We arrived in Esquel on time, just after six in the morning and there were no problems with my bag.

The one problem I did have, though, was that my hotel room wasn�t going to be ready until 9 o�clock, three hours away.

I killed the first hour by sitting around in the bus station watching the early morning news and then, when it opened, poking about in their mini-tourist office. I thinkk it was about twenty past seven that I motivated myself to move out of the bus station and into the freezing cold outside. Where it had been twenty degrees at lunchtime in Trelew on Thursday, it was now proudly 1 degree centigrade at 7:30 in Esquel.

Following my map, I walked down the main road from the station towards the middle of town. I bypassed a cafe that seemed to be open and I thought about popping in to get some grub. The sign outside said �closed�, but there were people inside drinking. Yes, drinking. 7:30am and bottles of Quilmes being poured into those freezing cold glasses that they like so much.

I walked through the eerily quiet main shopping streets, marvelling at the Alpine style architecture that made it look like a Swiss town. Time passed quickly as I looked for Welsh things in shop windows, hunted down the Welsh chapel in town and admired the dawn as it happened around me.

At about 8:45 I finally got round to hiking further down the street towards my hostel and after banging on the door and ringing several bells, I got inside where the maid was cleaning up the room for me. She sent me off to the kitchen and told me to watch the tv for a few minutse while she finished work. When she did finally finish, I dumped my stuff in the three bed room, locked the door, and jumped into bed to catch up on the sleep that I�d missed on the bus last night.

I got up again at about 1ish, feeling a bit peckish, and made my way into town where I visited one of the supermarkets that I�d spotted on my wanderings earlier on. Popped to a cyber cafe, of course, what�s new?, and took a look around Esquel in daylight.

Ignoring the shops and the skiers, the most unbelievable thing is the scenery. Gorgeous, stunning, fantastic. There just aren�t enough adjectives going around. Take a look at the photos when they go up.

I tried to get into the Welsh chapel, but it was all locked up, so I went off for a rest, a read of the local papers and then back to see if I could find the Welsh tutor, Jayne Rees.

It was about seven-ish when I went back to the chapel and �sgol Gymraeg yr Andes, where I knocked on the door loudly. There was a call of �Dewch i mewn� from inside, so I walked in quietly and saw a woman speaking in Welsh on the phone.

"Aled?" she asked.

"Um, no, my name�s Ian," I replied

"So you�re not the doctor that we�re expecting?"

"Um, no"

So I explained what I was doing there, wished her happy birthday (cos I could hear her saying it was her birthday on the phone, so I was nosing) and she rather kindly invited me out to join her birthday celebrations later on in the evening after the choir practice.

I turned up at El Viejo Obelisco at around 9:30 and was sat down next to Liliana and Romina, both of whom have spent time in Wales and spoke the language fluently, meaning that conservation flowed quite well during the evening. There were about 25 people there, most of whom could speak Welsh fluently or to basic conversational level. I was introduced to something called sorentinos, which are like large raviolis, so I had some ricotta sorentinos with a pesto sauce. Nice to try something new and veggie.

After dinner finished, around midnight, about ten or twelve of us moved along to a cafe on the corner of the street where we had some coffee or Quilmes and a nice little natter until about 1:30 when the party broke up and I walked along the main road back to my hotel to my warm bedroom.