Patagonia is so big! We´ve been driving for hours today and hardly moved it seems, at least when you look at the map. Amazing.

Had a stroke of tough luck the day before yesterday, when we left Bariloche. Got three rides, but two were very short. Ended up spending the night in a small town called El Hoyo (the hole, what an appropriate name!), in my tent by the river. Next day took us to Esquel with a radical truck driver, and from there at the back of a truck used for transporting livestock (and its shit as well) to a junction truly in the middle of NOwhere. A truck driver was sleeping in his truck at the junction and the guys we´d arrived with said that this trucker was going our way, we´d just have to wait until he woke and he´d sure as hell give us a lift. He was going pretty far, so we turned down the offers of a few friendly passer-bys offering to take us to the nearest town. Half a minute after turning down one such offer the truck driver woke, started up the truck and drove off. Taking care almost to flatten out our toes as we stood beside the road and tried to flad him down. Gave us a wicked grin. AAAAARRRRRGGGG.

Made it to the small town (a lot) later and rested there for a while. Walked to the other entrance of town, watched the whole town drive by at least three times (the famous - or notorious - "runtur" so well known to all Icelanders) but noone was going anywhere. As it got dark the cops at the Gendarmeria, where we were hitch-hiking, got tired of poking around in people´s belongings (and passports, if they didn´t have any belongings) and started to play around with motorbikes and "fjorhjol" (whatever that may be in English) we realised that we were not leaving this town anytime soon and walked back, found a room at a cheap hotel and settled in Gobernador Costa for the night.

Believe it or not, the first car passing today stopped and took us almost 500 km, to a city by the Atlantic coast called Comodoro Rivadavia. Endless flats and rolling hills, really endless. Wherever you look, it´s just you and the wind. Here and there the odd tree, the odd sheep grazing, the odd guanaco. Sanctuaries at junctions, unmarked roads for miles and miles and if you take the wrong turn it´ll be at least half a tank later you find out. The guy who picked us up, Victor, is an artist and a designer of leather clothes, and likes to collect weird things he finds by the roadside. Skeleton of a cow (or something), tin cattle, old tires, torn rubber boots... these things he picks up and places them again in a different place by the road, in a different context, as an installation. Photographs them and leaves them then behind, for all posterity to see and enjoy.

We want to leave Comodoro tonight and get further south. Hope we find a truck driving at night. Still haven´t made it halfway to El Chaltén, even if we´ve been three days on the move. You know how much I want to be in Ushuaia by Christmas. Or at least by the 28th of December. Can´t miss the ship to the Antarctic!