McCRAICKEN: Hello and welcome. Today we've come out of the studio for the first half of our program. We're here in the plaza in the Patagonian city of Bariloche, here on the shore of a huge lake, I have difficulty remembering it's name. What's the lake's name?

VOICE FROM ONE ASSEMBLED: Nahuel Huapi!

McCRAICKEN: Naheul Huapi. And the the voice you've just heard, is that of Juan O Conner, who I'll be talking to in a moment once I've set the scene. All around there are snowcapped mountains, both behind the town and on the opposite side of the lake, which would be visible if it weren't for it being a wet day. There's a grey mist if you look out on the lake during a rare moment where the rain eases. At the moment it's pouring down, but we're safe here under the stone arched colonades of the townhall.

Okay, Juan O Conner is with me, head of the city council and president of the local historical society. Who's family has been here since the city's founding in 1902. Juan, this is your chance.

O CONNER: (laugh) Hi, as JP has said this is my chance. It was my great grandfather that immigrated from Ireland. Then his son, my grandfather, who made the long journey from Buenos Aires to Patagonia. He'd been trained as a town planner and the Ministry for the Interior at the time needed such people to help establish a city as a service centre for all the immigrants that had come into the area in the final years of the nineteen century.

McCRAICKEN: Well, your grandfather gets here, also called Juan O Conner.

O CONNER: Yes. I'm Juan the forth.

McCRAICKEN: He finds a pristine landscape of mountains, forest and lakes, and his asignment is to found a city.

O CONNER: There were already two families living on the lakeshore when Juan first arrived, both had recently come from the United States. Their people had been homesteaders, but there was no more land to be had at home, so they come here having seen posters advertising the oppertunities there were in Argentina. One family was very enterprising having within a short few years set up a steamboat sevice to Chile.

Of coarse there were the indigenes people, the Mapuche. The early pioneers would come to rely much on inverstructure that had been in use for generations by the Mapuche, such as trails. The pioneer settlers widened them to except the passage of wagons and early automobils. Route 40 south through the valley from here was orriginally a Mapuche trail.

McCRAICKEN: You mentiioned those two first American families. I have in my notes for this program, Juan your Grandfather was aquainted with Leroy Parker, better known as Butch Cassidy.

O CONNER: Indeed. Juan, my grandfather has passed down the story to my father, and he to me. He was of coarse not know as Leroy. He'd taken on a Spanish name, Santiago. He come to Bariloche twice to visit some friend from his old days back in the Wild West.

McCRAICKEN: I'll butt in here a moment, Juan. Juan your grandfather had no idea of his background as a notorious bank and train robber.

O CONNER: Absolutely not. Even when the word got out, Juan never believed it was true. How could it be? Such nice people, him and Harry...

McCRAICKEN: Harry Longbaugh, alias Sundance Kid. To our listeners who don't have a clue who they were, they were made famous in the 1969 western film: Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid. Butch played by Paul Newman, and Sundance Kid, Robert Redford.

Go on, you were about to say...

O CONNER: Lets put it this way, there was a lot of injustice at the time. And, I believe, they were unjustly treated by society. My grandfather only ever saw extremely civil people. The second visit to Bariloche they made, they boarded the steamboat for Chile. He thought to return in a week or so. But they never did come back. He found out months later their ranch in Cholila had been sold to a land syndicate that had moved a family from Chile into his house.

McCRAICKEN: Juan. Your colleage here tells me you've just turned seventy-five. I must say you don't look a day over sixty. Are you not thinking of retiring soon?

O CONNER: No, as long as I'm fit, I'll keep on looking after the city.

McCRAICKEN: Juan O Conner, thanks.

Okay. Sean Kane should've been here by now, but there's no sign of him. Wait, as I speak I hear a message in my headphones telling me he has been held up in the rain that continues pouring down here in Bariloche. My assistant tells me he's just made contact by phone, and we'll be conducting the next part of the program via a phone link. He's just coming through now.

THERE'S A SHUFFLING FOLLOWED BY CRACKLING MICROPHONE NOISE.

KANE: Hello, can you hear me?

McCRAICKEN: There's a lot of background noise, like rain falling on a tin roof, but you're coming through clearly. Where are you?

KANE: I'm held up today, the rain pelting persistantly on the tent's outer flysheet that I sit snugly underneath. I feel safe here as it would've been awful miserable to take down the tent this morning. Then dangerous on the road with the low visibility and spray from passing trucks.

McCRAICKEN: So where exactly are you camped?

KANE: JP, I'm on a little peninsular below the road, by the lakeshore forty kilometres away, on the opposite side of the lake. It's actually a small inlet of the bigger lake with a steep hill on the opposite side of the water, tapering up to a towering rock, barely visible in the grey mist as I look out, the rain having just eased.

McCRAICKEN: I hear it's noticable less noisey on your side now. What's been happening since we last spoke?

KANE: Not much other than cycling. I left San Martin de Los Andes, Sunday. And today is Tuesday. I'll mention the instance of my computer crashing when I's in the hostel there. I thought that was the end of it and I'd be using internet cafes from then on. At the very least I'd have to take it to an electronics shop and get someone technical to have a look at it. That evening however another cyclist checked into the hostel. We talked about cycle-touring for an hour and a half, then there's silence for a minute. I reopen the conversation by saying in a grief strickened tone "My computer crashed today." "Oh!" he replies, and adds "my job is fixing computers" So I went and brought it down for him to have a look at, and within moments of opening it up, he has it going again. He also loaded a different version of Windows: Windows 7 Ultimate, as he maintained Windows 10, which the computer had been running on, but lost in the crash, was too heavy for my old Samsung. Needless to say, the computer is going well now.

McCRAICKEN: On that note I'm going to have to cut our talk short, as we're going well through out time; it's coming up on the hour. Time for the news.

NEWREADER IN THE STUDIO: The Pound Sterling is still down in value. The author Sean Kane says at the moment one Pound buys 18.5 Argentine Pesos. Down 1.5 Pesos, since last he checked. He added, while this isn't a disaster, he hopes by now, six months after Briexit, that it has reached the bottom of a trough and will soon begin rising.

Later, speaking at a "National Parks Free For Cyclists Campaign" meeting, he defended his right to cycle and enjoy the countryside without having to pay to enter certain parts of it.

KANE: "Charging cars to enter national parks, like a toll road through the park, I'm in favour of, as cars have a detrimental impact on the enviroment, whereas cyclists do little or no damage to the enviroment..."

NEWSREADER: That was Sean Kane, and he'll be speaking more on national parks fees in the next half of the program. Back now to JP.

McCRAICKEN: Thanks Bob! We're back in the studio for the program's second half. And wouldn't you just know it, it's a fine sunny day outside while we're stuck in here. If you've just joined us, before the news we were in Bariloche, where it poured down. That was recorded last Tuesday, and since the weather has much improved. Barry Best could do nothing to stop the rain on the day we chose for an outdoor broadcast. All he did that day was stand under an umbrella and sign autographs, handsome star that he is. Barry will be here later with the weather.

You also heard Sean, who wisely remained in his tent that day and somehow found a phone signal to make contact by phone. I can assure you with the fine weather since, he's been making good progress and is with us here in the studio for this half of the program.

KANE: Indeed JP. What a fine week it has been since. The following morning after the wet day in the tent, I dried the tent and everything else in warm sunshine, before packing it all away on the bike and riding the remaining forty kilometres to Bariloche, getting there about lunchtime and checking into the same hostel I stayed in last time I's there, run by a Swiss family, who couldn't believe I's back. They thought it an incredible feat to have ridden to Ushuaia and back north to Bolivia, and now be cycling south once again.

Then I stopped last weekend in El Bolson, where I really enjoyed the artisan beer in bars where they served it on draught. How does frothy red beer like Smithick grab you, or pale yellow wheat beer. Sixty-five pesos for two pints during happy hour.

On from El Bolson, I've had a very enjoyable few days riding south, through Cholila, famed as the place Butch Cassidy lived.

McCRAICKEN: I understand you arrived at the national park "Los Alerces" late in the evening and there was no one there to collect your entrance fee, and you rode on by without paying (laugh).

KANE: I'm glad you see the funny side. Well, it's an average long day's ride from El Bolson to just inside the park boundary, Lago Rividavia, where I set up camp at nightfall Monday evening, so that's why I was late. In any case I don't think I'm a maverick for park entrance fee evading. Furthermore, I don't quite understand paying to visit countryside. There's no such thing as national park entrance fees in Europe. It's some crazy American "theme park" idea, if you ask me in all seriousness.

McCRAICKEN: I'll back you there, but say no more. Now you're having a rest day or two here before the next leg cycling south.

KANE: Yes, I've been having an easy time of it this last couple of weeks. The next few weeks won't be as easy. There will be lots of gravel roads and even tracks.

McCRAICKEN: Right, I'll stop you there, as Barry Best has been sitting patently beside me. The man who has forever got a smile on his face. That's the kind of people I like. Barry, what was all that rain we had last week and why is the weather so fine this week?

BEST: Yes JP. Well, the cause for it all was a great low pressure system. If you look at the satelite picture, or rather because this is radio, picture the satelite picture. Out in the South Pacific is a great swirling mass of grey cloud roughly at latitude 40 degrees south where we are now. This swirling mass moves across into South America, taking some time to rise up and cross over the Andes mountains, causing many grey miserable wet days, until it eventually crosses over moving further east, leaving crystal clear sky in it's wake. So the reason for the rain last week and the fabulous weather this week.

McCRAICKEN: Right Barry. that was well explained. We're now coming to the end of the program. There's just time to dig into the mailbag, See what delight we have to read out this week.

Oh, here's one. Richard Ballockworth in Morningswood complaining about last week's Photo Show (laugh) he has got the wrong program. Nevertheless, he says

"I have never seen such terrible photographs, and displayed under such a grandioso title as '7 Lakes Patagonia Special' is laughable. Please Sean learn how to use a camera."

McCRAICKEN: (laughing) That was very direct. No messing around there in Morningswood.

KANE(furious): I couldn't care less what Mr what's his name thinks. He can post his comment where the sun don't shine, and..

McCRAICKEN: I'll have to stop you there now, as we're right out of time. Bye for now.