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Day 182 cont. Homely Esquel
It was getting dark by the time I arrived in Esquel, and rather than walk ten blocks to find somewhere to stay, I took a taxi to the reputable cheap hostel on the other side of town. Nice and homely, and with not many people staying there, it seems like a nice place to be based for a couple of days before I head back up to Bariloche. My only problems seem, as usual, to stem from language difficulties, with the accent in Esquel proving to be slightly difficult to understand. On the bright side, since everyone else staying here speaks spanish as a first language, it's a good place to try and improve my linguistic skills.
Saturday night's are never quiet, but it did take slightly longer than anticipated to get off to sleep, since the staff of the hostel had decided to have an impromptu gathering, with some rather loud music emanating from the kitchen next to my dorm (despite the rules of the hostel dictating that the kitchen was shut after midnight!)
Day 183: Six months on
It's hard to believe, but 'Day 183' officially marks the fact
that I've now been away for six months, and with time flying by, it feels like I'm already on the home straight. I got up this morning, to find that, as had previously happened in Ushuaia and El Calafate, my arrival preempted the first snowfalls on the mountains around the town, with the scenic mountainous backdrop that had been grey the day before, now dusted snowy white.
Being a Sunday, there wasn't a lot happening in town. Having gotten up and tried to get some breakfast at the hostel (served half-six to half-nine) at nine thirty, to find that all the staff were still in bed, I went for a walk, and soon found everything in town to be eerily quiet and predictably shut. Wanting to buy a train ticket for 'La Trochita', the thrice-weekly tourist steam train service, I walked a little way out of town to the railway station. Predictably, the station was closed and my only company as I walked back to town across a housing estate were the pack of rabied dogs who didn't seem sure as to whether they should be trying to befriend me or bite me. Without anything resembling a museum or
art gallery in the town, I cut my losses, gave up looking for things to do, and instead went to find a supermarket to stock up on nice food. Being cold, wet and miserable outside, I decided to dedicate the rest of the afternoon and evening to cooking and eating a big pot of vegetable soup containing root vegetables aplenty, and watching films with everyone else in the lounge (and finishing my book).
Day 184: Unwell in Esquel
I had had high hopes of getting up early and either getting the once daily bus to the national park an hour away, else going to Trevelin (another little 'Welsh' town) for afternoon tea, but these ideas weren't looking too plausible when I woke up this morning at six and stumbled to the bathroom to throw up.
I don't think it was my cooking, since generally, I'm a firm believer that you can't go too wrong with a big pot of cooked vegetables, but maybe some of the utensils were grubby, or I picked a bug up from somewhere else. Either way, I had to spend the rest of the day fairly close to the bathroom. The hostel
people were really nice and didn't put anyone else in the room with me, so I could spent the day wallowing in the dorm on my own being not very well.
It was after dark by the time I finally made it as far as the living room, where I made a nest on one of the sofas, and stayed there for a couple of hours, watching television and films, before crawling back to bed.
Day 185: The train I nearly went on
Having not managed to buy a ticket at the weekend or yesterday, I got up early this morning to head into town, get some money out, buy a ticket and go for a nice steam train ride. With only a few pesos in my purse, I joined the long queue at the cashpoint. Twenty minutes later, I'd made it to the front, to find that the Bank of Chubut, despite having 'Link' cashpoints, would not be giving me any money.
I didn't have time to visit another cashpoint, and instead hiked up the road to the train station, hoping that they'd take a credit card. Bearing in mind that I hadn't eaten anything for about thirty-six hours, I wasn't really feeling my best, but having stayed in Esquel for three days, I was determined to do at least one of the things that I had intended to. Sadly, although I got to the station in time, they didn't take credit cards, with the people at the cash desk looking at me disapprovingly at the suggestion that I could pay by card. I subsequently sat miserably at the station as a small hoarde of passengers climbed aboard the carriages of La Trochita, and watched as the train chugged out of the station. Although the main reason I had wanted to go for the train ride was to make my dad jealous (he likes all things railway), I was still genuinely disappointed when I couldn't actually go!
I could have made it to Trevelin for the rest of the morning and got another bus later in the day, but since I wouldn't have been able to stay there long enough to have afternoon tea in one of the Welsh teashops (one of my main objectives), and I wasn't really feeling like eating excessive (or indeed any) amount of cake, there didn't seem much point. After a walk around the town, and a prolonged visit to one of the local bookshops, I returned to the hostel to pick up my luggage before going to the bus terminal ready to return to Bariloche.
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