Mein Wagen ist kaputt...

Right, it was obviously going too well... 364 km south of Buenos Aires, on our way to Patagonia, our truck decided to pack up.

We will overlook our BA experience for now, it was great but too short anyways.

We broke down some 20 km after the last service station. After 2 hours of waiting around for help from the Exodus UK helpline, which did not materialise, a couple of Argentinian road controllers came to our rescue - probably called out because we had stopped in an hazardous position and someone had already hit and disintegrated our red hazard triangle. We were advised to drive back to the previous town (the truck could still move, only at 20 km an hour, and we had exactly 20 of them to drive back...) so we did. Our tour leader found accomodation through the mechanic in this place with lots of rooms and a kitchen which turned out to be very very old and mouldy and full of guess what? Mosquitos - of course!!! Bloody mosquitos again, this time in a civilised town and no swamps, but they were millions all the same and all came to feed on us while preparing dinner. The place was pretty grim, damp with a damp smell, the showers an hazard with electric cables running underneath the water, dim light and pathetic dirty crockery and pots to the point that we decided to go all the way back to the truck to fetch our good old utensils and forks. The bed was the worse, but thankfully we had bought 2 very nice pillows in BA (best investment ever) and stolen a couple of pillow-cases along the way, so, together with our beautiful cotton sheet that is meant to be our sleeping bag liner, we could sleep almost decently despite the damp stench.

In the evening it was diagnosed that the truck needed a new engine altogether, and therefore we should abandon the vessel along with ALL our possessions. Argghhh!! Now, that was a very big problem , considering that we are overloaded, we have just bought a huge bag full of warm clothes for Patagonia and the pillows and the sleeping bags and sleeping mats.. erm erm.

But we managed! We actually managed to pack the rucksacks back together and since we are not expected to be able to walk for miles with the possesions, we can manage.

Next, Kim our tour leader informed us that another truck was coming down the same route the next morning and it was half empty. So all we needed to do was to be by the road side by 8 am and look out for a big yellow truck and get rescued - the idea being that trucks rescue each other in case of trouble as they could easily be next. So there we were this morning, waiting for 5 hours and no bloody yellow truck in sight.. till Gregory convinced Kim to go and make contact via email and she found out that in fact our saviours had actually set off the night before!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So ... here we are, with plenty of time to do some Internet for once, stuck in this small town called 9 de Julio now waiting for a minibus that is going to replace our truck, of which we know only that it seats 24 and has reclinable seats, but Kim has not seen it so god knows what it´s like. On the bright side, this means that we have lost all of our camping and cooking equipment and that we will therefore have to stay in hotels rather than tents. Maybe a stroke of luck after all??

We will let you know once we see the minibus...