Bus ride through the 7th Circle of Hell

I’m writing this post from a nice little hostel called Hostel Altos del Sur nestled in the woods above a town in Argentina called El Bolson. We have a hammock out front, and are pretty much surrounded by trees, a few barking dogs, and nature stuff. El Bolson literally means “big bag”, and the town sits in the middle of a valley surrounded by piney trees and higher up, the Andes Mountains; mountains that appear to have snow all year long. Hippies came here in the 1970’s the build their utopia, and now their utopia consists of a touristy (but clean) main street and the same old hippies selling their hippy crap at the tri-weekly Hippy Fair. I think I’ll go back on Saturday and buy some cheap jewelry, and I cannot resist not having another fresh made waffle, topped with garden grown strawberries and boysenberries and fresh cream. It was delish. They also brew their own beers so Chris needs to get on that.

Anyway, it’s quiet here and that’s nice. And it’s really quiet here at 6:30AM when your bus drops you off about 3 hours late and the hostel is closed and you have to sit in the eating area until 8AM, waiting for someone to come in and open the place up.

If you ever want to make someone really really hate you, may I suggest a 35+ hour bus ride together from El Calafate to El Bolson, Argentina. You will be greeted by the historic Route 40, which is not paved, and constantly under construction, but not enough construction to actually pave the thing. The scenery can be nicely described as Nothing. No towns, no rivers, no people, a few emus, and a while lot of Nothing. Make it extra special by going with a company called Tasqa, as you will get seats that don’t recline, food stops at places with no food, one stale ham and cheese sandwich offered by the bus steward for the ENTIRE trip, a 3 hour layover that was never announced, one lone dinner stop at midnight, and general lateness and ass hat-ery. By the end, we were grumpy, stinky, starving, and so nasty to each other. If we’d gone a few hours further to the town of Bariloche, only one of us would have made it off the bus with all limbs intact.

I told Chris that if I ever get sent to hell, it will be that bus ride for all eternity, filled with people I can’t stand.

And in the midst of all that junk, our bus steward was so genuinely pumped and happy about his job. It was actually really great and funny and tragic at the same time. Because we spent the majority of the trip going about 15 mph, and there was a lot of random breaking, the bus steward would occasionally bust through the dividing door between him and the driver and us passengers, to point out places we might want to take a picture of. By the way, the entire trip, it looked like we were driving through the backcountry dirt roads of Arizona or New Mexico, and not the pretty parts. I have no idea what he wanted us to take a picture of, unless he was just a huge fan of dirt and shrubs. Another time, the bus braked for an armadillo to cross the road, and the steward hopped out of the bus (again, an easy thing to do when you are only going about 15 mph at top speed) and grabbed the armadillo. He then brought it on the bus for people to look at, and then hopped back off, and tossed the armadillo out. The armadillo didn’t look too impressed.

I’m also convinced they only took us to places where their cousins or friends or some other acquaintance lived. These places weren’t even rest stops, they were just random people’s home where you could use the bathroom and buy snacks they had made. One house had a baby cow and a baby alpaca that would just wander in and out of the kitchen. I have a picture of the alpaca, so look for it in the picture section soon.

It was ridiculous.

So back to nice and quiet El Bolson and my nice and quiet hostel that is playing an album right now by Mika; which is excellent. Chris is having siesta time now and tomorrow we will do a little hike out of the town to some overlook and to a cave that looks like it has a face carved into it. I guess it was done by a glacier, so I’ll probably have to squint my eyes and tilt my head a little to discern the face. There is a Red Hot Chili Pepper tribute band playing in El Bolson tonight and I half want to go, just to see if they know English or are singing everything phonetically. But after not much sleep on Hell Bus, we might just stay in tonight.

On Saturday, we are going to take a two (!!! Yay!!!) hour bus ride to the ski town of Bariloche. They are known for their Swiss style architecture, Swiss style chocolate, and microbrews. We’re going to be there for two weeks because we’ve decided to go to Spanish school for the next month. We will do two weeks in Bariloche (one week in a hostel and one week with a host family) and then two weeks in Mendoza (both weeks with another host family). The school is called La Montaña, and class sizes are 4 people maximum; they include housing and breakfast and dinner and school supplies/texts in the tuition. For one month, it will cost us $1134 each. We’ve been spending that much (actually more) just traveling so we thought we’d throw in Spanish lessons as well. The school also has three to five arranged activities each week that range from white water rafting, to tango classes, to movies, to dinners, to volunteering, etc. I’m looking forward to this and going back to school. We have four or five hours of class each day, Monday through Friday.

I think Chris is excited because he will finally be able to tell people off, like bus drivers that make you wait three hours for no reason in some random town.