Arrived here at 6 this morning when it was still dark. It was good to see the road I cycled the day before from the top of a bus - although difficult to believe that I actually done the first 40k by bike when I saw it from that angle. By some miracle I wandered out of the busstation and took exactly the right road (Lewis Jones - pronounced Hon-es here I believe) which led me to the next street, where Hotel Touring Club is. ThE most famous (well, ok, only famous) hotel in town. The bar/cafe was open and half full of breakfasting people with papers and laptops so I went in and installed myself in a corner with a pot of tea. It wasn yet 7am and I found the main attraction! I then moved on to coffee and croissants as they looked quite good. By this time I felt quite at home in the 100+ year old high ceilinged hall and had plucked up courage to ask how much a room cost as all the books say that this is the place to stay for historical reasons. (Apart from all the rest, Butch and Sundance stayed there whilst planning their raid on the Banco Nacional across the road.) It cost less than my grotty room in a hostel in Bariloche did so I agreed to leave my bag there and come back at 11 when the room would be ready. Since then I've been to the tourist info place, got maps of here and Gaiman (thE place for teahouses, 15 k up the road), visited a modern art museum, arranged a hostel for tomorrow night and a town bike for this afternoon and a bike with gears for tomorrows expedition out of town. Also fed my leftover roll from last night's bus meal to 2 circus bears I saw pacing back and forth in their cages... (I know, itś like something out of a John Irving book.) Off to cycle about now if I can clear up the last confusion between my Spanish and the hostel ownerś English about just what we've arranged now...
