My birthday

On Mr Perret's good recommendation I headed towards the village Perito Moreno with the hope of finding something spectacular. It was not in the Lonely Planet (why not?) so I thought it should be quite blessed from bothersome Israeli tourists (yes the Israelis have now taken over the throne of the most annoying tourists on the planet).

Some research showed that close to Perito Moreno, there is a famous cave with ancient hand-marks: "The cave of hands". And that was pretty much all I could find out on Internet. It must have been this place Philippe meant, I thought.

I woke up early on Sunday the 5th of April 2009 - Fnasse's birthday. The well-manned tourist information office, which was about the only thing that was open when I arrived late the night before (apart from the pizza-place), had two girls in until 23:00! Amazing, must have been some kind of government-funded employment scheme for poor people in a doomed remote countryside village. They had informed me that the tours to the cave departed at 07:00 when there were tourists.

Unfortunately, the tours only left every second day: on even days. On top of that, the tour on the sixth of April had been cancelled so the next one was due on the eight. What a laughable place; not even having a tour to the signature-tourist-attraction on a weekend. I could obviously not wait for the next tour so I decided to screw the cave and went to the bus station.

There I learned that the only buses left the village at 17:00 in the afternoon. Always like that on Sundays. Noone travels here they said. So it meant I had about eight hours to kill in Perito Moreno.

This Sunday everything was closed. The restaurants, the shops (but there were hardly any shops to talk about apart from the car service shops), the cyber-cafe, the church, the bakery, the bank and... hmm... can't remember seing anything more. But the tourist information was open. Same girls. I visited twice, asked for places to go. They pointed me to a look-out mountain (which was more like a few steps climb to the top of a gravel pit) and a walk along a river (which didn't have any water in it). And yea, the mini-market was open too so I didn't have to starve to death - bless the lord.

But I was bored like hell.

Easily the worst birthday ever.

I think I finally figured out why Perito Moreno is not mentioned in the Lonely Planet though, so only one mystery remains; what the heck did Mr Perret see in this place? If I didn't know him better I would suspect some kind of brain damage.