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We had more bad gravel road to drive on when we took a side road to get to Cueva de las Manos. It took us over 3 hours to do the 42km (26 mile) stretch. We parked up on a bend in the road on the steep part down to the visitors centre and had 2 inches of snow overnight!
We paid the 120 pesos entrance fee ($8) and had a guided tour which was very good. Cueva de las Manos is a World Heritage site featuring rock art. Dating from about 7370 BC, the polychrome paintings cover recesses in the near-vertical walls with imprints of human hands, drawings of guanacos and, from a later period, abstract designs. Of around 2000 images, more than 90% are of left hands; one has six fingers.
The tour took 1.5 hours along a gravel and board walk path. It is amazing that the oldest art is 9,300 years old. The latest is around 1,300 years old and it is not known why the cave dwellers left but theories include and earthquake or volcanic eruption. Archaeologists are still doing research here. We saw two foxes and a chinchilla along the tour.
It was well worth taking the detour to get here. Afterwards we drove back along the gravel road and sighed with relief when we got back onto tarmac. We continued north and spent two days searching in Perito Moreno and Los Antiguos for gas places to try and get our gas bottle filled. It meant driving through a police check point several times and they probably wondered what on earth we were doing. But still no gas. They only have the swapping system here and we even looked into buying one of the local gas bottles but when we hunted for the connection to link it up to our gas system, they don't have it!
During our search, our second gas bottle also ran out. Winter is fast approaching, it's freezing at night and now we can't even make a cup of tea!!!
Our only hope was to drive 900km return, right across to Comodoro Rivadavia on the other side of the country, to get to the gas plant where all bottles are filled and where they have the connections to fill our gas bottles aswell. That would cost us $73 just in diesel but we didn't have any other choice. We wouldn't survive without propane.
We resigned ourselves to the long journey and set off from Los Antiguos. When we got back to Perito Moreno, 56km away, there was a gas truck parked up at the petrol station. So we went to ask the driver if he had the connections for our gas bottles. YES!!! It only took 20 minutes and we gave him a tip because he'd saved us over $70 and a two day trip.
We were truly relieved and we made the police laugh when we went back through the check point again. This time we could head into Chile for our next adventure along the famous Carretera Austral with enough gas to get through the bitterly cold nights with hot food and cups of tea!
