We were in Rio Mayo before it was cool

 After Chey got some groceries (instant pasta, palitos Pep*, some bread and eggs), we waited quite a while for the camping lady to arrive. When she finally did, she showed us the "camping ground", which ended up being a wasteland of rocks, horse crap and garbage, with no shelter from the wind.  *Palitos Pep is the official snack of this team.

We discussed it and decided that since it was still light we would explore in search for greener pastures.

Chey poses next to the Ruta 40 sign in downtown Rio Mayo

And so we found the only hotel in town, a jewel called Aka-ta (the name meaning is a baby-talk way of saying "acá está" or "here it is"). The owners of the hotel, an old couple and their old dog, had bitter faces and unnecesary formal ways. While the mand showed us our room I couldn't stop humming Hotel California to myself.

Hotel Aka-ta, resort and spa (not)

So we dropped our bags and promptly went for a walk around town... where we found the reason for the bitter facces of the Aka-ta people: the whole town had been recently raided by zombies.

First sign of the zombies: abandoned destroyed houses,

Don't wait any longer, dog. Your human is not coming back. He's a zombie now.

More zombie-destroyed buildings.

The park. There are not kids playing anymore, because ZOMBIES.

Before leaving, the zombies made a monument to BRAAAAINSSS

Me, posing next to the BRAAAINS monument.

A little creepy house.

This bar was not attacked because the powers of El Gauchito are that great.

We had a blast looking at all the post-zombie-apocalypse sights, building theories about the destroyed things, and thanking life for our good luck of not living there.

Romantic sunset

After sunset we went back to our room (which we discovered had a beautiful brick wall view) and, since we're filthy hippies that don't want to waste extra money when they have perfectly decent camping food, I cooked our camping meal on our gas cooker in the middle of the room (note to parents: don't worry, I kept it perfectly fire-safe).

Cooking our dinner and wearing my sexy Muppet fur socks.

We put our twin beds together and got a very welcome night of sleep.

Next morning after breakfast we braved the most insane windstorm I've ever witnessed to walk out of town. It was such a strong wind that it made us sway even with the extra weight of the backpacks, and I had to bend almost in half to be able to keep going.

Trees bent by the wind.

And I should remember to tell you it was a dirt road, so we kept getting sand into our eyes, ears and nose. I even cried a little. I was feeling so miserable that I didn't even call Chey to look at an awesome desert lizard that walked by me (which I instantly regretted).

But we finally got to the freshly paved main road, where the wind was still insane but at least we didn't get sand punches. And of course we got a lift from the second or third vehicle that drove by.

Made it to the main road! (there was still some wind, as you might see)

Because you had to be heartless to leave us standing with that wind on the side of the road.

Outside Rio Mayo.