From El Calafate we headed north to the lakes region in Argentina.. the problem was that this involved some 200 kms painfully slow driving on dirt road.. we really didn't want to get a flat tire or to pierce the petrol tank with a rock otherwise we would have been stuck in the middle of nowhere.

When we reached the first stretch of dirt, pebble, hell road we toyed with the idea of continuing driving or sleeping in the small crappy town of Tre Lagos and doing the drive the following day. It was 8pm, darkness was falling and we knew it would take us many many hours to reach the next town. Problem was we didn´t know exactly how many kilomtres was dirt road!!! Was it 10kms or 1,000kms??? We bit the bullet and went for it. It was slow, omg was it slow. We couldn´t do above 30 kms per hour and there was no end in sight just kilometres and kilometres of dirt road... they were building a brand new tarmac road right next to the dirt one and it was clearly signed "do not entre, under construction" but desperation took over and it was the middle of the night so what did we do..... We crossed the forbidden line and drove on the fresh road. Heaven! You could see many other people had done it that night ahead of us so we didn´t feel toooooo guilty. It really helped us pick up speed and make up some lost time. We did have to dip back to the dirt road occasionally when we came across a road digger or huge pile of tarmac blocking our way.. We made it to our destination at around 2am. Found our beloved YPF and went to bed.

The following morning we had an alarm set for 7am so we could get up, make a coffee, brush our teeth and hit the road. When the alarm went off we both lept for it to hit the snooze button - we were so tired!! We slept in until 9am, did our morning routine and then eventurally got on the road around 11.30am. We begun to notice a pattern occurring. No matter what time we got up in the morning 8am. 9am. 10am. we never start driving before 11.30am. Bizarre.