Bus Journey from Hell
Hello from the bus of doom
(Just as I typed that we hit a pothole that made everyone scream and a shower of dust fall from the overhead vents – argh)
So we decided to take another bus. Most people might have some sense after 2 days on a bus and maybe possibly fly back to where they started. But not us. We’re here to do things properly and we want to see all of Argentina.
This bus is taking us from El Calafate to Bariloche. 9 hours into the trip I awoke to find someone had relieved me of my ipod. Now usually I might say, ‘Thanks I have too much crap with me anyway’ but not when my ipod is involved. With these 36 hour buses it was the only thing keeping me sane. Now I have to face the next 24 hours of this journey in silence. In her defence, Ylva has offered to sing all the songs I want to listen to, but buses seem to make her sleepy so the babble of German guys getting terribly excited with their card game is all I have for now.
We left the ski-type-snowless-town of El Calafate at 9 in the evening to go up Route 40. We were first told to get to Bariloche we would have to retrace our tracks from the previous few days, and that just seemed boring. So, we found the one company who would take us up the west side of the country, and set off.
About 5 hours into the journey, we hit a road blockage with a big sign saying ‘diversion’ and an arrow pointing to the road that was to be the diversion. Not obvious enough for our lads apparently. They steered the bus off to the left on the gravel road (haven’t seen tarmac in a few days) and proceeded to attempt to get around the blockage. We went up, and over on our side, then down again and sort of rolled really slowly around the roadblock. We took off on the dusty, stony road again and for at least 9 hours didn’t meet another person, car, house or animal. For about 5 minutes I thought the view was great but after ten hours of the same ‘nothingness’ on either side, I wouldn’t have minded seeing the odd building. To make up for my lack of descriptive skills, I took some photos of the nothingness I’ve been looking at for 25 hours now. It does change every 6 hours or so, but that’s only to go from just gravel, to gravel and bushes, to a sandy type gravel-thing.
We also figured out the reason for the diversion. The ‘main’ road is dug up every couple of hundred metres or so. This meant we had to drive over a mound of stones and stuff to get around it the whole time. It’s like the bus drivers think they’re playing some sort of computer game. Great way to add some more time onto a journey.
18 hours into our journey and we still hadn’t stopped anywhere in which we could get some proper food. We all pleaded with the drivers to please let us eat. They said we could have 5 minutes in a Shell garage, not quite what I’d been hoping for. Eventually they decided that we could stay there for two hours. I protested saying that now was a bit too long, no one wants a 38 hour journey, but the drivers said they had to go an hour down the road to pick people up, and they’d have to come back the same way anyway, so it’s 2 hours or 5 minutes. Can’t even remember the name of the place we stayed in. But apart from the garage all we found was one restaurant and one hostel. Amazingly they also had an airport.
Another great thing about this bus is they sporadically come round and tell us to put our shoes back on. Next time he comes near me he’s getting a slap. Sleeping with shoes on is weird.
I now have 9 hours left. Although we had an extra long shop-stop last night, and some time fixing something under the bus, so it could easily be 11 or so hours. I’ll keep you updated with all the goings on from the bus.
21.53pm International warfare going on here as the Argentinians keep closing the overhead window and the Americans keep opening it. Could get ugly here.
Other news: German’s are still playing with their cards. Seems they’ve decided to stay out of this one.
Sometime in the A.M: We made it! We’re off! This is one super feeling. They didn’t even feed us on that. Most buses provide food, airplane food but still food. These guys gave us a tiny pasty in the first 10 minutes and nothing else. And no film! I did however have my shoes off for a while. Mini victory for me!
Scene of the crime. This is the last photoo taken of me in which I am an ipod owner. That jumper was stolen about a week later…
This was the mid-way through the trip view. Fence is merely for aesthetic purposes. It doesn’t actually fence in or out anything.
On the left of the screen is the road. This shot was taken on one of our many trip over the side of the road to avoid a blockage. Which was crap, but gave me a good angle to capture the road, or more accurately, the dirt track.
Oh wow. Scenery changed to this for 5 minutes.
One of the blockages we went around. You can see the mound of whatever that is the bus had to mount and roll over the other side of.
Tags: 10 - Argentina, Travel
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