Apart from saving money, I thought another good reason to catch the bus up north would be the opportunity to see the amazing landscape that is Patagonia.
The four hour drive to our bus changeover point wasn´t too bad as you passed a few mountains on the way out of El Calafate. The bus terminal at Rio Gallegos was not a very awe inspiring but thankfully we only had a few hours to kill there. We almost got stuck in this place but luckily at 5.55pm we realised the 6.00pm us to Mendoza was the one we were supposed to be on. This was no thanks to the driver. Jon had asked him earlier if a different bus was going to take us to Puerto Madryn and he had replied ¨Si¨ (yes). Consequently we had been admiring the bus out of the window for over 20 minutes before we thought we had better check with someone else. Luckily we did. Maybe the driver thought it would be amusing to see us panicking at the last minute and running out of the terminal all flustered, half dragging, half carrying our enormous backpacks. (Our packs by the way are bigger then everyone elses we have encountered on our travels. I don´t know how people pack so lightly. I really don´t think I am overdoing it).
The amazing Patagonian landscape turned out to be not so breathtaking. For 20 hours the steppe looks surprisingly similar to the Nulabor – flat, boring and nothing as far as the eye can see. I watched tv. The driver seemed to have a thing for extremely violent and graphic D grade movies. Any kids watching on the second floor of the bus would have been traumatised. It must be a South American thing. The bus to Lima showed a teenage movie with a 'ménage à trois' scene and a girl hitting her grandmother over the head and locking her in the boot, not to mention drugging her numerous times.
We arrived in Puerto Madryn the following day around lunchtime. The trip went surprisingly quickly or so it seemed. In the afternoon we walked to the end of the pier (quite a hike as it extends about 500 metres into the ocean) and watched a whale playing near us. Unfortunately it did not pose for a good tail shot, nor jump out of the water and do a back flip. I was a bit disappointed about this.
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