Well not really, but close. On the way back from Cachi (truly an amazing journey, in and of itself), about 30 kms from Salta, some rain earlier in the day replaced the road with 3 metres of river. The semi trailer truck stuck in the middle of it didn´t help. So we ended up at the big YPF gas station along with a couple of hundred other people and their collection of transport trucks, tour buses, and cars.
All of a sudden, out of nowhere, ´Hey, Brian!´ And there was Brian from the Isle of Man, who I met at the institute in Mendoza, who is travelling with his motorcycle through South America. He´s been on the road for four months, has conquered Argentina, and now is heading for Peru, Ecuador, and Costa Rica before he ships his bike and himself back from Panama. And then, again, a friendly voice: ´Brian, hola!´ And there is the kid I was playing with on the tour the day before. So it was great fun meeting up with a bunch of people I knew, and catching up on their new adventures.
With my travel mates of the day...mostly girls from Buenos Aires, and one guy from Israel, I finally got into the mate (the national tea like drink), and we hung out chatting about politics, social support systems, etc. Every once in awhile, we would get word back from the front about what was going with the road. At first, 1 hour. Then, more likely, 4 hours. Then, I got word before anyone else...it looked like we´d best be getting comfortable for the night.
So I broke it to the mates of the day and the tour guide: The good news is that we are safe. The bad news? We might be safe for a long time. Um, a really long time.
About 11:00 we finally protested loudly at the idea of dinner at the YPF, and headed into the little town for pizza, beer, and empandas. (A little side track here...I hate to keep going on about the price of food and booze, but there was 12 of us happily fed and watered, for a grand total of 41 pesos. So my share with tip was 4 pesos...about $1.50!) About midnight, word came from the front (well, courtesy of a cell phone actually): there might be a way through. So we headed off on the bus, into a very long line of traffic headed by an excavator, through the water, and arrived safely home at about 1:30 am instead of the expected 6:00 or so.
