Comodoro Rivadavia - Chubut

The time has come to end my silence! Suitably dramatic I hope :) For those of you who haven´t heard me and my travelling companions were involved in a car crash about a week and a half ago in the middle of nowhere in Patagonia. I´m disgusted that a boy who gets knocked off his scooter and sustains no injuries except a possible punishment beating from his da gets news coverage in the local paper and we don´t. Our car is now similar(in the front at least) to one of those cars you see in a little cube in a scrap yard. The other two have put pictures up of thier injuries and all sorts but I still find that a bit disturbing so I´ll try get a pic of the car to put here (not the one with the blood on the door frame.) You may have guessed, gentle reader, from my flippant tone that none of us is seriously injured. Indeed that is true although my back is at me something terrible and makes me feel like some sort of geriatric every so often :). The other two have fashionable bent noses (but only a little, don´t get offended if you read this! :p )
Head on collision can put a bit of a damper on travel plans though and due to the temporary messed uppedness of muscles involved in carrying large objects (i.e backpacks) and those involved in any serious walking or climbing we´ll have to be a bit more sedate for the next while. I think Macchu Picchu may be off the list but we´ll see, still dore now but might have cleared up by then. For the moment we will be leaving Comodoro Rivadavia on Sunday. I can´t say I´m not glad - bad memories of stressful waits in hospitals I´d rather leave behind. Off to Buenos Aires we go. Unfortunately we´ll have to go on a bus for 24 hours because where a huge tract of fields on fire was stopping air travel before a Chilean volcano has stepped in and covered everything to the east in ash. Sometimes the wind whips up the ash and makes flying not so safe. I get the feeling someone is trying to tell us not to go there! Whoever you are - if it was you who put that 4x4 on the wrong side of the road you´re a bastard!
Having said that though we got better accommodation in the little hopital in Perito Moreno than we got in some hotels! Breakfast in bed, free transfers to the bus station, television, adjustable beds! Even free, really stong painkillers!. It was all free. God bless Argentina. The cops also sorted out te car thing completely for us, it was great. *And* they gave us tea. It´s a pity really, we were making such good progress towards weird gnome town in the north. Maybe they were warding me off!
On our way while we still had an intact car we stayed in Baja Caracoles. It´s a town of 31 inhabiatants. Yes, you read right, I didn´t miss a zero. I was wonderng why everyone looked at us funny when we got in. Seems to me now that half the population of the town was in the bar of the hotel we stayed in. Literally. God it was remote. It was at least an hour from anywhere else in any direction.
On the upside we did get to see the "Cueva de los Manos" the ancient handprints on a rock wall in an an equally ancient canyon. That was pretty cool, couldn´t get over the idea that someone just came down with an airbrush and did it in their spare time, there being a lot of it in the Patagonian wastes I imagine. Actually after that we ran out of petrol on the way to Perito Moreno too (another sign!?) but after only about half an hout of waiting a nice couple came along and sold us some. On arriving in Perito Moreno to fill up properly we discovered we´d rimmed one of the wheels and petrol was leaking from the car. So we fixed it adn it only cost about 20 euro. We met the nice couple there again anf they told us to divert off the road and head east (to where we ended up having to go anyway!) because of the volcano. After checking the news we decided o head on the way we were going anyway. "Great", we thought,"the rental agency will never know we messed up their car and we managed to escape a scary accident!" Ah if speaking too soon was a sport we´d get a gold medal. It was the next day we ran into the other car. Still lucky are we to escape with pretty minor injuries and the hospital did some excellent soup! I think I´ll leave it there for today and relate to you again my adventures when I am in the capital. Hasta lluego mi amigos!
P.S Happy Birthday Ferd! Sorry we´re late on the pressie, we´re getting our heads together now. With superglue!!