On the Road and in the Sky. Part 1.
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Rio Gallegos,
Argentina
Monday, March 14, 2005
Little did we realise how lucky we have been regarding buses and transport until we experienced a monumental cock up, the likes of which you can only appreciate when you take into account the vastness of the land we are attempting to traverse. This is a fact I am still having trouble getting my head around; in Britain, at a rough guess, Iīd say wherever you may be youīre never more than a four hour drive away from a coastline. But here you can drive for days and still be hundreds, or maybe even thousands, of miles away from the sea. Iīve had an almost claustrophobic feeling a couple of times on arriving in a town, after being on a bus for a day, as my brain slowly gets used to the idea that we are still landlocked by a long way. Then to add to the confusion thereīll be a huge lake, maybe even with a beach, that for a hundredth of a second will spark a neuron in my memory into saying īthe end of landī but only until my eye has taken in the mountains that engulf the lake and my small-islanderīs comprehension is fazed once again.
So anyway, this journey started out at the impolite hour of 3am, and obviously the only way we were going to make it to the coach at that time was to stay up, which involved a few cartons of wine (donīt knock īem, they rock!) at our crusty hostel with a random bunch of like minded dudes.
We had bought tickets which involved changing buses at Rio Gallegos, and a two hour wait, and then another stop at Commodoro Rivadavia. However, what actually happened was that we arrived in Rio Gallegos at 8am, hungover, knackered after five hours on a far from comfy bus, and spent two freezing hours in the tiny terminal, listening to a pneumatic drill outside the window.
At the appointed hour we went to board the next coach, had lugguage loaded and everything, only to be told that due to a problem with their computer our ticket numbers didnīt match the ones they had on their list, blah, blah, blah, which basically meant that we couldnīt get on the bus. Oh, and the next one didnīt leave for another 12 hours. "Weīre very sorry, itīs all our fault, the company will pay for your lunch.." LUNCH LOVE!? Iīm thinking. "You can leave youīre bags here if you want..." I looked at her with my best evil Fulham screw face, the one that lets Gordon know to leave the room, and said, "What I WANT, is a hotel room. I havenīt slept all night, I want to sleep and take a shower." A few phone calls later and we were packed off in a taxi to pass out our time in a hotel watching cable T.V and patting ourselves on the back, remarking that it hadnīt turned out so badly after all...
22.30 rolls around and we go to get our bus. Thereīs a slight moment of tension when someone starts ro say something about numbers not matching but then the manager bumbles over and ushers us onto the bus. Fine.
