One Way United

Hey everyone. In addition to the last post I made I was able to find a computer that recognized my camera and iPod. So that means I got to put up a bunch of pictures for you to see! So check out the Argentina gallery and bask in pictoral splendor.

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There´s something about travel that makes getting up at un-godly hours of the morning a lot easier. Normally being roused out of bed at 4:30 a.m. would have made me hell to deal with for a good while after that, but even with getting on a bus knowing I had a long day of sitting ahead I was glad to be moving again. Ushuaia had been great but I was ready to move on to see what else this land has in store for us. So I´m sitting on a crowded bus staring out the window listening to my iPod. This thing has been a lifesaver by the way. Without this little machine I might have gone stir crazy with these long bus rides (I usually don´t sleep too well in moving vehicles). So I have some quiet peaceful music playing and am watching the world pass by. Jordan is in the seat next to me asleep, blissfully unaware of anything going on around him (plus the fact that he is beginning to drool all over himself). You can barely see out the windows as the condensation is completely covering them. I wipe some if it off and use the water to clean my glasses. It´s a real challenge to keep these suckers clean I tell you. These long rides give you pleanty of time to think, if you think of anything at all. I often find myself remembering friends and family or fatasizing about what will come in the next place we visit. Mostly I just stare and watch the rolling Patagonian hills fly by as the long grass blows in the wind. The occassional, and very frequent, flock of sheep will pass as well.

This continues on as the bus crosses the Argentina/Chile border and we board a ferry to cross the channel. We´re a little pressed for time as this bus will stop in Punta Arenas and we will have to get on another one heading to Puerto Natales almost right away. We were a little worried we wouldn´t make it as the first bus arrived about ten minutes after the other one was supposed to have left. Fortunately we found that our bus was set to leave in about fifty minutes, so we spent some time on the internet. When we finally got on the bus we settled in for a three-hour ride to our final destination for the day…Or so we thought.

This bus had an odd little conducter who might have been mute as I never heard him speak a single word. He would use sign language (or really exaggerated hand gestures) to communicate and was really funny to watch. The girls on the bus really liked him as he spent quite a bit of time teasing them. I thought he looked kind of like a hobbit almost, although by comparison the majority of the locals we meet are shorter than I am.

About an hour into the bus ride the vehicle began to shake violently back and forth. Several times the driver stopped to get out to see if he could fix it. To no avail we kept going, with the bus beginning to slow down and stall repeatedly. The driver tried to find a phone, but none of them worked and we ended up turning around and heading back to Punta Arenas. And finally, just ten mintues outside of town the bus broke down and refused to go any further. One of the men in charge took a cab into town to get help and left a bus full of cold people on the side of the road, in the dark, for about an hour. Jordan and I were starving as we´d never had a chance to stop for food so all day all we´d been eating were cookies, crackers, and cereal bars. Finally the a new bus came and everyone loaded on it and we set off for Puerto Natales only to get in at 2:00 in the morning. What should have been an easy three hour ride ended up being a seven hour ordeal. And the bus dropped us off on this dark empty street corner and left us there in the freezing cold. We´d had a reservation at a hostel here so I grabbed the guide book and started to make our way there. We rang the bell at the door but the woman running the place said she was full and we couldn´t get in. Fortunately a little old couple around the corner was running a hostel as well and they had pleanty of room for us. So we buried our tired freezing bodies under the heavy blankets and went to sleep without ever having had an actual meal that day.

Today we´re feeling much better and have met up with our friend Mounya we met in Ushuaia. We our now planning for a three to four day backpacking trip in the Torres del Paines national park. I´m excitied as it should be an easy relaxing hike with beautiful scenery. We should be able to see glaciars as well! Hope everyone is doing great. Miss you all.

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Here is the article I promised you…Me and the fox are mentioned briefly…We met Robert Hughes at the Ushuaia Hostel we were staying in.  http://floridatoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060130/COLUMNISTS0305/601300322/1064

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