Of what was everything

Back at Hostel Crux on Monday morning there was no-one to be seen. We hadn't got there especially early - it was looking more promising for our job prospects if it was an at-leisure project, and we agreed to wait one hour for someone to turn up.

Five minutes later Gustavo arrived with Claudia, his daughter and Kevin explained that Martin his friend who now lives in France gave us his name.
Gustavo explained he's great friends with Martins uncle, and would do what he could to help us.
We explained we wanted to work, and needed beds in exchange.

Fifteen minutes later we were stripping bark from Oregon logs and it felt good to be alive.

We had our own whole hostel to ourselves, and busied our days stripping and varnishing wood, sanding and painting walls and floors, and putting up beams and rooves.
Our nights were taken up with cooking fresh, local food from scratch, playing chess, drinking whiskey (Old Smuggler), and various sewing reperations and alterations.

The New Year

When tourist season started in the new year the hostel opened and Nahuel (Gustavo's nephew) turned up, to look after the night shift at the hostel and have a summer break in the countryside away from Buenos Aires.

An honest, straight-talking and funny guy you can't help but get along with - we were soon great friends.
We also made a few friends around town - the bakery girl, coffee shop guy and horse trekking guide were the best.

Our daily work was getting more varied and we found ourselves horse-wrangling, gardening (with a variety of two-stroke petrol machines) and saw-milling.
The evenings saw less chess and whiskey as the hostel was open and there were clients to talk to, and the weather turned consistently hot and sunny.
Every day after work we took Falluchio (the dog) to the river and swam, bathed and relaxed to the setting sun.

Our lives were as idyllic as it sounds.

Join the game, boy

Join the game, boy

We stayed in Bariloche a few days - It was quite a novelty, it's a touristy town so shopkeepers speak English, and there were other foreign travellers which made a refreshing change to truckers.
Best of all we met Lorna, who was working at the hostel and helped immensely with finding second-hand clothes and our still basic Spanish, and we became great friends.
Kevin came down with a freaky fever so rested while I browsed the horifically priced camping shops to replace some of my kit to help ensure I kept all my digits on future Andean adventures.

It's a beautiful city (well, the centre anyway) with swiss-style mountain architecture, on the edge of the Nahuel Huapi - a huge lake bordered with snow-capped mountains on all sides, and it's in the middle of a huge national park, which the huge four thousand metre peaks which overlook the city from the west are in.

Saturday December 15 2012

We walked south out of Bariloche, and continued hitching the infamous Ruta 40.
We got a lift in a small Mercedes van carrying double it's weight limit in sugar slowly to El Bolson.
I've forgotten his name, but our host was nice, spoke clearly and explained anything we didn't understand in simpler terms, and was interested in our trip and had plenty of interesting things to say.

It was a blessing travelling so slowly as the stretch of road is incredible.It winds through the edge of the Andesalongside beautiful lakes and formidable rivers, through daunting mountains and breathtaking valleys, with our new friend naming each of them as we went.

Sunday, December 16 2012

The mysterious paradisical town in Patagonia Kevin had been told of by his Argentine friend (see first post) was called Lago Puelo, and we'd decided to walk the last part of our journey there from El Bolson.
That day I was glad to have lost all my belongings, Kev was struggling with his bags and we were soon hot and sweaty walking down the quiet road to Lago Puelo.
Before long it was raining.

It was a beautiful stretch, but more than once I was tempted to get the old hitching arm out just to get out of the rain, but we stayed true to our original plan and walked the whole way.

Our original plan was to camp wild on the lake (which the town is named after), but the windy, forested shores were wet and miserable that day - even though the snow-capped peaks on the other side were mesmerising.
We boiled some water for a cup of tea and ate an alfajore to lift our spirits and replenish ourselves.

We skulked back to the village in the rain and found Hostel Crux, where Kevins friend has given us a name with a very tenuous link of friendship.
The hostel was closed, but a quick glance around the back revealed it was getting an extension built. It's a fantastic building - all wood , varnish and uncut stone.
It looked like an amateur outfit, and didn't have any of the hallmarks of a professional team of builders, so Kevin saw the opportunity which we could only dream of:

"I bet we could help out with the building work for a bed."

I was very doubtful it could actually work out, but agreed it was definitely worth an ask.
We agreed to turn up on Monday morning pretending to have Spanish and extensive building experience.

The village was very spread out north-south and we agreed to go all the way back out of the north end of town to camp somewhere dry.
Following directions to a campsite after finding nowhere suitable from the road we took a break from the rain (which was now very cold) in a bus shelterand were promptly set upon by a gang of three small girls asking for a present.
They were very sweet and Kevin asked them for a song, which they sang with much gusto.
He had some Thai baht to confuse them in exchange.

Then the rain really picked up. We found the campsite as it was getting dark, and it had an enormous chain padlocked around the gate. It was closed. Very closed.
Trudging back towards town in the dark now and very cold we saw some cosy-looking cabins, and decided we deserved a break.

We knocked on the owners door, and while his cabins were full by some miracle he did have an unfinished one we could have for the night half price. Before we knew it we had our clothes strung up over the gas heater and were cooking up a storm in the kitchen.

I'm still alive

I'm still alive

(Continued)

We sped through the desert in a silence only broken by Enrique thumping the steering wheel in frustration, then forcing yet more peaches and cherries upon us while apologising.
"That's life" I (probably incorrectly) replied in Spanish.

When we eventually reached a town, we stopped at the first service station while Enrique interrogated truckers relentlessly.

Kevin and I napped the rest of the way and were let out at Cipolletti, which we supposed would make a nice base to visit the city of Neuquen from, where I could try and replace some of my things.

Enrique gave me a big, fluffy jumper with arms long enough for an average silverback gorilla, two jars of cherries and literally more peaches than we could carry, and I assured him that my ridiculous fate wasn't his fault at all.
Meanwhile Kev was sneaking as much fruit as he could back into the truck.

I said hell to our self-imposed budget (which consisted of spending money only on rice, salami, coffee and alfajores) and paid for a night in a hostel and a restaurant pizza.
Cipolletti has Italian heritage, and they make some mean pizza.

Friday, December 7, 2012

I bought boxers, socks and a vest from a supermarket in Neuquen, then a bag to put them in.
Unfortunately camping gear was crazy money due to the import taxes the current government installed to promote internal industry and trade.

Saturday, December 8, 2012

Cipolletti was a nice small town, but stretched into the outskirts of Neuquen maknig it difficult to hitch out of, so we got a cheap local bus to Senillosa to start hitching again.
We'd had a nice break and I was able to come to terms with not owning anything

Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, December 9, 10 and 11, 2012

We spent the next few days hitching and taking local buses slowly raising in altitude into the Andes, through Plaza Huincul, Zapala and Junin de los Andes.

The gorilla-jumper Enrique gave me meant I was sleeping out still, but hobo-style, without a sleeping bag.
Cardboard boxes flattened out as a mattress, plastic bags over my boots and Kevin's jacket zipped over my legs were the order of the day.

When we got to Bariloche it was too big and cold to carry on hobo-ing, so we got a room in a nice family-run hostel.

He'll begin his life again

Thursday, December 6, 2012

He'll begin his life again

(Continued)

Enrique was furious, and instantly blamed thieving truckers, which made sense as most of the traffic was lorries, but by this point we had a natural affinity to truckers as we got more lifts with them than anyone else.

I was a bit stupified, and could only laugh as I thought of the absurdity of losing all my things two weeks into a long trip out, and couldn't help but think of all the nice things I liked which were now gone.

I have to say sorry now to people who gave me things which got lost due to my hazardous lifestyle:

Mum - I never brought the hammock you bought me for Christmas, but I did bring the tarp which it came with. It had already saved us from a thorough soaking on a good few occasions, allowing for comfy sleep and all-round peace-of-mind. I'm sure a trucker is wearing it for a poncho in more of the relentless storms it sheltered us through. Thanks, I will replace it and find you some alpaca-wool gloves here once I get further north to alpaca-land.

Dad - Your gorillapod is gone, but I'm hoping it's now a great conversation-starter as a piece of modern art on an Argentine mantelpiece which a truckers' wife proudly claims their husband bought her for their anniversary. Thanks so much for lending it me anyway.

Kai - The hip flask is nestled in a truckers' cab most likely, and a knife-weilding King-Of-The-Road is now enjoying the mature (read: old) rum inside which could lead to any number of beautiful stories. Your inscription on it is still in my mind as fresh as the day you etched it though. Thanks always.

Jess and Vicky - The variety of funny tat which you furnished me with is probably making lots of truckie children very happy, and will be in better hands now. Thanks for the laughs.

Mat - The buff/headover I'm sure will be helping abate the one-armed tan(burn) of an Argentine trucker at this very moment driving through La Pampa in the desert sun. I'm imagining the hat/bucket is now a change pot on the dashboard for toll booth coins, but you never know, it could be something exciting like a hooch-smuggling-pouch. I still have the leather treatment, and as soon as I get an epic retro jacket it will be lovingly caressed. Thanks for them all, anyway.

Alan - The multi-tool is now an essential part of a truck on this fair continent and has probably already been used to pull off shredded tyres, short out electrics and threaten truckers in service-station confrontations. It was great and I did get some use out of it before it was gone. Thanks for the thought.

Well, that was emotional!

I could lose myself

Thursday, December 6, 2012

I could lose myself

(Continued)

After a minute or two of introductions and niceties Enrique asked who Kevin was.
He was appalled that I'd left him behind and explained that as a good Argentine it was his duty to make sure no-one was left behind.
I had no idea where we were going to try and put Kev.

In a minute or two more we were pulled up back in town next to a confused Kevin, and were playing a monster game of Tetris with crates of jarred cherries, boxes of raspberries, sacks of peaches and assorted junk in the flat-bed.

A nearly Kev-sized was eventually made in one rear seat, and Kevin managed to get his bag under a large iron bed-frame propped from the flat-bed to the roof.
I put mine on the bed-frame, clipping the strap through the thick, iron slats with a karabiner.

Soon we were zooming along being force-fed peaches and cherries (which did actually help free up some room inside) and learning about the extent of political corruption in Argentina and South America.
Enrique got quite heated, and I'm sure at times a bit racist, but the best we could do was agree fervently and assure him that our own nations have issues too.

The first hundred-and-fifty kilometres were without a single bend, waver or kink - it was exactly, perfectly and dead straight for an impossibly long time.
I could see why we didn't get a lift along it.

After a while I jokingly said to Kevin in the back:
"Our bags still there?"
"No. The whole bed-frame's gone..." Was the reply, in total dead-pan.

Enrique stopped sharply and we got out to assess - the bed-frame had gone as had my bag and some plants and dirt also in the back.
He turned around tyres kicking up a cloud of dust on each verge and without a word said we were flying back the opposite direction, all eyes scanning the roadsides.
We found a couple of the plants 10 or more minutes back - and after a while more the whole bed-frame, which had been dragged to the side of the road and my bag removed.

Balls.

Never Woke Up Alone Before

(Continued)

We headed for the beach we'd seen the previous morning from Eric's car, and swam and washed in the late afternoon sun (after filling our water supply to capacity at a service station).
It was beautiful.

We ate alfajores and were able to laugh at our stupidity.
Again I couldn't help but think about if we'd have stayed in Nestor's Nissan to Neuquen some four days before, but I suppose that way we'd never have nearly died of thirst in the desert.
Wait a minute...

We had a vague plan to sleep in the lovely wooded field behind the beach, but in the evening a guy appeared on a scooter explaining that the beach and fields were a private campsite and that it was twenty pesos (nearly three pounds!) a night.
We promptly left.

From the bridge over the river we could see some equally lovely fields, even with barbecue pits and subtle lighting. On closer inspection it turned out to be another campsite which was much better, principally because it was closed, and therefore, free.

Thursday, December 6, 2012

We knew now that we'd have to take this hitching game a bit more seriously - a couple of our lifts had mentioned we should shave (our beards were getting on a bit...), Kev's jeans were shredded and we generally looked unkempt and undesirable.
I won't tell you about the smell.

We also knew most traffic on this road was turning off where we needed to continue, so to ensure we didn't get stuck at the same junction we made some trusty, old-fashioned hitching signs with some roadside cardboard.

Two men is generally considered the least conducive combination for hitching, and

after a good while of fruitless thumbing we decided that it was probably quicker getting two separate lifts in our current hobo-state.

About 5 minutes into my first shift hitching alone a dual-cab pick-up stopped and while the passenger seat was empty, the rear seats and flat-bed were jam-packed with stuff.
After a hasty goodbye to Kev I jumped in and was soon nattering away with Enrique speeding away from Kevin who I knew had not a penny to his name.

He did have the food and stove though.

The (second) Turn Around

(Continued)

When it got to us it was unreal.

We tucked in under the tarp as best we could, but the rain was loud and unrelenting, and the thunder and lightning were constant and in every direction.

One highlight was getting out of my bag in the middle of the night in only my pants to re-plant a peg which had been torn out when the wind caught under the tarp.

It was not a good nights sleep.

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

In the morning it was becoming painful using any water - I know all modern advice is to drink when you're thirsty and avoid rationing (to keep brain-function and logical decision making skills for as long as possible), but it's very difficult in practice.

After a coffee I just couldn't bring myself to have the cup of water I wanted, knowing there was only one or two more cups-worth left.

It was scorching hot by 9 a.m. and we were standing out on the road with soaked belongings in a bone-dry desert losing precious water to sweat every second.

My hitching arm was glowing red by 10 a.m., and we'd started taking turns thumbing to hide from the sun under our towels.

By 1 p.m. we hadn't even garnered a random gesture from a driver, everyone was keeping their foot in and storming down the long, straight road - and we drank our last drop of water.

We set ourselves a time limit of one hour, and if we hadn't got a lift in our direction would make a sign (explaining we had no water) and try to catch the slower traffic joining the road from the south turning heading back to Rio Colorado, which was still the nearest habitation.

Two hours passed and I scouted some cardboard from some roadside rubbish and made our shameful, defeated sign as we prayed someone would take pity on two stupid gringos:

NO  TENGO  AGUA

In ten minutes a pickup stopped, and the passenger pointe his thumb to the flat-bed and we were saved.

The House

(Continued)

Half an hour walking through dry, scratchy brush got us to the outhouse - we had seen from a little way off that it had no roof, but as we got to it it became clear that it was missing a couple of walls too making it just as much a rubble pile as a building.

It was full of more of the nasty, harsh scrub, but i climbed through to the only interior corner left to find a pile of ancient, sun-faded rubbish and a partial skeleton which was very old and brittle.

No drug money.

Anywhere.

More relevantly there wasn't anywhere we could sleep, so we trudged back to the junction while the sun was setting slowly.

I still have no idea how, but Kev told me he could see a nice clear patch of ground off the road in the brush.

I couldn't see at all what he was looking at (and still couldn't when I looked back in the light of day the next morning), but thought it sounded good.

Sure enough there was a flat, hard patch of clear desert floor which even had a small tree-like bush on it's edge.

As we laid out our sleeping bags it became obvious that insects were going to be an issue.

Separate to our hobo stove fire I made a smoky, insect-repelling fire from a tumbleweed I'd brought from the road and we laid our bags either side of that.

As Kevin put down his bag and laid back on it I saw a large, bent piece of metal under the foot of his bag.

I knew it was metal because throughout my life I've come to recognise the solid, metallic shininess inherent in metal things, but I suppose it was dark…

"Is that your metal thing under your bag?" I asked, pointing.

As he calmly lifted the foot of his bag he replied "No Ed, that's not mine, that's a snake."

After a quick poke and inspection by torchlight Kev picked it up by what was assumed not to be the dangerous end and chucked it into the brush.

While we were cooking I realised I hadn't filled up my water pouch that day, it had a couple of litres in it, and we used most of that making rice and cocoa.

We'd drank my Sigg bottle dry in the heat of the day, as well as the litre in Kev's bottle.

It became obvious that water was our primary concern, if we didn't get a lift somewhere tomorrow it could be dangerous.

We quickly convinced ourselves that the volleyball team would have a well-stocked beer fridge in their minibus, and were probably getting on the road early to make the most of the day.

It was the first night we hadn't been hassled by wild dogs, but a huge thunderclap soon put paid to any celebrations.

I strung up the tarp from the bushy-tree-thing and we got out of our bags to watch the light show and our impending lack of sleep approach.

The Junction

(Continued)

The traffic going straight on Ruta 22 was fast, and it looked like it could be tricky to get someone to stop; but after an exhausting couple of hours in the sun a Peugeot 406 slammed on it's anchors, tyres squealing on the asphalt before skidding on the loose gravel at the side of the road.

We ran through the cloud of dust, lugging our bags, and laughing.

Eric was heading south to the coastal Comodoro Rivadavia, but always skirted west of Ruta 3 to avoid the notorious police we'd been warned about.

He was easily the fastest driver we'd hitched with so far, averaging one hundred and forty k.p.h. on the straight, dusty road.

After not very long we reached Rio Colorado, a quaint town on a big river (hence the name).

Going over the bridge in town we saw a nice beach with a few families bathing and swimming; I realised how very long it had been since I'd washed and made a mental apology to all the nice people who'd given us lifts, in all good faith and from the kindness of their hearts, that then had to suffer my body odour.

Some people are too nice.

Eric explained that there was *nothing* between here and the turn off Ruta 22 he was taking south, and we could get out at the services here to solicit a lift from a stopped trucker.

While we'd heard of this method had little faith in our Spanish and had entire faith in standing at the roadside thumbs out, so we stayed in against his advice until the junction.

Error.

It was hot. We had no thermometer, but on all known scales of heat I can tell you it would register as Damn Hot.

The junction was unusually well organised - there was a long, wide slip-road with kerbs between lanes and good visibility in all directions.

This meant any traffic going our way had absolutely no reason to waver from their cruising speed.

There wasn't much traffic, but two-thirds of that was fuel trucks, which seem to have a no hitchers policy.

We concentrated on keeping spirits and hydration levels up - sang songs, told jokes and stories, ate alfajores and guzzled water to replace the buckets of sweat we were oozing.

There was no shade in sight, and after a while I scouted over the horizon while Kevin thumbed, but there was only more harsh, uninviting scrub at the roadside for a long, long way.

The only feature on the landscape in sight (except the road) was a small brick structure we could see of the road a couple of kilometres back.

I recanted a variety of news stories and urban myths about Colombian drug money buried and hidden in obscure places, and we were soon convinced that it would be a blessing if we didn't get a lift all day, because our fortunes were waiting for us in the unassuming little den in the distance.

The day wore on, the sun burning through the sun cream on my hitching arm, and it was looking more and more like we weren't going to get a lift.

We carried on working on our morale though, and I started the intriguing rumour that the Venezuelan female beach volleyball team were on the road, going our way, enjoyed sporadically swapping bikinis, and that their favourite hobby was picking up bearded gringo hitch-hikers and scrubbing them clean.

The sun was dipping, so we thought it prudent to get an early morning to make sure we didn't miss them in the morning.

The (First) Turn Around

Continued

We got a few lifts, but only made it fifty kilometers or so down Ruta 3 that day - the last three hours at a dusty junction by Pedro Luro were entirely fruitless, and we'd procured only a variety of pointy hand gestures.

Most people don't like to be seen as un-charitable when asked directly to help a stranger, and will make unending excuses instead of saying no.

In the context of hitch-hiking this manifests itself in all manner of funny pointing and gesturing.

Cars with empty seats, pick-ups with empty flat-beds and trucks with cab-space all excuse themselves, indicating they're only going to the next junction, are coming back anyway, are driving too slow or too fast by pointing and flapping in all manner of ways.

Well, this was at an all time high in Pedro Luro - apparently no-one was going anywhere.

We set up to spend the night under a tree with minimal hassle from local dogs, saw no big cats and I enjoyed going to sleep with a now almost normal sized face.

Just to keep us on our toes an almighty storm rolled in, but by this time we were used to our "no rain until Chile" and always had a planned storm-evasion-point.

This evenings was a bus shelter about fifty metres away which had a concrete bench long enough for us both, a good water-tight roof and no discernible piss-stench.

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

We got up early and had our thumbs out before 7:30 a.m. (a personal record), but put in a good five hours before a pick-up going the other way stopped and called us over.

It was the first person we'd met with any English we'd met since Bs. As., and he explained that only a few kilometres down the road are the most corrupt police you'll find in Argentina, and that no-one goes that way unless they have to, and won't do or take anything (or anyone) out of the ordinary for fear of arbitrary fines on the spot.

He said to get anywhere we needed to turn around, get further west, and take the famous Ruta 40 south.

It was actually a huge relief turning round, we'd been getting quite low-spirited after so many hours hitching at one place getting nowhere, so many hours thumb outstretched in the baking sun has a psychological toll.

In twenty minutes we had a lift the other way, and Tomas would take us back to Bahia Blanca which had taken us two days to get from.

It was great. He put on Metallica's Black Album and we rocked out all the way to the dusty junction where Nestor had dropped us off in his nice, comfy Nissan.

This led me to realise if we'd have stayed in his pick-up we could have got another five hundred kilometres west towards Ruta 40.

I suppose that way I'd have never come face to face with a puma, got a massive swollen face, or got eight hours worth of sunburn without a lift.

Wait a minute...

The Beast

(Continued)

We got out at a dusty, nowhere junction outside Bahia Blanca and when, after not very long, another 50's Mercedes truck (like Luka's from two days earlier) with a big, round blue and white face came along I said:

"If a truck could be cute, then that's cute"

Usefully it stopped and Julio, a proper dude, took us to the fantastically named Hilario Ascasubi along with his 10-ball gearknob, giant handgun crucifix and extensive knife collection stuck into every surface of the cab.

We found a great camping spot relatively close to the road, but somehow invisible from it, at one corner of a wood.

I had finished the chess set which I'd been carving the past three nights, so after dinner on the hobo stove we had our first game of chess - followed by my first wild poo of the trip.

The stove had struggled as the wind had been blowing through the wood stronger than we'd expected - we tried to get an early night, but mosquitos and other freaky insects were non-stop once it was dark, and just when I was finally nearly drifting off an unusually persistent wild dog decided everyone on the continent should be informed of our presence.

None of the usual scare tactics were doing anything, and eventually after over an hour of constant, piercing barking he gave up.

After another hour or so thrashing and raging at a new wave of mosquitos an enormous noise came from the wood, probably fifty metres of so away.

It was like a demented cat being tortured through a megaphone, and Kev gently snored in reply.

Some minutes later the noise came again, twice as near.

My eyes were now fixed in the trees desperately and I spent who-knows-how-long staring at shadows and shapes in which I couldn't quite make out anything at all.

Just as I quietened my brain and shut my eyes a big tree branch snapped the tree I was sleeping next to and the noise of panicked breath and powerful claws scrabbling at bark settled into an uneasy silence.

Kev had woken up and went for the clap and shout approach, which was met with the single biggest hissing noise I have ever heard from two metres above my head.

He pointed his torch up and two big eyes in front of a bulky form appeared - as he thrashed his light around I jumped out of my bag and flapped as I did a wild hobo growl.

It jumped straight to the floor and ran back into the wood away from us.

"What the fuck was that?"

Monday, December 3, 2012

I woke up the next day and the variety of insects which had been so friendly all night had he interesting side-effect of making my whole top lip treble size - I talked funny, ate funny and dribbled when I drank. Thanks nature.

The next day the hitches were becoming shorter and more difficult to get - In the morning we got a lift with Mario and Lorenzo, a father and son who'd been out job-hunting for Lorenzo and once our poor Spanish was exhausted Mario promptly pulled out a small selection of photos from the glovebox to admire.

It turns out wild Pumas are a threat to livestock in this area (and are present throughout rural Argentina), and the photos were of Mario proudly posing with a fearsomely muscular specimen as long as Mario is tall.

Kevin and I looked at each other and didn't need to say a word - we knew this was what had stalked us from the trees the previous night, and that it was only scuppered by a weak branch giving it's position away.

The Death Of Don Quixote

In only 10 minutes of drowned-rats impressions on the roadside we got a lift to Benito Juarez with a nice old trucker called Juan.

More guesswork Spanish with the help of Kev's dictionary meant we were proficient in family-talk - brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews and children.

Our next ride was unforgettable - Luka was driving an impossibly old red Mercedes truck pulling two empty livestock caravans.

The windscreen was chipped, cracked and coming loose to a degree I've only seen in Africa.

He was a young guy, but a proper country-bumpkin type, with a big-bellied laugh and a distinct lack of self-preservation.

As we crawled down the road at only seventy k.p.h. the cab veered wildly as he was gesticulating, pointing out roadside crops and brewing mate. (Mate is a herbal infusion with hot water very popular across Argentina and surrounds.)

He had a dash-mounted boiler, with a water reservoir for non-stop mate drinking, which took much more of his attention than driving.

The trailers bounced around as they fell off the tarmac onto the dirt verges, then tipped violently as Luka dodged oncoming traffic whose lane we were in.

I was glad there were no cattle back there.

Against all odds we made it to A.G. Chaves alive, and had learnt the Spanish for a few cereal crops and livestock on the way too.

After walking through town without catching a ride we found a nice little roadside wood to camp in - and finding no kindling to start off a fire used the damp pages of what was left of Kev's copy of Don Quixote, which I'm reliably informed is the first modern, canonical novel.

We went to sleep surrounded by small glow-worms blinking in the long grass.

Saturday, December 1, 2012

After a lazy morning spent trying to dry everything (still from the storm previously) it took a good few hours getting an unremarkable lift to Tres Arroyos with Jorge.

It was a long, drawn out town and took a long time to get to a reasonable hitching place on the southern exit.

There were barely any trucks passing, but plenty of pick-ups with loads of room - we cursed them and surmised that they must all be driven solely by xenophobic, inbred hicks.

We cooked up some rice in our tin cans (by this time it had become obvious that our usual camp-spots had enough standing wood to save us burning alcohol and just use the tin-can windbreak as a "hobo stove") and slept among some beautiful smelling strange nutty-fruity things in the grass all around us, with minimal pestering from local dogs.

Sunday, December 2, 2012

After a surprisingly long time in the morning (I'd already boiled water to make coffee which we didn't have) we realised our whole food bag had been liberated by some kind of stealth-tactic, dead-of-night spy-animal, which was confusing as the most common pest, street dogs, are very unsubtle.

As soon as we got  to the road our fortunes turned, and before we'd put our bags down Nestor had stopped his Nissan dual-cab pick-up and we were on the road in record time.

He wasn't at all xenophobic, or visibly inbred, or even remotely hick-ish - in fact he was my favourite lift so far, he spoke audibly and politely and was keen to talk about the practical and cultural differences of our homelands.

He was going all the way to Neuquen (are there many palindromic place names?) which was 750 km and would have been a monster chunk of our trip, but our plan had been to skirt more of the east coast before heading west inland - this plan turned out to be stupid for more than one reason, but at the time we had no way to know.

The Road

After a cushty, but far too easy week in Bs. As. we got a bus to Canuelas, the nearest town we could see to the south outside the city.

Canuelas was a dusty, quiet town and we tried walking south straight out of town to hit the main road - which turned out A Bad Plan.

We walked for three hours with our heavy bags in the baking sun along dirt tracks with no shade to finally meet the main road.

Our first hitch-hiking spot wasn't a great one - traffic on the main road was going fast and there wasn't much joining at our junction, but after only 8 minutes (we had to time it due to a number of conflicting 5-peso-bet's placed on it) a little black Renault Clio came screeching to a halt just past us.

It felt great. There is disbelief, excitement, and intrepidation all in a mixed up instant, contrasted against the entire boredom of watching meaningless, boring traffic without respite or hope.

This is a feeling unique to hitch-hiking - with the simple gesture of an upturned thumb a complete stranger decided to give up a little of their time and petrol for nothing in return except a small amount of companionship.

It helps renew your faith in humanity, promotes cultural exchange and also IT'S FREE!

It turned out though once we were in the car that neither me or Kevin speak Spanish. In the twenty minute journey we did manage to figure out the guys name was Jerve and he worked on a tractor in Canuelas but lived in San Miguel del Monte, where he was taking us.

We walked to the far end of town to the last service station and treated ourselves to an alfajore (a chocolate coated triple-layered treat of soft biscuit and caramel) and scoped out a nice camp spot in a sparse wood behind the services.

I had what has become my usual travel-setup of a (waterproof) bivy bag and small tarp, while kevin had his (not waterproof) sleeping bag and open-top silk hammock.

Usefully in Bs. As. Kevin had cursed our journey by scoffing at the entire concept of rain, even going to the lengths of placing a 5-peso-bet that we wouldn't see rain before we reached Chile, sealing our fate.

Once we'd road-tested the alcohol stove I built from two beer cans in Faylin's house we spent the rest of the evening dissuading wild dogs from eating all of our belongings.

Fate had decided for Kev to lose his bet in formidable style and the mother of all storms descended on us.

It did mean I could stop clapping, growling, lunging, barking and throwing stones at the dogs, but Kevin was getting very wet.

I gave him my tarp - he could keep the worst off himself and semi cover his bags, while I zipped over my face in the bivy and tried to limit ingress through the zip.

It was pretty miserable, and we didn't get a lot of sleep but it was nothing a hot coffee and an alfajore or two in the morning couldn't fix.

Buenos Aires

I landed in Buenos Aires without any hassle, and once they had me fingerprinted and face-recognised I found Kevin waiting for me with a baggage trolley and a hug.

After an over-priced celebratory airport beer we got a coach into town and had an over-priced celebratory bus station chicken lunch and started trying to figure out where our couch-surfing host Faylin lived.

On the way we were trying to second-guess the numbering system and Kev made me shake on a stupid bet about how many blocks we were from Faylin's house. And the '5-peso-bet' was born.

We couldn't have asked for a better host, Faylin lived with two great Colombianos and over the week we stayed there we met loads of their friends, went out drinking and dancing, had days out in the park, entangled each other in many ridiculous 5-peso-bet's, and, most importantly "Got Our Shit Together".

I should explain a little - I met Kevin 15 months before in Nimes in the south of France for only 2 days, where, while drunk, he said he needed an accomplice in a daring adventure across South America in the footsteps of Ernesto "Che" Guevara 60 years before.

This was all I knew, except for another evening in Nimes the following summer (I had gone to visit Kev to see if he was still "in") where Kevin told a pretty girl in a bar that I was to be the star in his next film. Classy wing-man manoeuvre I thought. Very classy.

Well, Kev had turned up in Bs. As. with a Macbook, two professional cameras, a selection of microphones and a stack of DV tapes and memory cards. Apparently it was more than a great wing-man line.

But, we still had no actual idea what we were really doing here, where to go or how.

One day in Bs. As. was especially inspiring - we'd found out about a small hardware store which had become an impromptu Che museum, and had inherited the artefacts left by the real (long-closed) museum.

The owner, Eladio spent an hour talking to me about the attitude and achievements of Che, and had a true passion for the man and a firm belief that if everyone was a bit more like Che, the world would be a better place.

"Just ask yourself, what would Che do?" became the quote of the day.

Che and Alberto had started their journey going south in Argentina, before crossing the Andes mountains for Chile, and an Argentine friend of Kevins had told him of a paradisiacal village on a lake nestled in the Patagonian Andes near the Chilean border and given him the name and address of a family friend there - We had a goal.

Restrictive import taxes and border controls meant that we couldn't buy motorbikes in Argentina as I'd have liked to, but we heard some great tales of hitch-hiking through La Pampa and the semi-arid desert of Central and Southern Argentina from Faylin and her friends - We had a method.

Our Shit Was Together.