The hostel here, Planet Hostel, is fine, except for the 250 pesos for a bed in a dormitory. That's as dear as any hostel any place in Europe. For that, I get an upper bunk bed, nothing special. No on-suite shower and toilet. But the breakfast is good, with delicious homemade bread.

The location isn't the best, being on one of the town's main thoroughfares, with the constant noisy exhausts of old cars accelerating along the street below the window of the first-floor common room.

Cars in Argentina like most things are very expensive. Furthermore, there doesn't seem to be any limit, or regulations on the age and road-worthiness of cars, which would stop thirty-year-old bangers spewing out black smoke being continued to be driven.

All modern new cars I've been told, are bought on nought percent credit.

I often wonder at all the expensive new cars, how the people driving them make their money. In certain places looking around you could be in Scandanavia, with dear cars and people wining and dining. They look down on me in my threadbare well-worn clothes.

Prices are all the time rising. Wine is now too dear to consider buying. Thankfully there's beer. In Esquel too there's artisan beer, a microbrewy where I now sit writing over a frothy pint of ale, or pinta as they call the measure here.

Well, it has been a day struggling with slow internet, loading pictures to the journal, which took forever. Thankfully tomorrow I'm back on the road. A short day, 26 kilometres to Trevelin.

Before leaving Esquel though, I'd like to see La Trochito, The Old Patagonian Express, that leaves the railway station at 9 am for it's Saturday outing to El Maiten.