred years or so ago, virtually all the big trees were threatened.

Fortunately for Argentines, a national park was set aside to protect them and it came into existence through the generosity and foresight of a man named Perito Moreno.

Extraordinary individual, who in three different ways shaped life in Argentina.

Shortly after the beginning of the 20th century, he was dedicated to school kids, and gave free lunches to kids in Buenos Aires.

He spent time creating a museum of archeological relics and above all he was responsible for surveying the boundary between Argentina and Chile and negotiated the agreement that settled that.

He is so well respected now in spite of his death and obscurity, that there is a street, a town, a national park, and the greatest glacier in the Americas named after him.

He had the same kind of impact as John Muir in the United States.

Muir of course wondered around the Sierra Nevada, was instrumental in creating the national park at Yosemite and raising the consciousness of the American people about the importance of conservation, of course he was not entirely successful, but today we recognize him, the same way that Argentines recognize their hero, Perito Moreno.

For most travelers on Ruta Quarante, Bariloche, and Lake Nahuel Huapi in Patagonia mark the end of the road, but for the more adventurous, highway 40 continues for another thousand miles to the south.

Join us next time in the Americas with me David Yetman.

The year 2014 marked the 50th anniversary of the passage of the Wilderness Act of 1964.

It created a new American phenomenon, a place where nature is still legally in charge and humans are mere visitors.

The Wind River Range.

[Music] Funding for In the Americas with David Yetman was provided by Agnese Haury.

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