The Longest Bus to El Chalten (Day 18)

So, technically this post spans from Feb. 24th at 11:30pm to Feb. 26th at 7am. But, I want to point out some of the highlights of this crazy-long bus ride. First of all, never before have I been so happy to be small, so that I can lie down horizontally over two seats and sleep quite happily. And, as luck would have it, I had an empty seat beside me the whole ride.

After we pulled out of El Bolson, we made a stop at what I think was Esquel. Apparently, we were riding in a borrowed bus, since our proper bus has broken down the day before. In Esquel, we would switch to our proper (hopefully adequately repaired) bus. The only glitch was that our proper bus was running 2hrs late. Not so bad, since I managed to sleep the entire waiting time, only to be herded into the cold night air while we sorted our packs into the new bus. Then we were off again.

When we hit Perito Moreno about 5hrs later, the bus driver announced that we would have a 2hr layover. I guess we all assumed that the bus would stay put, so you can imagine my surpise when I came back from the bathroom to a vacant bus lot. During a moment of crisis thinking I had misunderstood and the bus has left without me, I realized that I was surrounded by my bus mates, all dumbfounded also. The bus had left, with ALL our stuff on it (including my glasses, jacket, camera and books), to make a run to Los Antiguos. The terminal staff assured us this was normal and that everything was fine. I was pretty relieved when the bus returned and everything was just as I´d left it. Wierd.

We proceeded to stop about every 3hrs, for a pee and a snack. After a while, this gets to be a little tedious and I wanted us to just keep going so we could get to El Chalten. It didn´t help that we kept stopping in the most non-descript and devoid-of-most-food places. You´d think that an enterprising owner who frequently gets business from bus travellers would fill up shop in wait for the feeding frenzy that happens when weary travellers arrive. Doesn´t quite work like that here.

Somewhere in the middle afternoon, after hours and hours of desert and flat, these really cool mounds/mountains of mineral rock deposits appeared. The bright red (ferrous oxide?) against the desert brown was pretty cool, not to mention some really cool formations.

The afternoon slipped into night and in the morning, when we finally arrived in El Chalten, I sat up and was treated to my first glimpses of the Fitz Roy range.


With the sun just coming up, the view was pretty spectacular.


From here and since we were 2hr later than the scheduled 5:30am arrival, I was able to wander over to my hostel for a hot shower (less stinky Tera to come) and breakfast. My first take on El Chalten is that it´s pretty gorgeous and I can´t wait to explore.