Where's Waldo-Nik?

Wow! This is a first. Until The Great Plotnik received a note this morning from NotThat, he hadn't even realized he hadn't bothered to post a blog listing two days in a row, for the first time in at least five years.

What has happened is that El Ploto has transferred into Spanish Mode. He has been sitting in front of the computer and on the telephone, trying to set things up for his and Duck's upcoming Chile/Argentina trip, and it's exceedingly complicated. His Spanish is fine except when speaking to people with soft voices on bad cell phone connections with one second satellite delays during a rain storm and with the heat whooshing in the background, all of which seems to be true on every phone call. It takes a lot of concentration for Plot to make sure he has understood correctly what he has just heard someone say, or to just hear anything at all.

E-mail has revolutionized traveling in the same way bottled water has. No more waiting for days until you get an answer if at all. People even in the most faraway places can communicate with you in real time and they can't wait to do so.

** WE UNDERSTAND THAT PLOTNIK'S TRAVEL ISSUES ARE NOT FRIENDS HAVING SURGERY, NOR FAILING ECONOMY, NOR MASSIVE EARTHQUAKE, NOR DEMOCRATS LOSING AND REPUBLICANS WINNING, NOR ANYTHING ELSE THAT REALLY MATTERS AT ALL.**

Where were we? This morning Plot has to answer the email from Estancia Telken, which is out in the absolute middle of nowhere, approximately two hours, Plotnik estimates, from Estancia Los Toldos, also in the middle of nowhere. Both are somewhat near the Cave of the Painted Hands -- by "somewhere near" we mean within several hours by 4 X 4, hike and perhaps horse -- and are the only places anyone can stay "near" the Cave.

But which to stay in? Both are working sheep ranches, both offer spartan accommodations with, one assumes, lots of mutton chops, both can find local guides to help strangers find the Cave and surounding regions of other paleolithic painted rocks, as one hikes along and above the river, and both cost the same thing, which ain't cheap.

But to get to Telken or Los Toldos, Plot and Duck have to take at least a 10 hour bus ride from El Calafate, where the two gringachos will be on their previous stop, over gravel roads towards the tiny town of Perito Moreno (not the glacier of Perito Moreno near El Calafate but the town of Perito Moreno on the way to Bariloche). Then somebody's got to pick them up and drive to the estancia. If it's Telken, which seems to be slightly larger and prettier, it's an hour drive to the estancia but a two hour drive to the Cave. If it's Los Toldos it's at least two more hours to get to the estancia but only a one hour schlep to the Cave.

The backpacker literature has stories of satisfied people staying at Telken, but many speak of how cool it would be if that place near the cave, Los Toldos, would finally open up and take in guests. Now it has. But no one has ever stayed there.

And no matter which estancia Plot and Duck pick, they'll have to get back to Perito Moreno, the town, for a 7:30am bus from Perito Moreno all the way down through the pampa to the Atlantic Coast town of Puerto Madryn, which just happens to be one of the Welsh-founded Argentine towns that JJ-aka-PP would kill to see. This bus ride takes 12 more hours and according to Nguyen Goldstein Bossanova, the only one Plot knows who has actually traveled in Southern Patagonia, there is absolutely nothing to see but flat flat flat.

WHY ARE WE DOING THIS? some might ask. Some might. Some might get up in the middle of the night to see their mate also up in the middle of the night, asking the same question. HONEY? Yes? I DON'T KNOW EITHER. BUT WE'RE DOING IT. GO BACK TO SLEEP.