We have been having a long yak shave over camping fuel. We didn't bring any as airlines frown on carrying it. Lonely planet tells horror stories of airlines throwing out stoves altogether. We have a Trangia. It burns meths. This is nearly pure alcohol. If it was pure, it would be odourless and colourless. And drunks would drink it. Most countries, including the UK, insist on it having an added smell and colour, and be made undrinkable. Of course, every country picks its own colour.

We knew all this because at some stage, dad had bought some in Norway (where its called Rod spirit). The bottle came back half full, and when I went on DoE, I took the rod spirit along to finish off. The teacher running the trip sniffed the bottle, peered at the red liquid, and declared it not to be meths. I pointed out it was Norwegian, hence the funny characters, and it burnt like meths. I came home from the trip with half a bottle of British meths and half a bottle of rod spirit. My dad was not pleased. However, it could have gone worse - if I had pointed out to the teacher that rod spirit was alcohol.

At the time, I figured this was some sort of metaphor for the DoE scheme - how the scheme had been corrupted into some sort of rule following exercise, and so on and so forth. These days, I figure the old Duke would be proud of the teachers knee jerk rejection of anything foreign.

Back to 2013 (a quick hi there to the woman on Amtrak who told me that the world would end in 2012. She was completely straight faced). Finding meths in Chile wasn't so bad - we asked in an outdoor store (which was useless, rant about that coming) and they directed us to the local hardware store. The guy there tolerated our Spanish (he must have been the one guy in San Pedro who didn't work in the tourism industry) and sold us a bottle. We filled up our fuel bottle, and left the remainder with the hostel owner in Arica. He was happy to get some "People are always asking me where to get this!".

That was the start of the odyssey. When we showed up in Bariloche, we figured buying more fuel (the Chilean stuff burnt hot but quickly, and we needed more) would be easy. We are in a hiking capital of the world, right? How hard can it be?

Turns out that the walking stores around here are mostly useless unless you want to buy clothes. No idea why. However, one shop assistant pointed us to the good store, where among fishing poles, guns, and actually useful gear, we managed to buy some stuff. They didn't have fuel, and were possibly the first place to mention MSR (so many places thought we wanted MSR that I considered getting a tshirt. "No. I don't want MSR, thanks for asking"). The local hardware store sold us universal solvente - no idea what it is yet. The internet turned up a list of names used in Argentina. The local pharmacy recognized one of them, and pointed us to a small supermarket selling nothing but cleaning products. There, in among the hairspray and the toilet roll, we found our fuel. The guy there asked if it was for fondue. Told you this place was like Switzerland.

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