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.