Ash fallout from a newly active volcano in Patagonia has reached Buenos Aires causing cancellations and or delays most of the past week. With this in mind, I know it would've been better if I had of phoned or kept an eye on the local media before setting out to the airport here in Salta for a flight to Buenos Aires thereto connect with my flight home. I thought or hoped that if cancelled there'd be a flight by evening.

I unloaded the boxed bike and boxed trailer from the taxi, paid the driver and got a trolley; then with my boxes on, I wheel up the ramp and through the sensor operated slide doors into the departure lounge where a few people waited, but there were no queues nor any check-in people behind the desks. It is only nine o'clock and my flight isn't till two fifteen. I have plenty of time. After wheeling my trolley from one side of the long though narrow lounge I take a seat. The woman in the next seat but one tells me her flight was at nine o'clock but has been cancelled. And shortly a young man carrying a small case walks over taking the vacant seat between me and the woman and tells us both in a down in the mouth way that his flight has been cancelled too. When we talk more, he tells me he was due to fly on the same fight to Buenos Aires as me.

Walking over, I find someone with whom to speak to behind the vacant Aerolineas Argentinas check-in desk that confirms the worst, the flights are indeed cancelled but not knowing whether the situation would last all-day. I return to the seat hoping it wouldn't as last week there were landings and takeoffs at Buenos Aires at times when there wasn't ash in the air; supposedly when the wind didn't blow from the South West.

Resigned to wait, the waiting is made easy by opening a book and soon I'm somewhere else faraway and completely different. Our two cowboy heroes of the story are on the run on horseback across a landscape not unlike Argentina with ranch-land, plains, rivercrossings and afternoon snoozing under the shade of trees. Although reading in silences, I act out in my head what I think a Texas drawl sounds like as I read the spoken lines. I like the language very much. I crack in a silence laugh at a typically provocative line one says to the other "you shouldn't been born at all" "what makes you say that" replies the other. I soon feel drowsy though what with one thing or the other not having slept much in the past few nights. The eyes want to close. I make a mental note of a sentence-ending mid paragraph and submit, closing my eyes and sleep a short while; when I open my eyes again, I pick up at where I left off without the need to recap the story.

I start when there's a loud Ding-Dong on the tenor. There follows an announcement for a departure to Santa Cruz which is North of here and well away from any ash. The woman that is now sitting next me with a laptop open on her knee sees all Lan flights cancelled during the day but a departure at 20.00 is still on. There is another Ding-Dong and an announcement for all passengers for flight 2455 to Buenos Aires, my flight, to report to the information desk. There I am told that all flights are cancelled for the day. The sympathetic man behind the desk tells me to check tomorrow morning. Nobody knows,it seems. For now I take a taxi back into the city. The radio man calls out the driver's number. The driver answers confirming he's picked up the passenger at thr airport and is driving into the city to the hostel and then says in a mocking voice "Good afternoon". The radio man laughs at the driver's funny English and answers back "good afternoon, good afternoon" and laughs louder.