Matt & Rob's Big Trek

Hey there, folks! Back sooner than expected as we are taking an unplanned stop in a town called General Acha. You lucky, lucky people!

Short cuts. I wonder what percentage of short cut stories are told where the cutter comes out on top? Sure, if you know your town or city like the back of your hand then you up your chances to about 50/50 but in an unknown land with only a map for reference that little line connecting the dots may as well be potted with black holes. We left Santa Rosa on Tuesday and straight away the country was far better for walking. Although it had been better since Trenque Lauquen Ruta 5 was still pretty full on for traffic, but now we were really out in the countryside and the silences were indeed golden. So nice to be out there. Our route took us off the main roads to for two day’s worth of track in the country. What we didn’t know was just how arid it was going to be. The track was sandy and the air not much wetter but it was okay for the first day as we tumbled down into a valley on what is the best rally course I have ever seen. It twisted and turned and jumped all over the place and was pretty damn cool. Shame it was two crap feet and a big bag of stuff I had instead of a super Subaru! But with blue skies overhead and a real ‘out west’ feel to everything I felt pretty good. Then the second day we started up the hill. And up the hill. And up the hill, like a retarded Grand Old Duke of York who can’t remember his lines. And the water started to run out. Pretty soon I was down to about 200mls and we had about 90 mins of daylight left with only more hill around each twist and jump. When you’re in that position you can only think about liquid and to a maddening degree. We had badly miscalculated and were set to hit the next town, which was tiny, in the dark and with no place to stay. The anxiety was way up. Just at that point my left shin began to hurt quite badly with what I assumed was some sort of shin-splint as I was not used to the hills. A limp was going to really bugger me sideways. Then an angel turned up. Only about 4 cars had passed us all day and suddenly there is this chap with a big old Dodge pickup with his dog in the back offering us a lift. Apologies to the purists but we simply had to take it. I had to jump in the back and there was no tailgate so there I was, wedged in with my foot and using a shovel for an anchor, on what was certainly the best ride in the park that day! It was wicked! Tearing along the track being bounced and jostled along with the dog. A bit dusty but hey. Annoyingly, it turned out that we only had 5-6 kms to go until the town but we still would have got there very late and in the dark so that guy saved us. Top man! Turned out he’d seen us outside Santa Rosa. Practically everyone we meet has seen us at some point along the road. It’s pretty cool.

The day after this we started out again, this time on a bit more of a road but still quiet. It was bloody windy which really saps the will out of you, and it seemed to be all flat and straight again which was dull. I was just having a great big moan about needing to ‘enjoy this more and not have a big shit year’ when we finally came across a fantastic view across the Valley de Ultracan which we were about to cross. It really was the first time we’d seen a proper view of what was coming so it was a treat. That was only the first that day, though. We searched at the bottom of the hill in the forlorn hope of finding some trees or fields that weren’t caked in horses as they had been stalking us the last couple of nights and it gets scary when you can hear them outside. What we found was the best place ever! Over the horizon, just as we’d given up hope, we came across a huge salt lake that reflected perfectly, just like in the Thames TV sign that came on before ‘Rainbow’, and with a beach and a whole deserted campsite. It was wonderful and mysterious at the same time. There is a sad beauty about summer places in winter. Moon lamps stood next to empty camping berths and many of the windows were smashed in the main buildings that overlooked the beach. You could almost hear and feel the ghosts of summers past and it took me back to my childhood. Hopefully they will clean it up for the summer season but it was all very Famous Five. Or, actually, Scooby-Doo! That was it! It was the haunted summer camp! I was fairly sure I saw old man Withers hiding in one of the deserted entry booths. Anyway, we pitched out tents right on the beach and it was wonderful. And when, as I slipped out for a pee at night, I saw a fluorescent, screaming, ghostly pirate on the brow of the hill, I said nothing to Matt and merely flipped a 12-decker sandwich down my gullet in one and had done with it.

Our unplanned stop here in General Acha is down to the fact that we have a 6 day treks between towns from here on in and really needed to plan in order to avoid simple errors. This planning generally means how to carry around 10 litres of water each where our maximum so far has been 6, and what kind of unappetising tinned meat we are going to have with our crackers as pastas and soups will take up valuable H20. Anyway, it’s all good fun, in a perverse sort of a way, trekking out into what is officially a desert. Wahooo!

Just a quick note of thanks to the chap who turned down our USA visa. Would have been way too hot and not sure my tent could take a hurricane. Kiss my ass, Irene!

And what about those Brighton boys? That’s a nice lookin’ table I see.

See you on the other side! Love you, bye x x

Yo Yo Yo Yo Yo Yo! After 12 days and 150 miles without a stop or a day off (350 so far!) we finally made it to the end of Ruta Nacional 5 and Santa Rosa, the capital of La Pampa region, a nice place of around 80,000 folks with a great big casino too. We even did it in some style, walking at least 7 miles along the railroad tracks to get here. For those admiring the danger, the trains move at about 6mph here and to say they are antiquated is being kind; you really could run away from one, taunting it with trailing limbs, bare bums and v-signs so we weren’t in any strife and walking the railroad is one of the things you have to do, isn’t it?

We haven’t had any major events since we were in Pehaujo which gives me an opportunity, so why don’t you sit yourself down, I’ll get me pipe and cardie, and I’ll weave you a tale of life as a roadside hobo in Argentina.

We tend to get up at about 9am if we have a choice about it and enjoy a breakfast of dry cereal and some sort of biscuit. It’s a nice chewy start if you’re a horse and I’m thinking of moving onto hay anyway but it’s not so bad and gets us underway by about 10-10:30. From there we split the day into 4 segments of about 6kms (the road we’ve been on has markers which is handy) each. The first one is always ok. The second, when you’re starving, invariably sucks. The post lunch drive is best and the fourth is jointly a mission to find somewhere suitable to pitch up so it can either be mercifully short or bastard long and this is where the feet really start to go south if they weren’t already. So the days are pretty uniform you’d think…except for the factors. You can never forget about the factors. Bloody factors.

The Weather – It is no lie to say that it changes every day here. You cannot tell, as you watch a sunset burn the horizon, what it is going to bring with it when it pops up again: a fierce wind, rain, a cold winter’s day, overcast or sunny, or one that turns out to be pretty hot. In England the temperature always ranges from, say, 0-12 degrees in winter and although it is generally warmer here the range leaves you dizzy as one day you’ll be blowing into your hands to keep them warm and the next you’ll be basking in the sunshine dreaming of pints and beer gardens. I can tell you that right now it is minus temperatures at night and we’re thankful to be in a hotel. The night before we got here my water bottle froze in the night in my tent so when I stretched out my hand for a drink I found only an ice-cube to suck. Freezing. Really.

The Road – They talk about mental challenges when you do this sort of thing and I can assure you that walking the same road for 350 miles is one (that’s Brighton to Newcastle by the way). It becomes an entity that you are tied to, a Sisyphean bind of a thing that you are never away from, occasionally as a night time friend when you’ve snaffled some wine to watch the lights go by, but very often just a long, dull stretch of concrete that neither rises nor turns. Long and dull like double Geography, only without the reckless flamboyance of, say, an essay on top-soil fertility. It has certainly had me asking the question of what I am doing here? Recently it has gotten a little better. Heck, we even had to climb our first hill the other day. A hill, Goddammit! You’d think that would be bad but any bit of character is a welcome change.

Where You’ve Slept – In the first few days we tried to hold out for bits of wood unpossessed but within a week we saw that every, EVERY tree in this country is owned by someone, and so we’ve been fence hoppers ever since. Cheeky little tresspassers with a will to sleep. Time was when we’d find a disused or half built property to sleep behind, possibly being awoken by a herd of suspicious cows, or with luck we’d come across some woodland on the edge of a property, but as we got further out into Las Pampas there was nothing. I honestly had tears in my eyes as I looked on the horizon day after day and saw maybe three trees in the next 10kms. We soon started sleeping in farmer’s fields and getting up at 7:00am so as not to get shot by grumpy Argentine mud-lovers. Thankfully, the region known as La Pampa, which we had expected to epitomise this dirth of character, has more bends in the road and more trees than the whole road from Buenos Aires to here. Yay.

What We Have Eaten – Petrol Stations are our bread and butter and tend to pop up on the outskirts of most towns but the best things are the roadside parillas (mixed grills) that are usually around the same place, or sometimes, and in a life saving capacity, rise out of the bushes ahead like a foody-drinky-best thing. They range from full restaurant style to very homely affairs with some cheery hobbit cooking 200 lbs of meat on a barbecue and then bashing it onto a plate for you. And it is delicious! They really know meat here. Dinner is normally pasta cooked on our little stoves. It’s very sweet and you’d be amazed at how tasty it seems after 15 cold miles whilst staring up at the stars.

That’s kind of it for the road. Argentina is a very friendly place and they’re quite proud but they are not hedonists in any sense and you’d be amazed at how few bars there are around. Most towns have no more than two and if they do, even here in Santa Rosa which is quite big, then the others are empty. It makes me angry sometimes as I want to go bloody wild but we manage.

As a counter to my previous post about the nutbar policeman I should mention that the Anguil PD must be the nicest on Earth. They picked us up from the side of the road to check our passports and ended up buying us big bags of variety biscuits, making us coffee, drawing us maps of Santa Rosa and where was good to go. Real class. Thing is that a couple of French girls were murdered up in Salta a couple of weeks ago. It’s is hundreds of miles away but everyone is in a bit of a tis about keeping turistas safe. Think they’ve got the pricks that did it now though, so not to worry. If they could only have a taste of my naturally rampant paranoia about everyone I see they’d know they don’t need to tell me to watch out : )

Anyway, we turn south tomorrow and head into some of the most sparsely populated landscapes in the country on our way to Patagonia. Exciting, though! Think the scenery is set to begin changing and soon enough we’ll be in the foothills of Los Andes! Can’t wait. Next post is likely to be from Neuquen, about another 380 miles away, so speak to you then.

Cheers, then. Missing you all, byeeeeee x x

Well, it was coming. On Friday morning I’d said to Matt that I had a massive urge to go nuts and party and Pehaujo has turned out to be quite the most lively place we’ve been to so far. Essentially it is just one short road but that road has two bars and two clubs! I’d only had about 4 hours sleep Fri/Sat night and after about 10 gins I was a mess, making Matt slap my face in order to wake up enough to hit the 2nd club at about 5am, but we made loads of friends and had a blast. I locked Matt out of our room and on his return a few hours after me he said that I got up, tried to unlock the door and couldn’t, and so went back to bed. “No, mate, you have to finish unlocking the door!” Classic stuff…I don’t remember. Needless to say we didn’t leave town today and I think we’re even feeling the mood take us again. Gotta be careful. This is the second post from here so do catch up on yesterday’s but here are some pictures made out of my camera…Sorry about some of the spelling and incorrect use of CApitaLs x x

No, we’ve not been out robbing banks with Al Pacino and John Cazale, but by the sounds of certain extracts entailed you might have thought we had.

When we left 9 de Julio, which I should say is a very nice, quite upmarket town, a little like a larger version of Mercedes, we were barked and growled out of town as we are every single one. Not a lover of dogs, I find it highly irritating and not a little scary on some occasions when the big, aggressive fellows are on song. On a daily basis we see dozens of dead dogs by the roadside, from skeletal to fairly fresh, but as we exited the town onto the main ruta one picked the wrong time to come chasing after us I’m afraid. We ignored it as we duly do but just as it finished growling at us from behind it chose to re-cross in front of a car doing about 70mph at least. I turned just after the bang (it was not a small dog) and saw the poor chap blasted about 60 or 70 feet down the road. Sorry to bring you the details (it wasn’t bloody in the end) but the incident is of import.

Just as this happened and the offending car stopped to check his damage Mr Plod happened to be driving by. Matt and I were fairly distraught and we hung around across the road but he never even gave us a second glance as he calmly walked down the road to despatch the creature should it not be finished (it definitely would have been), and so we carried on on our walk, a little harried and upset as barking and growling doesn’t really deserve that. After about ten minutes te policeman rolled up on the other side of the road. Now, we’ve met quite a few coppers along Route 5 and for the most part they are really friendly after they find out what we’re doing, laughing at us a little and raising a respectful eyebrow. This guy, however, was just the sort you really hope not ever to meet. Whether he’d seen too many movies or was in a snit about the dog (having to log the incident rather than the mutt’s life I’ll warrant) this chap was dead set that we were Carlos the Jackal and Hannibal Lector out met for a Sunday stroll. He barked at us to back away, demanded Matt drop his walking stick which he then threw miles away as if it were the very serpent from Eden, and then edged just close enough to grab our passports from us to leave us standing, fairly concerned, as for ten minutes he shouted into his radio for back-up. What had we done? Was it illegal to leave the scene of a canine cessality? The worst thing was that I’d left my hunting knife in my leg pocket and I could picture myself in the company of several burly crims overnight for possession of a concealed weapon. Not a happy thought. Back-up duly arrived and we then had the whole ‘legs apart, hands up and pat down’ treatment during which I might have let off a peep of a fart I was so worried. Thankfully not much was thought of the knife but we were commanded to empty our ruck-sacs. I think that as we turned out bag after bag of crackers, cheese, Lays and assorted crap they rather embarrassingly realised that we were not the slowest drug-runners or heavily weighted burglars making a rapid 2mph escape as they had thought, but still we were then made to get in the police van and take a trip to the nearest station, all without the knowledge of why? We thought the trip was over. “You cannot walk along the side of the road, dog-murderers,” was our best hope. Matt was taken in first and I could hear them grilling him. I strained to hear his answers over the noise of traffic. He stuttered and splurted out where we’d been staying etc. After five minutes I heard him walking out towards where I’d been waiting. Here we go: he’s going to be pretty shaken, I thought. No. “Do you want to come through, mate? I’m making friends,” he said with a beam. And we did. For the next half hour we talked about the relative merits of the Argentine football team (which meant pointing up to the sky for Maradona and Tevez but, curiously, to the ground for Messi) and drank their mate (with an accent over the ‘e’ that I cannot find), a hot, herby drink all the macho men drink that I was praying I would like and be able to smile at, and thankfully did. Then they let us go. No mention of the dog; they just wanted to know what our names were etc. How we nervously laughed as we walked back the 3 kms they had driven us the wrong way.

As we were pretty tired from that experience we started looking for a place to set up pretty sharpish and spied a wood where a lone horse was brazing which looked like no problem. No. After we’d pitched sure enough along he came. I have a few problems with horses: they are stupid and easily startled, much like the Sandpeople, and although they seldom return in greater numbers they are massive and one of them killed Superman. This idiot simply would not leave us alone, so just as we’d set everything up we had to make a fading light decision that neither of us wanted to sleep with a night-long horse threat and so had to move. Simple enough? Not really. He followed us to the point in the fence we’d jumped and Matt managed to hop over. Now, as it’s my turn, the bloody thing decides to start jumping and running around like it’s seen its Dad’s ghost and with only a tree between us and with it blocking the fence. I was shit scared, I’ll admit. As he went on a fierce run through the surrounding trees I pegged it over. Normally I’m pretty ungainly at these things but I didn’t hang about as I saw him circling back to head me off. No injuries to report.

Sorry if this one is a bit long and I was not going to say anything about the town we’re in, which is Pehaujo (which Matt and I are incorrectly calling Pahoojho cos we like it), but it turned out to be brilliant! It’s tough to make friends out here when you don’t speak the language but we found a bar that got absolutely packed last night, a real rarity. After several beers we got into the shots, raising surprised eyebrows with the waitress as we did one after another, and we were speaking with folks all around it seemed. We ended up going to the town club. We’d been to one in 9 de Julio but, frankly, it was crap, and consisted of one prat bloke singing at the front while we stood bemused and awaited the real music for an hour and a half. This one last night had the worst DJ you could imagine: he constantly mixed from the very middle of every song but we seemed to dance all night and had a proper laugh. Just hanging over now as we ended up sitting up until dawn getting wrecked and discussing the relative merits of life in Argentina (of which there are many) with some locals in the hotel. Waiting for Saturday night now. Matt said he got some girl’s number but I remember after the club we were chatting with a transvestite and there was a weird drunk boy who Matt said kept going for his crotch, so I hope it isn’t one of those! (ha ha – those who know Matt know that won’t be the case).

Cheers then. Love you, byee x x

p.s. Who won The Apprentice?

p.p.s loads of people are driving up to us from the roadside now and they know we are English and that we are walking to Bariloche, the police also (except the annoying man above). It makes us feel terrific!