In retrospect I think nothing could
have prepared us for the 1385 km long bus journey from Bariloche to El Chaltén
that lasted for 2 full days, had countless and seemingly endless sections of
dirt road and let us traverse the... big nothing. When people look at the map of
South America, Patagonia seems actually quite small. Well it isn’t. It's a
bit bigger than a million square kms which is 4x the UK
or 2x France but unlike any of these Patagonia is quite narrow
and long with a population of two million people which
results in lower densities than Scandinavia. And the big nothing.
Before we embarked on the epic bus
journey we had quite a fabulous last day in Bariloche. We exchanged all of our
remaining dollars at the best possible black market rate (even my 20 dollar
notes got a nice quote after some searching around), did a little hike (since
we are lazy bums, we took a chairlift and came down 1000 metres in altitude
that hurt us more than walking up), had one last great dinner at Alberto’s
(this time without ordering ourselves silly amounts of food) and got pretty
drunk with our hosts who invited us to their house before we said our final
goodbyes to Bariloche.
All that wine came screaming back to me
in the morning at 6am when we had to walk down to the hotel where the bus
started from. It was a rather painful (but at least downhill) 15 minute walk in
full gear and I did not even have coffee before this walk. Now anyone who knows
me knows that you don’t talk to me in the morning before my caffeine levels
reach a certain niveau or you risk complete unresponsiveness in good cases or
some unfriendly growl in bad cases. When we reached the bus stop, the bus was
nowhere of course.
5 other people were there and it seemed
like they were all ordered to be there in different times, our paper said 630am,
theirs said different times between 545am and 615am. It was kind of weird and
not the best start. Then the bus turned up at 645am which wasn’t on any of the
papers present and after some customary paper checking and documentation
(Argentineans LOVE administration) we were on the bus for the first leg of the
journey to a place called Perito Moreno. The bus driver put on some surprisingly
good music (some 90s soft pop), put the A/C on max which sent most of the
people to sleep right away.
Our first stop was a place called El
Bolsón and it was here that things started to change. The landscape around
Bariloche is very much like Switzerland (although more pretty in my opinion)
and although there is a nice end of the world feeling to Bariloche, it is still
very far from being removed from civilisation. Ruta 40 moves more inland as it
travels south and with the Andes gone or far on the horizon, the bleakness and
vastness of the Patagonian steppe puts everyone in a different mood. It is
unlike anything I have ever seen before; it is majestic and frightening at the
same time.
Long before I could go on daydreaming
about the steppe and the meaning of my life, the changing music soon reminded
me where I am. I have never been a big fan of Bonnie Tyler’s Total Eclipse of The
Heart (apart from the literal version), but I must admit that the Spanish translation in tango style
caught me completely off guard. Ever since that bus journey I wanted to contact
Natalia, the reservations lady at Chaltén Travel, so that she can give me the
link to this masterpiece that was more horrible than anything I’ve ever heard.
And that was just the beginning. We still had 10 hours left...
Although our first day on the bus was
long, there were not that many gravel sections on Ruta 40. This was quite a
surprise as we were prepared for a horribly journey on gravel road that would
make us regret that we embarked on it. Although Ruta 40 was a dreadful journey
in the past (and to an extent it still is today), these days northern sections
are almost completely paved and more and more of the southern sections get
paved, too. Where there is gravel, it is still pretty horrible, but out of the
800 kms on the first day only 200 kms were gravel. In 2-3 years the magic will
be gone and this will be just another typical journey.
It took us more than 13 hours to arrive
at Perito Moreno, the interim stop on our journey. We immediately took a walk
around and realised in about 2 minutes that we entered another universe. It was
at least 10 degrees colder than in Bariloche and there was a howling wind that
became omnipresent later. There were hardly any people in the streets and the little
town had a “lost in the 70s feel” to it with concrete monuments and presidents
painted on house walls. There were some stray doggies but they couldn’t really
be less bothered. In 20 minutes we’ve been to both ends and we realised that we
had finally arrived at the end of the world.
We wanted to celebrate this achievement
by having a drink but it was at this point where we came upon the most striking
mystery of Perito Moreno: there were absolutely no pubs in the town. There were
restaurants, but no pubs. This was against any logic we knew: what else could
you do at the end of the world. Where do people meet? What do they do? Instead
of reaching undiscovered heights of existential fear and locational economics,
we discovered the beer fridge at the local supermarket. We went back to our
little hotel, drank our beers, went out to the hotel restaurant for dinner and
kept thinking what awaits us the next day...
(To be continued...)
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