argentina at least, but more car trouble

as near as we got to the cueva de las manos, about 40km thataway
see all photos »

the journey was fairly uneventful apart from missing the chilean part of customs, there was no barrier just a sign in spanish that we didn´t have time to read whilst driving.  we drove for about 45 minutes on a dirt road to the argentine customs post where they asked where our stamps and special bit of paper were and sent us back to chile.  so we eventually crossed the border and arrived in perito moreno late on easter saturday.  many places were full and there was a big procession in town.  noty a very exciting town but it did have its useful points, see later.

our car and an armadillo in the desert.
see all photos »

we left what we though was early the next day, only to discover we had again been caught out by time changes, doh.  we headed off tho the cueva de las manos, a cave with rock art, but never arrived.  the car lost power. again.  we made it to a desperate little "town" of Bajo Caracoles where we met two other broken down cars, two lovely puppies and a mardy mechanic.  we eventually got the mechanic to charge our battery for us with the intention of driving back to perito moreno, another fun day for jamie.  he charged it for an hour and said this would be enough, we had our doubts - perito moreno was 125km away.  well we were right and he was wrong, i´d like to pleased about that but it was a pain in the arse.  so there we were stuck  on the most isolated road in argentina, the famous RN-40.  we could see nothing for miles around except scrub and abandoned estancias  (they were abandoned in the 70s on account of falling wool prices and the devastating effects of volcan hudson blowing its top and sending tonnes of ash over the border from chile).  a nice man stopped in his car with his family and took alex b away to perito moreno to find a tow truck whilst me and jamie sat in the car as it got darker and colder.  i had a great time trying to explain to all the people who stopped that the alternator had broken and no a jump start wouldn´t work and that someone had already gone to town and would hopefully be back soon.  IN SPANISH.  we did not learn this vocabulary in our lessons.  eventually alex came back, just as we were getting our sleeping bags out and tiring of 20 questions.  He brought with him a police truck and two jolly gendarmes.  apparently there had been some sort of bribing with extra fancy petrol for their truck and some chocolate biscuits at the petrol station - i´d have asked for a bit more seeing as the mechanic at bajo caracoles had wanted 150 pounds to tow us.  so we arrived back in perito moreno at midnight, had a pizza and went to bed.

He brought with him a police truck and two jolly gendarmes