Day two of sitting around at the school with nothing happening. There was a facebook group set up called 'tourists trapped in Southern Patagonia' to detail what was happening. I couldn't find this group and those that had said there was nothing new on there. Them and everyone else went down to the school anyway.

The school was even more busy than yesterday. People were still coming from the national park adding to the numbers and as it was wet and cold outside forcing people to gravitate inside.

The people here are mostly the young fit hiker mountaineer types used to being active. Sitting on my bag in the corridor you notice the same faces pacing up and down like trapped animals. There does not seem to be anybody with government authority organising anything. The protesters make the rules (that happen to change every five minutes) and everyone else accepts and tries to work around them. Even the law appears to be under mob control, for example the police arrested 36 people during the recent riots in Punta Arenas where two people died. The judges however freed them all, the judges were locals in a community where over 80% of the people were on strike. Any restaurants that opened had their windows smashed or burnt down. The police are currently trying to get clarification from the goverment on what parts of the law to uphold and how. The hostel owner was telling me how a local with two police officers in tow was turned back at a barricade trying to get food to someone trapped in the national park.

It appears from where I am sitting that the goverment has sent the army in to 'keep order' but this is only the new twisted protester order we have at the moment. We are left with a small group of charity people begging for buses to help with the evacuation. To date I have only seen a handful of buses turn up. The first bus yesterday was stopped, the second lot got through but the first bus today was stopped. The current situation from the Red Cross main man was that no buses were going. Everyone stayed at the school however, you never know what is going to happen next.

After about 3 hours with no sniff of a bus I managed to ask the Red Cross main man whether waiting at the hostel checking the bloggs would be just as effective. With his nod of agreement we headed back to the hostel.

Back at the hostel an Italian couple simply had enough at 4pm they set off walking the 26km to the border. It is 8km to the first barricade but no local would dare give a tourist a lift incase they were seen. At 6:30pm someone checked the government bloggs. We couldn't believe our eyes the protesters were opening the road to the border only for private vehicles and just for 6 hours from now. It was changed a few times in as many minutes but it was worth checking out. No buses or hostel vehicles would be allowed across but it did give us some hope that a local in his own vehicle could take us to the border at least. Some people headed out but locals were reluctant to help fearing repercussions. They then headed out to the school, we didn't have much hope so opted to make something to eat to be ready if something did happen. Asking the hostel staff if they knew someone willing to take us did pay off, the hostels brother was willing but he wouldn't return from taking someone else for at least an hour. I used the time to try and get some money to pay for the trip, the 24hour autobank was closed but I chanced on a exchange place to change some dollars. I then did some research on how to get from the border to El Calafate. I started to get worried that we were pinning too much on this one chance and was wondering why the others hadn't returned. Eventually the hostel owner told us that there was a problem, they were checking the number plates each vehicle was allowed to make the trip once.

We headed down to the school where we asked a few backpackers what was going on. Apparently loads of cars were at the school taking people out, some people were paying a fortune (160 dollars each). We had missed the boat but wouldn't have payed that amount of money. There were a few people around still, one group said that they didn't want to pay on principle.

We went back to the hostel with new hope rumours, these make any decisions to walk tomorrow more difficult (I would prefer no hope). A lot of people walked today 200 was quoted on the Internet. The latest news was that the protesters had decided to close the border well ahead of the midnight deadline (they make the rules).

I end the day thinking do we walk or stay? The decision will be made tomorrow once we see what is happening down at the school. My patience is going quickly.