No Viajes solo por Carretera en la Madrugada

A woman wakes in the middle of the night to find a figure sitting on her bed, hand extended toward her as if it wants something. In that moment, she remembers a promise she made on a lonely road—a promise she never kept. This episode of Relatos de la Noche weaves together three stories from listeners in Argentina and Chile, all set on the isolated highways of Patagonia and the northern provinces. Each story turns on a moment of encounter—with stranded strangers, a spectral woman, or a figure in a dark hotel room—and each leaves the teller questioning what is real, what is memory, and what might be owed to forces beyond the visible world.

The Vanishing Accident on the Road to El Chaltén

The first story comes from a Chilean construction worker living near El Calafate in Argentine Patagonia. He describes the desolate winter roads leading to El Chaltén, a small mountain town that empties out in July and August when the highway becomes treacherous. One morning before dawn, driving to deliver materials for a hotel expansion, he spotted a car stopped on the roadside. Three people stood beside it—two young women and a man—and a dead guanaco lay nearby, blood on the snow. He stopped to help.