Hitching a lift south

After spending a few good nature and family weeks surrounded by the lovely landscape, and as many stray dogs as you can imagine, we finally started hitching our way down to the end of the world.

In the process of getting ready. My hair was in need of serious attention.

Final touch to the little backpack while I stare like a creep in love.

 With my dad and sisters in the good ol' Falcon, we got 40 k south down the famous (and soon to be so familiar) Ruta 40.

Sisters selfie, because why not?

En ruta!

Heavy backpacks and loads of sunscreen on, we had a very emotional goodbye (especially the latinos, we tend to be emotional), and picked a good spot next to a road sign.

Sunscreen, so much of it. Especially for one of us. Guess which one.

Chey tried to sneak a picture, but my dad is always watching.

Goodbye!

Aaand there they go! (and by "they" I mean "we")

If I'm to be honest, I had no idea of how this couple-hitching thing was going to go in Argentina, and I was kind of ready to wait for a long-ish time. So imagine my (happy) surprise when after less than 20 minutes, a car pulled over!

It's probably because Chey looked so neat.

I looked pretty neat too.

It was a tiny Renault owned by a very young couple and their 6 month old baby, Cielo Azul (which means Blue Sky in Spanish).

Our first ride!

 A huge pile of luggage took pretty much all of the remaining space, but somehow they managed to make room for both of us plus backpacks... by moving both mum and baby girl to the front seat (I imagine this would never happen in Australia?).

I can't say it was the comfiest ride ever, but to compensate for the lack of space, they were lovely. We got the first round of Australian-related questions... Do you ride kangaroos to school? Do you eat kangaroo? Does the toilet water spin in the opposite direction? (most people here got all their knowledge of Australia from The Simpsons and don't stop to consider we're still southern hemisphere).

This is how the ride looked from Chey's perspective.

Road map and Barry the hippo on Chey's lap.

And in this particular case we also got questions about all the edible Australian wildlife, since our driver was the biggest meat eater I've ever met (a big claim in a country like Argentina). We conveniently avoided mentioning our meat-free lifestyle as to avoid uncomfortable moments.

The lovely family took us to a crossroads where our paths split because they were going east, while we would stay in the lonely Ruta 40. We wished each other good luck and Chey and I got off to get one more lift towards a civilised place. Or so we thought.

There was a roundabout in the centre of the crossroads with an infinity of red pieces of cloth, cigarrette boxes and alcohol bottles surrounding the tiny house of a national saint: El Gauchito Gil. *See note at the bottom

Chey holds a bottle at the Gauchito sanctuary-place

All of the surroundings had changed immensely. We were not looking at mountains, green deep forests and colorful flowers anymore. Now everything was proper Patagonian desert. Yellow, dry grassy bushes, wind and flatness. Beautiful on its own minimalist way.

Patagonian desert.

 We went across the Gauchito temple to the road where we would continue hitching and, oh, awesomeness! As soon (literally) as we turned and lifted out thumbs, a fancy 4 wheel drive pulled over. The driver (a radiologist from a town nearby) drove us to the immense metropolis (not) of Río Mayo**

The drive was significantly more comfy than the previous one, with heaps of leg room and the backpacks resting in the back of the 4WD rather than our laps.

The dusty Ruta 40 is still not fully paved.

Juan the radiologist was so nice that he got us to a camping ground and called the owner to make sure we would have a place to stay the night, We still ended up someplace else, but this post is already too long as it is, so stay tuned for the Chey and Adri's guide to the amazing Río Mayo.

NOTES

*About El Gauchito Gil  

You surely know Argentina is a pretty religious country. What you might not know is that people have a pretty massive collection of unofficial "saints" that the church doesn't support. One of this saints is El Gauchito.
 We have no idea of how he got his saint status, but it seems like people ask him for stuff, and when they get the stuff they build him little houses on the side of the road, where other people who are too lazy to build a little house can place offerings for him.

All red honoring El gauchito.

**Random note

I just wanted to share that I originally wrote this post on Chey's iPod and it autocorrected "Rio Mayo" to "Rip Mayo", which I consider a very accurate and decent name for that town, and now officially propose as a possible replacement.