36 Hours Later.....

It's been a few days since I posted last. I think that must have been right before we left Calafate for a fun filled 36 hours of buses, bus stations and not showering. The trip was broken up into 3 parts. First, 5 hours from Calafate to Rio Gallegos. Second, 12 to Comodoro Rivadavia and then lastly an overnight 17 hours or so to Bariloche. We booked our tickets through our last hostel and ended up getting some wrong information. Our tickets had the wrong departure time from Rio Gallegos on them so we missed our bus and had to pay a penalty of 120 pesos to sprint to the one that left at 10am and was the last one till the next day. Shitty, but 50 dollars to avoid staying in gross Rio Gallegos was worth it to me. Because we switched buses at each stop and had some time between transfers the trip really didn't feel as long as it was. They play the worst and most random movies on the buses in Argentina. We watched Taken, Eagle Eye, Lakeview Terrace with Samuel L. Jackson, Passengers and the Day the Earth Stood Still to name a few. Lakeview Terrace and The Day the Earth Stood Still were exceptionally bad. Also, they didn't feed us at all on any of the buses, which is so bizarre because we paid more for the "cama" bus but either way, like on our Iguazu trip, you usually get meals and snacks when the rides are that long. Well, per usual we survived on crackers, chips and candy.

Got into Bariloche at noon yesterday and checked into the Marcopolo Inn, a really nice hostel that's a part of the same chain we stayed at in Iguazu. In Calafate we met these two guys, Darash and Patrick, who have been in Buenos Aires teaching english for the past 6 months and are doing the same sort of trip as us right now before they go home. So we've been staying with them for a while and they are also going on the same bus with us to Mendoza on the 15th.

Charlie, Scott and I explored town after taking what may have been the best shower of my life. Great place, much better than Calafate but still comes in second to Ushuaia in my book. It's sort of like the Aspen of Argentina. Great shops, restaurants and ski stores line the streets and are all built wooden, ski-lodge style with christmas lights setting that mountain town ambiance. Nearby is the first Swiss colony settled in Patagonia, which is the only possible explanation I have for the amount of chocolate shops in Bariloche. They have chocolaterias on every street and another strange Bariloche quirk is they have these Saint Bernard dogs on the street corners and people stand to charge 10 pesos for a picture with the dog. Random. It's a fun game to try to sneak pictures when they aren't paying attention.

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