we made the brave decision to hire cars and head out on road trip trip today. We were not disappointed, though probably not for your usual touristic reasons.....

Of course, eventful enough for our nominate drivers (ross, ali-b, selai and matt), was coming to grips with the right hand drive, the 'relaxed' and somewhat inconsistent argentine road rules (although i feel the term 'rules' may be overly formal in this context), and driving on the wrong side of the road, let alone what lay ahead of us.

having negotiated our way out of town we set out onto the open road where we all made a mistake in thinking the driving would get much easier, nt having to worry about who to give way to and what not. wrong. The funds for roading here are slim, if not non-existent and the metal spiked tyres that almost all vehicles have here mean that its like driving through a mine field. we are now beginning to understand why ushuaians drive ALL OVER the road! they are merely choosing to drive the path of least resistance. enough said.

after certain amounts of phaffing about trying to find the turn off the main highway up to estancia harberton, we were in for a treat following snowy metal roads featuring wondering wild dogs, quaint (broken) wooden bridges and some pretty awesome scenery, we made it to harberton. but not before sighting a beaver dam, much to my delight ( a kid in a candy store comes to mind!). brilliant!

haberton. -was closed.

nice (closed) museum full of fish bones (and by fish i mean whales - some of the heads stood taller than us!). the method of rotting the flesh off the bones of these marine mammals involves covering the bodies with tarps and letting what bacteria persist in the harsh climate do their work. and a small village consisting of a (closed) cafe, and a restuarant, and seemingly its single inhabitant was sighted chopping wood.

we found a campsite to light a fire and boil a billy for lunch and take in some of the resident beaver handy work - so destructive!! after a windblown lunch we set in for a rally drive home. much to the delight of camp father, we drove onto a crash scene. snow+slick tyres=sliding off road into ditch. camp father quickly donned his camp hat and repaced it with his action-man cape. it was all on. pretty soon we were hooked on to the ill-fated car and up to our knees in the snow pushing as action-man worked on jolting the vehicle up out of the tree it had come to rest on and out of the snow. ali-b did some handy work with the snow shovel and pretty soon we had the thing nearly clear of the ditch. victory! after some much broken comms, we had her neatly popped out onto the road, apparently undamaged, sweet! action-man quickly switched caps, although choosing his possum-bourne helmet instead, we tore off down the snowy road and away home.

so. a little less touristy than most would anticipate, but a successful day nonetheless. well done team!

selai