first & last day in Bahia Blanca

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We eventually left the Bus Station in Bahia Blanca and got a taxi to the Hotel Los Vascos, we got there for around 8.30am and the place was closed, so we began the walk into town with our big backpacks! Everywhere seemed to be closed at that hour of the morning, so as is our usual response when things aren´t going right, we went for a coffee.

Had a little think over coffee & decided to try another place called Residencia del Sur, it looked a little dirty from the outside, but we decided to be brave & try it - the bloody place was booked out. Hopped in a taxi again back to Hotel Los Vascos & the woman there didn´t speak a word of English so we ended up in a matrimonial room. So now we reckon we are the talk of the town as the Irish lesbians!

We showered in a shower which also had a fountain, which was quite bizarre. Then we headed into Plaza de Rividavia which has some lovely buildings, we dropped into the Information Office & by the time we got out it was lashing rain with thunder and lightening, so we headed for another coffee place, except this time we had lunch, we shared a pizza & chips, had 2 drinks each & it cost about €7!

Bahia Blanca is very much an industrial town & this is evident every where we go, we decided to try out the buses here today and headed to Museo del Puerto, buying the ticket was traumatic enough, think we bought enough tickets to transport the whole of Argentina for a month, but the guy at the desk couldn´t understand us and we couldn´t understand him, so we just kept nodding & laughing!
Got there through some really dodgy neighbourhoods & the bloody Museo was closed (a man had tried explaining this to us earlier, but that´s with the benefit of hindsight!) So we walked around an industrial estate for ages getting lots of funny looks. Then we figured it was best to head back to town as it was 5pm & beginning to get dark.

We walked down the street where we thought the bus stop would be and in the space of about 400m we passed 4 strip joints called things like Champan & The Cat Black!! We stood on a street corner like the 2 lost idiots that we were & this guy approached us, called Ricardo, he kept speaking to us in Spanish & in spite of us not understanding each other we figured out what he was trying to say. He pointed us in direction of the bus stop as we were leaving he tried to swap Gwen her DKNY watch for a friendship bracelet.

Got a cab back to town cause we really couldn´t figure out how to get the bus (even though we asked what we figured was a corrupt policeman!).

Now plan is to get the bus to Puerto Madryn tonight at 11.30, which we think takes about 10 hours!
Ciao!

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