The Patagonia Steppe is huge!. We drove for 9 hours between two towns on Route 40. Actually the second town was about 5 houses and a petrol station/shop/bar/restaurant and hotel all in one. We intended to camp but the site was shut and it was blowing a gale, so for yet another night we had to retreat to a hotel.

The roads in Patagonia are 20% tarmac and 80% gravel or 'Ripio' as they are called here. There are many variations of these gravel roads, which we are slowly becoming expert in. The worst roads are those made out of stones about the size of tennis balls, these are really harsh. The remainder range through stone sizes down to sand or earth roads. These can be OK and allow speeds of up to 60 KMH, but at that speed when a rock or hole appears you can hit it with a bang! Of course the earth roads will turn to mud with rain, as we found out! The worst roads can drop speeds to 20 KMH.

These gravel roads have two things in common, one is the dust, it gets everywhere. We have spent a couple of hours searching every gap and hole, checking door seals; but Gerty is a Land Rover and along with squeaks and rattles these are part of the joys of ownership. The second thing is the possibility of the road forming a 'washboard' surface. This is a series of ripples across the road and it appears that any surface can do it. It is a real bone shacker ride when that happens!

All these add up to 9 hours to travel 250 miles. We passed only 10 or so cars & lorries coming the other way and the landscape is unchanging flat, barren scrubland. Farms come up every 25/30 miles apart with small flocks of sheep 10-20, at similar intervals. Probably saw 30 cows all day. How do the farms make a living?

The next day was not much better but was broken by a visit to Cuervas de las Manos (Caves of the hands). First discovered in 1881 they are actually a series of rocky overhangs 70 metres above a river valley where a tribe of early Patagonians lived around 9000 to 3000 thousand years ago. They left paintings, mostly of their hands and hunting scenes, on the walls under the overhangs.

After the caves we drove on yet more ripio road to the Bosque de Petrificado (petrified forest). It was located in a lunar landscape of cream and orange coloured valley and hills and consisted of scattered tree trunks that had been petrified into solid lumps of rock. It all happened 65 million years ago when trees from a massive forest were washed downstream and settled in a shallow lagoon that was subsequently flooded by the sea and later dried out and covered with sediment. During this time the structure of the wood is replaced, through osmosis with minerals which subsequently harden to rock in exactly the same form as the original tree. The trunks were then slowly uncovered by wind erosion. The wind is still eroding the landscape and it was so strong we could hardly stand up.

Next day headed fro the border to cross back into Chile.