In the morning, we set out to look for cheaper, more pleasant accomodations, and we had Jay practice his Spanish by asking about the prices at nearly a dozen different hostels and hospedajes until we found Hostal Leyla, run by a sweet, tiny Chilean and otherwise filled with a rude, slovenly group of 20-somethings from Israel (we found out later). I'm thankful that they weren't Americans, because I'm not fond of having to prove to hostel/restaurant owners that "we're not all that bad, really!" ...So far the rude groups we've found have been French, Argentinian and Israeli, with a few rude Germans in between. Yay, we're off the hook now!
We spent the day exploring the town - a nature reserve we "broke" into (the ticket booth was abandoned and a well-trodden path led from a section of missing fence) with a stray dog (henceforth known as Felipe) who guided us around, a lunch of pasta and meat at a grill where the half-blind Italian-esque waiter refused to serve us tap water, Tito's ice cream (where the "o" on the logo was represented by a happy face, so it looked more like TIT:-)'S ice cream and a table umbrella from 2 tables away catapoulted itself onto our table just moments after we got up), and a fun time at the grocery store where a loud group of Argentinian teens were admiring Stephanie and kept commenting loudly about her (and pissing her off quite a bit). On their third pass by us, I "accidentally" bumped into them. With the cart, and possibly and ankle. While Stephanie tried to keep a poker face, I reacted with a "permiso" in the worst accent I could muster up and we moved along. They stopped following.
We got tickets to the glacier for the next day and, after a day of mini-adventures, returned to the hostel for dinner and card games.
The next day, on our last day together, we woke up early to get to the bus station on time... But we were so overzealous that we ended up with over half an hour to kill while we waited for the bus, but we were accompanied and entertained by Bebecito (another stray that Stephanie named).
The bus ride to the glacier was relatively short and unremarkable, but the glacier was incredible. We saw a huge piece break off and crash into the water (yay global warming in progress?), plus various smaller pieces and much creaking and groaning fromthe massive ice mountain. As the views in Patagonia, the glacier was beautiful, imposing, breathtaking... and completely lost in photos, so I apologize that they don't come close to capturing the amazingness of it.
After getting back to El Calafate, we cooked ourselves dinner and played more games, figured out money stuff, and went to bed.
We saw Steph and Carrie off the next morning, went for a run, and hung out around town before catching our bus to Bariloche. The bus ride was LONG, lasting from 5 PM on Monday to late (near midnight) on the 6th. On the road, we were held up twice: once for a broken engine (but "the guy with the mullet" fixed it) and once for a huge herd of cattle... with cowboys.
When the bus finally arrived, the bus station was closing so we grabbed brochures of hostels in town and set out in search of a bed. We must have knocked on the doors of nearly 20 hostels and hospedajes, not to mention a few hotels. Everything affordable was booked, and the hotels were all expensive (over $50 USD a night!). Around 3 AM, we gave up (having walked the entire town multiple times) and found a gas station that was open 24 hours. We sat at a table and had some food until the sun came up around 6 AM. We then returned to the bus station, waited for the company attendants to come to work, and got the last two tickets on a bus to Puerto Montt, Chile.
Goodbye, Argentina!
 |
| El Calafate, Argentina |
 |
| Perito Moreno Glacier, Argentina |
No comments:
Post a Comment