Bus Travel - El Chalten to Esquel

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As Sarah mentioned in the last blog, we took a 2:45 bus from El Chalten back to El Calafate. It was a double decker bus and we got the first row on the second story (floor?) so we had amazing views. At least for 5 minutes until the windows fogged up. It reminded me of riding backwards in the Volvo station wagon when I was a kid.

The bus had a group of English/Americans who had trouble with their tickets. They spoke very very little Spanish and had apparently booked the wrong day for the bus so they ended up paying twice. They were quite unhappy. Lesson learned - always double check your tickets (which we knew already and have even caught a mistake on one of our own).

Once back to El Calafate we passed a couple hours over a Hawaiian style pizza. Then it was time to hop on a 24-hour bus ride. How bizzare does that seem? A 4 hour flight from CA to PA seems like forever. What was this 24-hour bus ride going to be like? The initial excitement (much like a first flight) got me through the first 15 minutes. Then reality set in. Fortunately it was a bed-bus, meaning the seats were much bigger and reclined very far. Quite comfortable.

We passed the hours with Morgan Freeman & Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino & Bucket List. Everything was in English which has been a surprise to us. The amount of English/Spanish music radio we hear is probably 80/20. JLO, Lady Gaga, Madonna, Britney, Coldplay, Nicki Manaje (?) if it is English and pop then the people here seemingly love it.

The bus served dinner (a chunk of meat and potatoes) which was unfortunate since we brought bread and cheese. Theirs seemed better so we ate that. Both of us got a good 8 hours of sleep and awoke at the beach. Turns out it is faster, with more paved roads, to go all the way to the coast before heading north.

Then intestinal disaster set in for both of us, which I´ll spare you all the details on...at least for this post. Maybe random chunks of meat from the bus aren't the best. Who knew?

Despite that complication we made it to Esquel only an hour behind schedule. I hope all of our bus travel can go as relatively smoothly as this trip, although I tend to doubt it.

No pictures for this post.

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