Heading inland from Comodoro, it's 150km along the paved RN26 (later becoming the RP20) to Sarmiento. The road cuts through hilly steppe country, covered in duraznillo bushes and the nodding heads of hundreds of oil wells, relentlessly probing the ground. The desiccated landscape changes as you approach Sarmiento, having been well irrigated by waters from the Río Senguer and the lakes it feeds, Lago Colhué Huapi and Lago Musters , the latter named after the famous English adventurer of the nineteenth century, Captain George Musters, who was the first white man to learn of its existence.

SARMIENTO itself is a farming community, originally founded by the Welsh, the Lithuanians and another famous immigrant group, the Boers , who fled here at the beginning of the twentieth century in an effort to escape the British after the Boer War. The town attracts relatively few tourists, despite the presence of the intriguing petrified forests of José Ormachea and Héctor Szlápelis nearby, but it makes a very pleasant place to overnight, with a number of decently priced hotels and a good-natured, old-style ambience. The fine Museo Regional Desiderio Torres (April-Nov Mon-Fri 1.30-7pm; Dec-March Mon-Fri 9am-4pm, Sat & Sun 10am-noon; $1) has a sizeable collection of indigenous artefacts and dinosaur bones, plus displays of indigenous Mapuche and Tehuelche weavings. Over the second weekend in February, the inhabitants celebrate the three-day Festival Provincial de Doma y Folklore , with horse-taming and racing in the afternoon, and folk concerts in the evening at the Club Deportivo.