"The Real Patagonia"

Ruta 40, 3-4 February

On a long and dusty road in the middle of nowhere, we were rudely awoken from our comatose state by the bus guides shouting, "Nicky? Nicky?" In a dazed and blurry eyed state, our first sight was of a large Argentinian man tapping his temple with his index finger and his mouth making incomprehendable words which Lindsey translated as, "YOU FORGOT YOUR PASSPORT!" Nicky was handed the phone, to hear Ron´s hungover, groggy voice on the other end. After exchanging pleasantries, Ron nonchalantly muttered, "So you´ve left your passport, I´ll send it to your hostel in Calafate." Nicky, knowing she had her passport, played along with the "joke", said, "ja ja, thanks, that´ll be cool, here`s Gayle. Gayle chats to Ron, back to Nicky, laugh laugh, ha ha...speak later

We laugh about the joke and how he´s already having withdrawal from the Awesome Foursome. An hour later, the penny drops, as Gayle realises she has actually left her passport behind!! A few calls to Ron and Maarten, who say they´ll sort it out, not to worry...so we didn´t.

The Travellers Guru describes the Ruta 40 as "the real Patagonia" so we felt we had to experience it. In our opinion it was a lonely, desolate, monotonous lanscape that lasted 32 hours, so naturally we used the time to catch up on a few hours sleep. The 4 o´clock photos on the 3rd and 4th Feb represent nearly the entire bus route.

Highlights included:
- Ash`s headbanging sleeping style
- Toss the Orange and getting the whole back of the bus involved
- Observing the poor German, who got left behind after a pit stop, break the landspeed record in an attempt to catch the bus, thereby avoiding 2 lonely days waiting for another Chalten Travel Bus to pass.
- A crazy bus driver who broke the boredom of the trip by "putting foot" through every muddy puddle, thereby spraying the bus windows with a thick layer of mud - not that there was anything else to see!
- Cuevo de los manos, creepy bushmen-like paintings where ancient civilizations spat paint made of coloured mud onto their hands pressed against the wall, so creating a negative of their hand. All which took place over a period of 8000 years. To us it looked more there were people trapped inside the rock, desperately trying to get out

All in all an expensive trip, with Chalten Travel having a monopoly of the Ruta 40. The air conditioner didn`t work which had us all in a sweat for 2 days (not good for backpackers with limited acccess to clean clothes), they even had signs asking us to keep our shoes on! Basically if locals needed to travel this road frequently they wouldn´t stand for it.