You just have to love this place, and this country (in case you've forgotten I'm back in Chile for the seventh time).Porvenir, on Tierra del Fuego, is a town of some 5,000 souls. It covers about a square mile - you can walk from one end of town to the other in around 15 minutes. The main drags are paved but otherwise all roads are dirt, except for the 5km to the port where the ferry leaves for the two-and-a-half-hour voyage to Punta Arenas on the other side of the Magellan Strait. There is one internet caff - mind you, it's the latest kit, WinXP and broadband, and very friendly and helpful. There is free internet at the library, but you have to book and anyway the police use it all the time. The only bank takes Mastercard but nothing else, and won't change Argentinian pesos, which is a bit limiting as due to the cockup last year in Santiago I only have Visa and Amex.

Last night I went back to see Dr.Ruiz for a checkup. He agrees that the headache will take a couple of weeks to fade completely. He pulled my arm around a bit and visibly winced at the crunching noises. "It's not good". "It wasn't terribly good before" I said. He laughed, and laughed even more when I showed him the pix of the bike, and me lying down in the road. He's given me a prescription for catering quantities of industrial-strength anti-inflammatories to keep me going once I'm
riding again, and instructions to get the bone straightened properly when I get home. I didn't tell him how long that might be in case he got fierce.

The airline office is a small, unsigned wooden kiosk in the park by the beach. The sales clerk is a rather doddery old boy who can't be more than about 75. I bought a return ticket to Punta Arenas (30 quid including transfers). This morning the minibus picked me up at ten to eight, the old boy wearing his bus conductor's hat. We drove 5km down a dirt road to the airfield where the old boy donned his check-in clerk's hat, and everyone said their Buen' dias. The 9-seater Cessna 402C landed, unloaded the day's post, and I climbed in with the other three passengers, greeting the pilot and co-pilot as we scrambled round them.

The runway is dirt, of course - you don't half get a lot of road noise from the tyres. Cruising altitude is 900m for the 15-minute hop across the strait to Punta Arenas airport (where the RAF were stationed during the little disagreement in 1982). The only other plane there was a military-spec UN-registered Ilyushin 76.

So here I am in the Big City - internet caffs, more banks (with Visa ATMs, thank heavens) than you can shake a stick at; truly a Great Metrollops. I'm going back to Porvenir on Monday afternoon; Sergio and Ernestina, who run the hotel and cook for me, are cool about everything and have been looking after me wonderfully. They understand about the bank thing and are perfectly happy to look after my stuff and The Old Dear.