El Chaten,
Argentina
Monday, February 11, 2008
The bus sucks. Plain and simple. And I will be on it for 28 hours, sweet. The buses in southern Argentina are shittier because the roads blow as most of them are gravel and our bus has steel grating covering the front windows except for the part of the window the driver will directly look out of in order to deflect rocks from kicking up and cracking the windshield. I get on and the bus is full except for one seat as everyone is coming from Bariloche. This is the content of the bus in terms of nationalities; 8 french fuckers, a korean chick, a swiss chick (the same one I hung out with in Bariloche coincidentally), me and the rest Isrealis. I am the oldest person on this bus by far. So we stop in this town called Perito Moreno and I get out and go to the bathroom and get something to eat. I take note that it`s 12:00 exactly and I have been on the bus for about 7 hours. We take off and the entire time I think we are going south and making progress and at 4:00pm we make another stop and I get off to go to the bathroom and stretch my legs and I notice that this stop looks almost identical to the one in Perito Moreno. Wait a gosh damn cotton pickin minute (I have no idea how many sins I commit on a daily basis but for some reason I don`t litter and I don`t use the lord`s name in vain, seriously, makes no sense since I`m a self-acclaimed aetheist) it is the same fuckng bus stop. Holy fuck (but I will use holy fuck, don`t ask), what the hell just happened. How the hell can I be in the same fucking exact spot I was in 4 hours ago. I am going insane, I`m losing my mind and I`m going to a mental institution because I now officially have disorganized schizophrenia. What the hell, this is so baffling. It`s like I just went through a reverse time warp or an anti-wormhole. Did I just fucking time travel and go back four hours to the past? Is this bus actually a Delorean and did the bus driver accidentally hit 88 miles an hour (142km/hr)? I mean I know just by being on this bus I am traveling into the future by maybe .00000000000000000000000000000000001 seconds compared to a stationary person but traveling into the long sought after past is another thing entirely. I have no idea what just happened, neither does anyone else and I decide I should probably take a nap in order to deal with this strange turn of events. It`s hard to nap though since the road isn`t paved and my head bounces all over the place like a bobble head doll or a blond chick from California.
Strike up a conversation with the Isreali chick sitting across from me since she looks pretty decent and I ask where she was from (although I already knew because 1. Hebrew is easily recognizable and 2. I saw her reading from right to left) and when she says Isreal I say Sababa which means cool in Hebrew and like half the bus turns around to look at me. She asks how I know that word and I tell her I have met more Isrealis than Argentinians in the last month. I end up getting to know most of the Israelis by the end of the trip and they are really cool but I don`t think the French people like me very much. I see an awesome Patagonian sunset out of my window and once again I wish I had my camera. It`s crazy, it doesn`t get dark till like 11pm down here. We are pretty far south and we are on the western border of Argentina and Argentina only has one time zone so it obviously stays lighter here than in BA which is on the east coast. Man, you could play beach vball all night down here. Larry Hamel would love it. The decent looking Isreali gives me her camera so I can take a picture of the sunset out my window and she tells me that she wants a beautiful picture so I end up taking a picture of myself. She laughs and slaps me on the arm and that my friend is what we call an Indicator of Interest. After the sunset I sleep the rest of the way and when we finally arrive in El Chaten at 6:30am I am grateful I didn`t almost shit myself or almost miss the bus. The ride actually went quicker than you would have thought.
