Renting a car in Puerto Madryn
We enquired at our hotel for a car hire company and they gave us a recommendation for a place nearby. They didn't have any cars available that day, but were very friendly and recommended some others we could try. We had no luck with these either. It seems you need to be able to book around 2 days in advance, unfortunately our schedule didn't allow for this.
We eventually came across a company (not on our list) called Rent a Car, and were pleased to find they had cars available! We paid 950 ARS per day which seemed reasonable, and we were relieved to have found a car at all! We didn't actually see the car, an Opel Corsa, until we had signed all the paper work... We got a bit of a shock. It was old, with a crack in the windscreen and rust around the doors. The gear stick was a bit dodgy and the engine made a quite terrifying noise.
I was genuinely concerned that the rental car wouldn't get us to Punta Tombo, knowing it was going to be a long, long drive. However the car did get us there and back. On reflection, we decided that it was better to have an old car, as you wouldn't want to be worried about driving a new fancy car on the gravel roads. You get lots of stones flying up and hitting various parts of the car. You also get a big cloud of dust behind you so you have to keep the windows closed!
The roads are very straight and there isn't much in the way of traffic, although there are some big lorries that suck you in as you drive past them. The weight of the lorries and the lack of maintenance on the roads meant that there were big ridges in the road that were difficult to negotiate in our little car.