I had arrived on Saturday afternoon, mindful that the bike shop in Comodoro would be closed long before my arrival. Sunday was out, so it was Monday morning before I could get the bike under the nose of Doctor Honda. I used the time to catch up on sleep, finish a trashy paperback and drink a carton of frighteningly cheap wine. With a cunninly constructed windbreak -- aka a motorbike -- I managed to fit in a few hours of semi-sunbathing.

The campsite was stuck out on the far fringes of town -- downwind of the property-owning areas of town, I noted. For the weekend, a couple of families drove out to the site to use the barbeque facilities; one little tribe of brothers, sisters and cousins was brave enough to approach the gringo and laugh at his Spanish.

A smattering of backpackers were there too, including a Frenchman on Year Three of his South American adventure (brave enough to hike through deserts but incredibly squeamish at the site of me putting on my contact lenses in the Gents' bathroom) and two retired German couples driving around in Ford Tauruses.

The beach is an amazing sight, absolutely unique. A broad sweep of golden sand, maybe three kilometres long and as much as a kilometre wide, crystalline and clean, fringed by the deepest of blue seas. Anywhere else in the world there would be thousands of sun worshippers, high-rise hotels and peddlers hawking sunglasses and beer.

In Rada, the beach is empty. You guessed it: the bloody wind. It was impossible even to sit on the beach without turning into a human windsurfer.

I called Samantha and then my parents, where my brother and sister were gathered for the weekend. I felt both a long way away and very, very close; in truth, isolated as I was, this is a pretty small world.

I'd spotted makeshift rugby goalposts when I did the tourist thang in Rada Tilly on the way south. Went back to take a picture for Dad, proof of the inate civilisation of the Patagonians, only to discover the posts had disappeared. Found instead a small group of hardy land-yacht pioneers. Finally: someone who had worked out how to make good use of the swathes of virgin beach.

On Monday I rode over to Comodoro, finding the Honda shop on the main coast road and therein the kind of people who make you glad to be alive: the chief mechanic, who dropped all his work for the day in order to work on my bike (in other words delaying work for his regular customers in order to help out a complete stranger) and his boss, the shop manager XXXX, who took me to lunch and spoke of his hopes and fears for Argentina, his career and ambitions, and Life.

It was humbling to hear how much he earned, how he scraped a life for himself and his young family, and what his prospects were in a country on the brink of financial meltdown (as would happen weeks later). He also mentioned, without bitterness, the fact that the owner of the shop had a couple of other businesses around town... and a light aircraft. Yet he couldn't afford even to buy one of the bikes he was charged with selling.

XXX, I hope things are working out.

Between them they sorted out the bike, replaced the chain, convinced me of the need to oil the new one every 200km (I hadn't done it in the last 4000km...), cleaned and scrubbed and tightened and cranked and tweaked, replaced the dieing tyre and readied me once again for the road. They warned me that I would need a new sprocket in the next 500km (they didn't have one to hand) which I eventually replaced XXX km later in Mendoza, when I'd finally worked outwhat it was. I scare myself.

The work took most of Monday so I retreated to Rada for another night in the campsite before heading inland - leaving Ruta 3 after all this time for the journey cross-country to the Andes, Chile and more adventures...