Through The Nothing, Part II

I know it’s been a while since I last posted in the blog however the last 3 months have been truly mental. Since the blog is about fun and not about real life and I still have a story to tell, let’s forget about real life again and let’s go back to Patagonia :-)

The last post ended in Perito Moreno, the world’s only town in the middle of nowhere without a pub and this is where the next morning found us. I think the last time Perito Moreno saw any construction activity must have been in the early 70s and the town has a special “lost in a time warp” feel that got only more pronounced in the morning. There are fake wood tables with brown paint peeling off, chairs with fake red leather and everything one can associate with a bygone era.

We woke up early and had a breakfast which consisted entirely of carbohydrates and not the good ones. The inhabitants of Argentina and Uruguay swear by Dulce de Leche which consists of some milk powder, a LOT of sugar and some water. It is an interesting substance that is extremely sweet and its consistency is somewhere between Nutella and expired super glue. It comes in jars or little plastic containers that are used in other countries to package jam / marmalade. I was sort of prepared for Dulce de Leche but I was not prepared for the thing resembling a croissant which turned out to be a sweet pastry and the combination with DDL gave me enough sugar for the coming 2-3 decades.

During the World Cup on Brazil this year, the same heartless Brazilian authorities that made me bin my water while suffering a cold, confiscated the whole Dulce de Leche inventory of the Uruguay team (all 39 kgs of it) and later all the misfortunes of the team, including the infamous Suarez bite, was blamed on this horrible act of the Brazilians. The Brazilians were even accused of sabotage. Apparently Uruguay’s players can’t function properly without a kilogram of stale super glue in their bloodstream and need to bite other players to procure the necessary carbohydrates.

The sugar high I got from the stuff was very much needed as walking with the heavy backpack in the howling wind (for some reason one always has headwind in Patagonia) was not an easy task at all. We arrived at the hotel where our next bus was about to start from and, of course, the bus was nowhere to be found. We had no choice but to find comfort on a torn fake red leather sofa and armchair. I decided to charge my iPad (the workhorse keeping us alive with games) in the meantime and this is when I came to realise a rather peculiar thing (of which I unfortunately have no photographic evidence).

This peculiar thing was a Santa Claus glued to the window next to me whose illumination was terminated by me pulling the plug. It was a rather fascinating Santa Claus I must say. Its mouth was huge and VERY red and basically made one concentrate on that one body part only. It was the mouth of a porn actress. After this Santa sighting we came to realise that almost every Santa Claus in the country we have seen has this look. We never found out why Argentineans have a love for this interesting interpretation of Santa but at least the bus arrived, an hour late.

Our second day on the bus was just as long as the first one however we were a lot grumpier because the second section consisted almost completely of gravel road that made it impossible to read, play, listen to music or exist at all. The journey itself proved quite eventless apart from stopping for a hardcore backpacker guy in the middle of nowhere who turned down the bus driver’s cheap transfer offer. This made us think for a second about what a convenient place this shaking hell of a bus is after all compared to the bleak emptiness around us but then the feeling passed quickly. We both entered a kind of stupor for several hours that was broken when we the wheels finally touched asphalt after stopping at the world’s loneliest petrol station.

We knew that only 70kms are left and this lifted our spirits already. What lifted our spirits even more was the weather – after bleak clouds all day the cloud cover started to break and we could see a beautiful lake and some peaks of the Andes as our bus made the final approach to El Chaltén. And then something really wonderful happened. The whole Fitz Roy group came out of the cloud. There was suddenly a lot of excitement, the bus stopped, people jumped out and everyone was speechless for a second. This was a truly magnificent present from Patagonia after the longest bus journey of our lives.

Surprisingly we arrived in El Chaltén in time even with the hour long delay at the start and after waving goodbye to the horrible bus we started walking towards our accommodation in a very strong wind that became our faithful companion in this tiny outpost of civilisation at the end of the world. It was at this point when we realised how far we ventured from not only home but basically everywhere. It was a scary and great feeling at the same time.

We did not know at that time that El Chaltén would become our favourite place in Patagonia. El Chaltén is such an amazing place that it is in my Top 5 favourite places in the world. To be continued... and not in 3 months, I promise...