And look at this!

And here is Esquel, an eight hours bus drive to the west from that small green splinter. Click on the 'View Larger Map' and you can see both.


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The country in between is a semi-desert scrub. There are small wizened bushes, and the wind carves the rocks of the steep-sided gorges into strange shapes and lone, dramatic boulders.

The bus was old, the front window pocked where stones had hit and the seats loose in their housing, tipping with every bump in the road - and there were several. The driver swerved to avoid the larger ones. Once or twice the bus would slow and someone would yell at me in Spanish. I think they wanted me to take pictures, so I did, but they've come out badly because my hands weren't steady.

Once we followed a small river that bifurcated and then joined again, and on these tiny islands were small flat incongruous-looking meadows.

Eventually it grew night, and from time to time the bus would would be waved down by people with lights. They seemed to come from nowhere. All around us was complete and empty darkness, not a settlement in sight, and I wondered how long they had been waiting by that ill-kept road. It was the only one for miles, the only connection between one side of Patagonia to the other, and this bus its lonely customer.