from perrito moreno, i drove up north to chalten, which has some nice hikes (supposedly….i’ll know more tomorrow).

i also noticed that my front right wheel was making some noise when i braked, so i decided to check out the pads…turns out that they were completely worn out on the front passenger-side (coincidentally, the same side that the car tends to drift towards). in fact, some of the metal was scraping against the outside of the disk….luckily it wasn’t so much as to damage the disk….although the disks are pretty wavy…not as bad as a record, but close. also, here’s something weird (i.e.–not good….but, i’m not dead either): the driver’s side brake pads were not nearly as worn out (still had ~1/4in remaining). it probably has something to do with the flux capacitor. luckily, i have some extra pads from when i prematurely changed my brakes back in guatemala.

lastly, i picked up another traveler…a swiss guy who had randomly been at the same hostel in ushuaia a few days earlier. i hadn’t noticed him in ushuaia (we hadn’t spoke), but he recognized the xo laptop. it’s crazy how good of an icebreaker the olpc is. it looks like he’ll hitch a ride to puerto madryn.