The Long Road North Part V: Crossing the Antiplano on the Bus to Lima

Video of the journey

Day 1: The Creeps

I woke up early to be at the bus terminal in Jujuy before 7am. I was groggy, having spent the night on the wiggly top of three bunks in an overcrowded and poorly-ventilated hostel dorm room with Argentine and German party animal roommates who kept me up most of the night. I had my 6am revenge, but it didn't feel as sweet as sleeping would have.

My bus was not at the terminal when I arrived, but I was early enough to not be concerned. My bus wasn't supposed to leave until 7:50, but the woman who had sold me the ticket had insisted that it was important for me to be there by 7am, so 7am was when I was there, although it wasn't clear why it was necessary to be an hour early for a bus that, no doubt, was going to show up 2 minutes before departure like every other bus in Argentina ever. When 15 minutes later the bus still wasn't there I got concerned enough to ask at the ticket window, where they told me that I needed to go to another bus station a 10 minute walk away. Why the hell hadn't they put that on the bus ticket?? But I walked over, sweating hard with my giant backpack through a not-particularly-appealing neighborhood. I had been warned about rampant theft in the area and felt helpless with all of my stuff. Fifteen minutes of walking later and there was still no sign of a bus station. I asked the one guy who happened to be out on the street, who pointed further down the road. Cursing under my breath I kept walking, and found nothing. Another guy pointed me back in the direction I had just come from. There had been no buses, no terminals, nothing. But back I walked until, sure enough, I spotted a building with the name of my bus company painted on it, but it was boarded up. There was no bus, were no people, no signs of life…this can’t be right, I thought.

Waiting for the bus

I hailed a taxi back to the main bus terminal and asked again. The guy swore that the boarded-up building was where I was supposed to go. I made him promise twice that if I waited there, my bus would come and get me. He insisted that I was going to miss the bus if I didn't hurry, so I got another taxi back and sat down to wait, sitting alone on the sidewalk in front of the abandoned building on the sketchy street that was empty except for a few men occasionally staggering by reeking of piss and alcohol and making lewd comments as they passed me.

The 7:50 bus departure came and went. So did 8:00, 8:15, 8:30… I started to think that I should go back and give the guy who had promised me I needed to wait there hell for making me wait in a weird place and miss my bus, or make him call the bus and insist that they pick me up at the main terminal where I felt much safer waiting. The whole situation made me really uncomfortable.

I was about to leave when a vehicle drove slowly by, stopped, and started to back up. I wondered if it was maybe a company representative come to inform me that my bus had exploded and wouldn't be coming or something…that or life was about to get unpleasant. I discreetly pulled my Swiss Army knife out of my purse and unfolded a blade. I wasn't sure just what I planned to do with it, it was handy enough for slicing avocados but not exactly a knife-fight worthy blade, but figured a knife was better than nothing on that street. The van pulled up to where I was sitting, and a man leaned out the window.

“Hoooola,” he drawled.
“Hola.”
“Como estas?” 

I wasn’t smiling and was wondering how I’d be able to get proof that the guy was from the bus company, and decided that I wasn’t going to get in a vehicle with anyone I didn’t recognize, and I didn’t recognize this guy.

“Que necesitas?” I asked. What do you want?
“Are you sleeping here?” He asked me in Spanish. Oh great, he thinks I’m a streetwalker.
“No. I’m waiting for my bus. It’s coming soon.”
“No, honey, your bus is late! I will drive you where you are going.” To Lima? I thought. Right.
“No, gracias. I will wait for my bus.”
“Do you want a cigarette?”
“No.”
“Coffee?”
“No.”
“Oh come on pretty girl, come get a coffee with me.”
“No.”
“Just a coffee, come on honey, I’ll take care of you.”

I turned and looked him straight in the eye and said evenly,

“Déjame en paz. Leave me alone.”

He laughed, put his head back in his window, and started to inch the van forward, then stopped again and stuck his head back out the window and made kissing noises at me.

I stood up, knife in hand, and yelled,

“Fuck you, get the hell out of here. Go!”

He left.

Angry and shaken I was gathering my stuff to hail a taxi after an hour of waiting on the street, when suddenly I saw my bus come down the road. It didn't look like it was going to stop, so I walked out into the road and blocked it from passing. Sure enough, after the driver yelled at me and I yelled back and showed him my ticket, it was my bus, and the driver pulled over, threw my bags in the hold, and let me on. I was in a sour, sour mood but I’d be spending the next two days on this bus with this driver, so I figured I should at least try to be nice.

My bus ticket

The bus was full, which was disappointing. After all that time being the only one waiting for it I had hoped it would be a quiet ride, but apparently everyone had gotten on somewhere earlier down the road. There was a guy who had sprawled out across my seat, and I politely asked him to vacate my spot. He was my seatmate and I would spend the next two days smelling his BO, but he ended up being a sleeper, and I was grateful at least for that. Be it plane rides or bus rides or car rides or any rides, I like seatmates best who don’t talk. Ideally ones who don’t smell either, but I’ll take smelly over chatty. I settled into my seat for the two-day journey, then got up to make myself some oatmeal that I had cleverly thought to pack myself, since I hadn’t had breakfast yet. I got back to my seat and realized that, although I had paid for a good seat, my seat was broken and didn’t recline. At all. This was going to be a long 2-day ride.

The drive was scenic, but I had been on the first three hours of it already, so I pulled out a book and read, a book on the history of the Inca Empire.

It looked pretty much like this for 49 hours, except when it was dark.

Usually on these long bus rides I alternate between my Kindle and my laptop and snapping photos with my camera, but after that morning and all the warnings I had heard about thieves in the region, I didn’t trust anyone, and didn’t want to advertise that I had valuable stuff with me. I did shoot some videos with my GoPro, but I kept it strapped to my wrist at all times, and figured if anyone touched it, I’d punch them and scream bloody murder. A tougher target than someone knifing open one of my bags to pull out my camera or laptop. I chided myself for being so paranoid, for behaving differently than I would have in the south. In the south, passengers on the buses were usually European or Israeli tourists. It’s not that tourists don’t steal stuff, but there I was always one target among many. On this bus, I was the only non-Spanish speaker, the only person who didn’t look like they could be Peruvian, and I stood out. On other buses, people smiled at each other and shared snacks. On this bus, I got on as the last person on a full bus, a white girl with fair hair in a sea of dark faces who looked at me not with the warmth and friendliness of the south, but with frowning and suspicious, “what is she doing here?” looks. I’d smile at people, and they’d glare back at me. When I’d turn around to look behind me, there’d always be half a dozen eyes on me, the whole trip, night and day. It was creepy.

Late afternoon rolled around and we had not been fed. I wondered when they were going to bring something to eat or stop for us to get food, since I hadn't brought anything to eat other than my one packet of breakfast oatmeal. The multiple border crossings make having a food bag on the bus impossible as any food would be confiscated. Besides, my ticket read “con servicios” which means “we will feed you on the bus”, and I figured that would be good enough. At around 3pm we stopped at the Chilean border. In the three hours that we were stuck waiting to get our papers processed I could easily have walked to the nearby gas station and bought something to eat, but we were sternly told to not leave the line, and I assumed bus food would eventually come, as it always had in the past.

My giant green backpack on the border securty scanner.

My chariot for the long, long trip.

No bus food came. After being loaded back onto the bus, a woman selling egg and cheese sandwiches—i.e. everything I’m allergic to—was mobbed by the passengers and I asked the driver if we’d be eating soon. “This is your last chance until tomorrow,” he replied. WHAT?? I asked him again to be sure, explained that I was allergic to the only thing she was selling, and she had just sold out of sandwiches anyhow, that I had no food with me, that my ticket said “con servicios”, that I had nothing to eat. He was unsympathetic. I asked if I could walk to the gas station to buy something. He said no. Low Blood Sugar Carie muttered something obscene as tears welled up, and I skulked back onto the bus, slumped down into my chair, and resigned myself to a night of trying hard not to slice the arm off of my seatmate to grill for dinner.

Luckily there were some distractions from my growling stomach. Movies, as usual. Unusual was that most of the movies were not horror movies, which I was grateful for. My creepily staring busmates were scary enough. Ronan, some heist movie that I didn’t watch, Hangover III, Fast and Furious 7 (Really? There have been 7?), Rocky 7 (Grudge Match), Lone Ranger, a surprisingly not-completely-terrible movie by Sylvester Stallone about an undercover narcotics cop hiding out with is daughter in Louisiana, some terrible-looking movie with Vince Vaughn, and then a disturbing movie based loosely on the even more disturbing true story of an Austrian girl who had been locked up as a sex slave in some creep’s basement. In the movie, the guy was a stranger who had kidnapped her as a child, he waited until she came of age to start raping her, and kept her locked in the basement—except when he chained her to his bed—for 10 years before she escaped. In the real life story, the rapist was the girl’s own father who started raping her when she was 12 and kept her locked up in the basement with her seven children/half-siblings for 24 years before she escaped. That night I had nightmares about the bus driver yelling, "Obedéceme! OBEDECAME!!" (obey me) while I was locked up in the luggage hold.

And I dreamed of food.

Day 2: Welcome to Peru

I woke up dizzy the next morning, having not eaten in a full day. Breakfast didn't come. Neither did lunch, making 30 hours with no food. I slept a lot. We crossed the border to Peru, there was no food at that border crossing. I looked. I did make some friends, though, after one middle-aged woman approached me while we were waiting in line and asked if I understood what was going on. Thinking she was trying to help me, I smiled and thanked her and said I did. She thrust her papers upside down in my hand and asked if I could help her fill them out. At first I was confused. She spoke Spanish, I didn't, and the forms were in Spanish, why did she want my help? Then she started pointing to the lines as if trying to read them, but they were upside-down, and it dawned on me that she couldn't read. So I sat down with her and went through and filled out her forms for her, and just when I had finished, there were three other women waiting. I helped all of them with their forms and waited with them in the customs lines to make sure everything was okay. From then on I had people on the bus who smiled at me. Apparently the people on the bus had decided that the gringa wasn't so bad after all.

Welcome to Peru! After 7 months in Argentina and Chile, I finally made it to another country!

Finally in the mid-afternoon we stopped at a weird mud-gated building that looked like an abandoned warehouse from the outside but was a sort of restaurant on the inside. I elbowed my way to a spot in the line (one thing I had learned after two border crossings with these people was that an unwillingness to use elbows will get you left behind and unfed) and gratefully accepted the blocker-elbowings of a few of my new woman friends to keep my spot, and when I got up to the cashier I asked the women to help me order Lots of Food because I was really hungry. They were happy to hook me up with the best of hearty Peruvian Fare, and when the meal came it felt like the best meal I’d ever had. It helped that, having been starved of spice for the past 7 months, Peruvian food was legitimately flavorful. It also helped that I was famished. The women sat and ate with me, and made it clear that I was now in their protection. I was grateful for it.

Later that evening, we stopped for dinner, and I felt like my whole world was Food. It was glorious. I was in Peru. And I had food. Life was good.

Finally! A meal! Also, Pincapple and Orang.

Back on the bus, people smiled now. Maybe they had been hungry and grumpy, too. It was like being on a bus in Chile, only whereas in Chile people are warm and kind and welcoming immediately, my Peruvian busmates had taken significantly longer to warm up to me. Now that they had though they were all smiles and jokes and curiosity and advice and niceness.

I slept much better that night.

Bus rest stop bathrooms

Day 3: Arrival in Lima

The bus arrived in Lima six hours late. Six hours. Nobody seemed surprised. I didn't mind, since that meant a daylight versus a 4am arrival, giving me more time for bus sleeping, which I had now been at long enough to have worked out the optimal arrangement of baggage to produce a sleeping nest that sort of passed as comfortable. The Lima bus terminal, once we did arrive, was beautiful—an airy, glass-encased building with security guards posted at the entrances checking bus tickets, which seemed like a good sign at the time, but in reality belied the chaos outside.

My morning in Lima quickly got quite exciting. Continued in The Long Road North Part VI: Lima

Postcard Contest 4: Patagonia

Why, hullo spikey mountains.

My parents and I are headed off to a tourist town in Argentina's Los Glacieres National Park in the mountains of Patagonia that serves as base camp for a very spikey mountain on the edge of the Patagonian Ice Sheet that is named after the captain of the ship whose adventurous naturalist would later become one of the greatest names in science.

Name:

• the naturalist
• the name of the ship
• the name of the captain
• the name of the mountain
• the name of the town we're going to

First person to leave a comment here and get it right gets a postcard! You do have to leave your name so I know how to contact you and get your address.

Disclaimer: I can only send you a postcard if I am able to get your mailing address. I will announce winners when I have internet access, which may be as long as a week after the contest is announced, so be patient! Also, I make no promises as to when I will send the postcard. But, at some point, I will send it, pinky swear.

Getting to Torres del Paine: hitchhiking on a yacht, long bus rides, and friendly faces

The Goal: Meet my friends in Torres del Paine

These past several months whenever people would ask me what my plans were next, I replied, “No se. No tengo un plan.” (I have no plans) I really enjoy the traveling life without a plan, doing what I want where I want when the mood strikes. However, there was one plan for this trip that I had been looking forward to for half a year: meeting up with my friend Serena and her fiancé Eric to celebrate my 30^th birthday in Torres del Paine.

Torres del Paine is Chile’s most renowned national park and is to Chile what Yosemite is to the United States. The park is centered around some spectacular walls of granite, considered by many to be one of the most beautiful place on Earth. It was recently named the "8th wonder of the world" by voters on VirtualTourist; also, my well-traveled friend Caleb recommended it as “the standard to which I compare all natural beauty”(check out his blog, he and his girlfriend are doing good things on their trip to SE Asia). Becaues of this, it attracts a zoo of backpack-laden tourists from all over the world to hike on its famous trekking circuit. It, along with the Andes in winter and the Atacama Desert, was one of very few “I must go here” goals for this trip.

The Torres. Pretty rad.

Serena and I met in 2005 when we were roommates during our three-month internships at NASA Goddard as part of the NASA Academy program. We bonded over things like arguing about which temperature to keep our room at (we worked out a compromise where I gave her all of my blankets and in exchange was allowed to keep the room at a cool-ish level), being the weirdos who biked to work, taking obscene numbers of photos with rockets, and sweeping the end-of-program awards ceremony. Unlike most summer program friendships where you stay in touch for a while but eventually drift back away into your own lives, many of us from that summer are still in touch eight years later. This is in part thanks to the Girls Heart Rockets running team that grew out of the program, first as an informal group named after an inside joke, but it quickly morphed into a seriously ass-kicking competitive relay team.

When I used “I’m going to be traveling in South America” as my excuse this year for not signing up for any Girls Heart Rockets races (glad to have a really legitimate excuse for a change versus my normal excuse that until we form a sister team “Cows in Space”, I’m too slow for Rockets), Serena responded, “Sweet, can I come?”

Serena, chowing down on a bell pepper after reaching Baso Torres.

Unlike all of my other friends and sibling who had said the same and even made promises to join me for parts of this trip for years only to weasel out in the end, within 24 hours Serena had committed, and within a few weeks we had made definite plans that the two of them would join me in Patagonia over my birthday.

So I had intentionally kept my trek on Isla Navarino “short” (if seven days can be called short) even though I would have liked more time to explore the island, because I wanted to leave plenty of buffer time to make sure that I could make it to Torres del Paine in time to meet up with them. Or at least I thought it was plenty of buffer time: I planned my Navarino trek to end on a Thursday, and the trek in Torres del Paine wasn't starting until the following Tuesday. Given that it took me 2 days to get to Ushuaia from Bariloche, I figured twice the time to make it half the distance should be plenty. Right? Right??

Leaving Puerto Williams: appropriately difficult for an island at the end of the world

There were only four options for getting off the island and to Punta Arenas (from which there are a good dozen or so buses a day to Puerto Natales):

1. A 1.5 hour flight with DAP airlines directly from Puerto Williams to Punta Arenas, leaving twice daily Monday-Saturday (the cheapest commercial option and by far the fastest)
2. Taking the same zodiac back to Ushuaia that I had taken to the island, then take an all-day bus to Punta Arenas the next day (with the bus, more expensive than flying)
3. A 36-hour scenic (but expensive) ferry ride that would get me to Punta Arenas Monday night: too late to meet Serena and Eric in Puerto Natales but maybe early enough to rush to meet them in camp after their first day of hiking
4. Attempting to hitch a ride on a yacht to Ushuaia, then bus to Punta Arenas

Since the flight was the cheapest and by far the fastest certain option, my first order of business once I returned from the trek (see Navarino Part VIII: The Feral Swampbeast Returns to Civilization) was get tickets for the first possible flight to Punta Arenas. I had been told before I left on my trek that getting onto a flight once I returned would be no problem—high season hadn't’t started yet—and that that would be better since the tickets were expensive and if anything happened to delay my return, I wouldn't want to have to forfeit the ticket.

But when I showed up at the DAP office (Puerto Williams is serviced by the famous Antarctic airline DAP via a small airfield outside of town) and waited the 30 minutes for whatever hamsters were running the computers to spin their wheels enough times to permit a search for ticket availability, I was informed that all of the flights were full. “¿Y manaña? ¿O Sabado?” I asked, and was then informed that the flights were full for weeks. I asked if there was any wait list or way to get on and they told me to return at 3 pm to see if there had been any cancellations. I showed up at 3 pm, and the office was closed. I tried again a few hours later and found them open, and they told me to return the following day at 2 pm. I did, and the office was closed. After this happened several more times I started to lose my patience with the folks at the DAP office...but I had yet to experience the full of their incompetence (I can only assume DAP pilots are as much above average as the staff at the office were below it...).

This has nothing to do with the story, but is a memorial plaque in the Puerto Williams museum honoring Captain Robert FitzRoy of the HMS Beagle, who visited Isla Navarino several times in his trips to South America

Meanwhile I went to scope out my other options. I was too late to get the next-day’s zodiac, the one for Saturday was full, and the weather for Sunday was looking iffy enough that they warned it may not go on Sunday.  So the zodiac was out. I wasn't keen on the expensive and slow ferry, despite the scenery (which with bad weather rolling in probably wouldn't be too spectacular anyhow) because it would mean missing the first full day of hiking with my friends.

So I spent a lot of time hanging out at the yacht club in hopes of meeting someone I might be able to catch a ride to Ushuaia with. It was a fun place to hang out regardless, full of fascinating people, and also had the town’s best internet signal (there are, it turned out, three places in Puerto Williams with an internet signal: the town library with terrible slow internet in a cramped space, the town museum with somewhat less slow internet that cut out often but in a really nice spot, and the yacht club which was about on par with the museum but had the distinct advantage of also having a bar). The first night back, this meant arriving with the intent of having a beer and seeing who was there, and leaving at 4am having drunk ALL the beers that the yachties and Chilean navymen kept buying me.

Inside the Club de Yates, coolest bar ever.

I had a great time there meeting and talking to people and especially enjoyed getting to know Ben and Anna (and their dog Osa), a San Franciscan couple my age who had sailed down from San Fran over the course of several years and were also looking to bum rides to Ushuaia in order to hop on a free trip to Antarctica that they had managed to charm their way onto.

My dancing all night after my trek got me two things: (1) very sick, and (2) an invitation to an asado at the yacht club the following day. The asado was being thrown at the club on Friday to welcome the sailors who were arriving for a friendship regatta being hosted by the Chilean Navy in order to celebrate the 60^th anniversary of the founding of Puerto Williams. Free wine, free food, and fun company? I do not say no to such things. At the asado, my host and I put out the word that I was looking for a ride, but there were no bites. Still, I got to meet some real characters including the famous Charlie Porter, a glaciologist (officially a research associate at the University of Maine) living out of his two boats and house in Puerto Williams, but in one of his previous lives was a pioneering (and still legendary) big-wall rock climber in Yosemite and Patagonia.

On Saturday the folks at DAP had suggested that I show up at 11:30 at the airport to ask the captain if he could squeeze another passenger on what I assumed was an afternoon flight (since I asked at DAP if I needed to bring all my luggage with me and they said no). Apparently this is pretty standard there and my chances were actually decent—if they weren’t hauling a lot of stuff, they might have weight left over for me. So I slowly dragged my sick, wheezing self the 40 minute hike to the airport from town. I made it almost all the way there at shortly after 11 when, first, a plane took off (this worried me). Shortly thereafter a car full of carabineros who were dropping a friend off for a flight drove by (this unworried me somewhat) and picked me up. We arrived just as a vehicle full of the folks I recognized from my many trips to the DAP office was departing, and they told us that the flight had already left. It turns out that the staff at the Puerto Williams DAP office have no idea when their own planes leave.

Bridge on the way to the airport.

My carabinero friend was furious in the totally calm, joking Chilean way (tip from Charlie Porter: “The key in Chile is you never, ever lose your cool. Chileans communicate in jokes when they get pissed off.”), since he had also been told to show up at 11:30, and he was a ticket-carrying passenger. We spent an uncomfortable hour back in the DAP office trying to wrangle our way onto the evening flight, although at that point I never wanted to set foot in the DAP office again, having written them all off as utterly useless.

We were promised that if we returned to the airfield at 7:30 pm, the carabinero would have a ride and I might be able to squeeze on as well. To me this meant that there might be a flight leaving sometime that evening but they definitely wouldn't have room for either of us when we showed up, but I kept my mouth shut and agreed when the carabinero told me to meet him at the police station at 6 pm to drive over nice and early (since he, too, did not trust the info from DAP).

Tired, sick, feeling quite miserable, frustrated, and hungry, I returned to Patty’s, stopping on the way at the waterfront to watch the regatta which was now fully underway and to catch my sick, wheezy breath. I cooked myself some soup and chatted with the latest arrivals. I told Patty my plans to leave at 6 pm and try to catch the afternoon flight and teared up when we said our “maybe goodbyes”.

It was the first time I had come close to crying in over a month. Walking back to the yacht club heavy-hearted it struck me how deeply the place had grabbed onto my heart. My wild soul had found a place wild enough to want to stay.

Colorful boats (with the Yaghan scenic ferry in the back right) in Puerto Williams

How I hitchhiked on a yacht to cross the Beagle Channel

I wandered back across town to the yacht club, feeling suddenly lonely and craving the company of friends. After chatting briefly with Ben and Anna I curled up on the upper inside deck of the club to catch up on emails, rest, work on getting a blog post up, try to map out my transport options, and update Serena on my transportation situation.

Suddenly Anna appeared with the news that they had found someone to catch a ride with, leaving the next morning to Ushuaia, and that if I asked there might be room for me as well but I’d need to commit right then because they were heading over to the port station to get their passports stamped out (since Puerto Williams is in Chile, and Ushuaia in Argentina). I waffled since if I could get onto the flight it would be a lot faster, but I decided to walk with them anyhow since I was going that way in order to meet the carabinero for our attempted flight-catching.

Sailboats participating in the Puerto Williams 60th Anniversary friendship regatta

On the way over, the yacht’s captain Marcel informed Ben and Anna that he wanted to leave that evening instead because bad weather was rolling in. When he said that, I jumped, thinking if I could get to Ushuaia that night I could catch the early morning bus on Sunday, get to Punta Arenas Sunday night, and be in Natales in plenty of time. So I put on my gutsy mooch pants and asked Marcel directly if there might be room for me, too. He gave a sort of noncommittal response, so once we got to the station I asked, directly again, feeling really awkward about being pushy but sufficiently driven by desperation. He said yes, sure, why not, and I promised to supply wine to seal the deal.

And that’s how it happened that my fourth experience hitchhiking in my life was on a yacht.

Iorana, Captain Marcel's yacht

I felt guilty about standing up the carabinero, but figured he would make it to the airport without me as Ben, Anna, and I handed over our passports and Captain Marcel checked us out of the country. I suggested Patty’s place as a place for dinner before we took off. Marcel laughed since he was friends with Patty and was already planning on having dinner there. Ben and Anna had to pack for Antarctica (how often do you get to say that?), so Marcel and I walked to Patty’s together.

We chatted on the way and Captain Marcel told me stories about how he’d landed in this part of the world. How he’d worked chartering trips (and still does) around Tierra del Fuego and Cape Horn. How he was now old enough to collect his Belgian pension and that it provided plenty to live on while he worked as a gaucho at Yendegaia. How he loved living without a phone and internet. How he had been married once for seven years and that was quite enough. How “I’m happy, I have no problems, I don’t want someone else’s problems.” And I could only nod my head and agree on that count.

Patty had a treat in store for us: a mountain of fresh king crab, the last of the season. I supplied the wine, an “expensive” (for Chile, where excellent wine is about as cheap as water) $12 USD bottle of Casillero del Diabalo 2012 Reserva Carmenere. Casillero del Diabalo is my favorite wine back home, and since discovering Carmenere in Chile it has become my favorite wine, and sweet shit this was good. Patty and Marcel and the others kept loading me up with so much crab that I felt like I wasn’t going to be able to walk. It was absurdly tasty on its own, and Patty makes a magic Mapuche merkén (like chipotle) spicy sauce (as well as a really good garlic mayonnaise, but her magic spicy sauce is my favorite) that made it mind-blowing. It was a meal that in a restaurant in Ushuaia—or anywhere else for that matter—probably would have run over $100. And that was just a regular dinner with friends at Patty’s place. (I miss her!)

There were several of these trays served up.

King Crab dinner at Patty's

Me, Captain Marcel, and Patty

It was around 10 pm when we wandered back to the boat, me with all my stuff, and loaded down with a belly-full of what must have been several pounds of crab. We grabbed Ben and Anna, hopped on the boat, untied from the Club de Yates, and were off. Marcel’s yacht, Iorana, was very comfortable, with a large aft cabin where he stores his wine and dried meats (and where we dropped our packs), a kitchen and dining table that converts to a large bed, a side couch, and a fore berth where Marcel slept. He set the autopilot and got up every few minutes to check on things while we sat and chatted. I was exhausted and although I  tried to stay awake and chat as long as I could, I soon fell asleep at the table for an hour, after which I was given permission to curl up in a corner and was out cold until we docked in Ushuaia at 4 am.

What I hadn't factored into my flash decision to take the boat was that I’d have to check in to Argentina before I’d be allowed to go anywhere, and the offices wouldn't be open until 9 am—well after the morning bus I had wanted to take had left (and as it turned out I wouldn't have been able to get on that bus even if the timing had worked out). Well, at least I’d get to sleep.

Marcel turned the boat radios off, determined to sleep as long as possible, and we all fell asleep to the sound of the thumping bass of a Saturday night party raging onshore. He woke us up at 10 am to go check in. We had breakfast (I supplied bread, butter, juice, and oranges, Ben and Anna supplied what fruit they had left from their boat, and Marcel spoiled us all with homemade rhubarb jam. We all waked over to the police station where they took their sweet-ass time (over an hour) checking us in. Then we said our goodbyes and scattered: Marcel to deal with customs, Ben and Anna to find their friend to help prep the boat for the trip to Antarctica, and me to try to book a bus ticket to Punta Arenas.

Anna on arrival in Ushuaia

Escaping Ushuaia

Ushuaia has no bus terminal, which made things difficult. Buses in Chile and Argentina generally cannot be booked online as a foreigner. The booking offices were all closed since it was a Sunday. At the info center I was told that word I hate so much, “imposible”, when I asked where or how I could secure myself a seat on a bus for the morning.

In fact, the info I was supplied at the info center was wrong. I had spent many hours in the previous days mapping out my transport options and knew that there was a Chilean bus company that at least in theory ran a bus Monday mornings from Ushuaia to Punta Arenas. When I asked at the info center about this bus, they said “no existe” and handed me a printout of the “complete” list of bus connections, which did not include the company that had the Monday bus. It later occurred to me that all of the companies on their list were Argentinian, which further confirmed my finding that Argentinians generally refuse to acknowledge that Chileans can do anything right (contrary to my experience, where Chilean outfits generally do the same thing for cheaper and in a more friendly way). They also told me that it was not possible to pay on board a bus in Argentina, and that because tomorrow was a holiday nothing would be open, so there was no possible way for me to leave Ushuaia until Tuesday. I didn't believe them.

Ushuaia is, however, a very beautiful town.

I was tired and grumpy and sick of information offices feeding me blatantly wrong information and being the absolute opposite of helpful. I started asking around town in shops and tourist agencies instead about where I could get a bus until finally one person pointed me down the street with the words, “5 blocks that way, be there at 6 am”. Sure enough, 5 blocks away, I found the office of a little tour agency with a little piece of paper taped in the window that showed the Monday bus I had seen on the internet leaving at 7 am.

I found a hostel that would let me pay $60 Argentine pesos (~$10 USD, depending on who you exchange money with) for a day of internet, use of their kitchen, and shower, and settled in, crossing my fingers that I could show up and get on that bus the next morning. Meanwhile, I randomly connected with an acquaintance from Bariloche who was in Ushuaia celebrating her very successful exams to be a tourism guide in Bariloche, and we caught up over dinner. I hope she makes it into the business soon, because, I had decided, competent providers of tourist information are desperately needed in this part of the world!

Marcel had generously offered to let me spend another night on the boat, so after dinner I wandered back to the boat, crawled into my sleeping bag (Marcel was off partying with boat friends), and woke up early the next morning (Marcel was out cold, so I left him a note to thank him and say goodbye) to see about the bus.

View of the boat mooring in Ushuaia at sunrise

I showed up at the tour office at 6 am, walking up the streets while the discos were still raging. There wasn't a soul to be seen outside except a stand of groggy police officers up early to keep drunk kids from getting into too much trouble. The tour office was dark, so I left a “I need a bus ticket!” note at the door and then tried to sneak into the hostel two blocks away for the shower that I hadn't used the previous day. I was caught by thoroughly disgruntled employee who I only confused with explanations, but in the end I think he was too tired to deal with me and gave up and let me shower. I was quick, and back at the tour office by 6:30, at which point the discos had dumped their load and the streets were full of kids who looked way too young to be drinking legally and girls in platform shoes and mini-dresses in the frigid cold while I was bundled up in a down jacket. The office was still dark, but I was relieved to see  a small crowd gathered outside.

I chatted with a man who turned out to be a Penguinologist from Oxford until the bus showed up and, much to my relief, they let me in without a ticket. Not only that, but they let me pay in Chilean pesos and gave me a very generous exchange rate that meant I paid about 60% of what I thought I was going to have to pay ($30000 CHP, which equals ~$60 USD). Score! I settled into my seat with Professor Penguin and breathed an enormous sigh of relief. Professor Penguin had celebrated his birthday the night before and a friend had baked him a cake, which he shared with me for breakfast. I felt like the luckiest person alive.

A final Ushuaia photo

After that it was 11 hours of tedium (= rest, sweet rest) interrupted only by a long hour and a half wait at the border crossing where, for some reason, they never bothered to stamp us out of Argentina. Then another stop at the ferry crossing across the Strait of Magellan between Rio Grande and Rio Gallegos where, because of huge swells they took us out of the bus and put us inside  (I didn't have time to grab my camera, so no photos or videos, sadly). This was fortunate because unlike all of the other long bus rides I had been on, this bus didn't feed us meals or snacks and I was getting hangry (= hungry + cranky, thanks Tom & Ellen for the brilliant word). Professor Penguin and I got hot dogs.

Punta Arenas to Puerto Natales: the final leg

We arrived in Punta Arenas at 6 pm, and 10 minutes before our arrival I was informed at all of the buses continuing to Natales for the next 24 hours were full. By this point this neither surprised nor phased me, I just asked about other bus companies and the bus steward actually called ahead for me and made me a reservation with another company. Because—I know this may come as a shock to my Argentinian readers (giving you guys shit, but you know I love you)—Chileans are helpful! And nice!

We pulled into Punta Arenas, I hugged Professor Penguin goodbye (he was transferring between two Antarctic trips to visit his penguin colonies), and the bus steward gave me directions to the other bus company. On my way I was tempted to stop and get dinner—food other than hot dogs and cake and cookies—but thought I’d check in first just to be safe. I showed up and was immediately whisked onto an earlier bus. Food can wait. I was finally on the final leg to meet my friends!

Surprise friend addition to the birthday tour: Anneke, my Australian friend I had met in Bariloche.
No one got swagger like Anneke.

I arrived in Natales three hours later (after a total of 14 hours sitting on buses) at around 9:30 pm. I set off from the bus station confidently, with a carefully-drawn map that I had made up with the help of the Internets in Ushuaia the day before in hand—only to end up standing in the rain, confused, turning in circles, trying to figure out where I was, hopelessly lost, because Natales had built a new bus terminal that was well off the edge of my nice little map. But less than a minute later someone came to my aid and the chatty, frighteningly made-up but good-hearted woman walked me most of the way to the hostel while telling me her entire life’s story.

I arrived at 10 pm where I was greeted by the hostel owner, who was expecting me thanks to my Bariloche pal Anneke who managed to make it down to join us for the trek and who had arrived the day prior. I was so very relieved to see Anneke, a familiar face, a friend to go play with. Anneke even fed me. I slept like a rock that night. The next morning at 8 am, Serena and Eric were there with their rental car, and off we went to our trek in Torres.

On the road with Eric

Bus to the end of the world

I took a bus from Bariloche to Ushuaia. It took 36 hours, and covered over 2000 miles of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego. For my U.S. friends, that's like taking a bus in a straight shot from the border of Canada to the border of Mexico, with about 80% of the drive through scenery reminiscent of the mojave desert (but a good portion of that was at night). It was pretty rad.

36 hours watching Argentina go by in my La-Z-Boy on Wheels. My seat was the one in the window at the upper right.

What follows is the 36 hours in all of their detail, as narrated by the voice in my head. In case you've ever wanted to spend 36 hours inside my head. Also a lot of pictures of bus food because most of the photos I took of the landscape didn't turn out but the pictures of food did.

Or, for the scenery without the words, here's the video (cut down significantly from 36 hours to 4:20 minutes, you're welcome).

The play-by-play

06:15  My friends at the Green House Hostel had thrown an asado the night before my departure, and so I was full of wine, beer, and Fernet when I went to bed, and still full of it when I woke up 40 minutes before my alarm when the sun rose. I showered, then attempted to pack without waking up the six snoring guys and two not-snoring girls in my hostel dorm room.

08:35  Brian the hostel owner called me a taxi as I scarfed down my breakfast in my normal frantic way. I have Brian a hug, "Voy a te extraño!" The Green House people had been my family for the month, and I really was going to miss them.

08:50  I arrived at the bus station, dropped my backpacking backpack in the luggage bay, and boarded with my remaining two bags: my backpacking backpack, my little school backpack full of Spanish homework and my computer, and a third bag full of food for the 36 hour journey: bananas, water, chopped up bell peppers, mandarins, crackers, cookies, and a half kilo of good dark chocolate from Bariloche's legendary Mamuschka. I settled into my VIP seats (the advantage of booking early--you get to pick your seats) on the top deck of the double-decker Marga bus in the front, my glass bubble for the next 24 hours. The bus was empty so I "nested" by spreading my mountain of stuff all across the front row. Anyone who has ever been on a road trip with me can guess what this looked like.

And for those of you who have never been on a road trip with me, "the nest" looked something like this.

09:05  The bus departed and rolled through Bariloche. The upper deck gave a different vantage point on the city that had been my home for a month. We passed the slum part of town, which I hadn't seen before, small shacks squished up against the huge city garbage dump just north of town, with Cerro Cathedral and Cerro Otto in the background as the bus joined the legendary Ruta 40.

The view as we pulled out of Bariloche

09:20  OMG Road trip!!! I love road trips!! There were lakes and pointy snow-capped peaks streaming past my windows on all sides. My excitement built, I couldn't contain a grin, and might have even let out a squee. As each minute brought new and more spectacular peaks with storm-colored lakes at their feet and hills and meadows full of scotch broom and dandelions accenting the layers of green, purple, red, orange, and magenta of the mountains and the sky with pinkish clouds. I kept thinking "most spectacular effing road trip ever!" (and I've been on some pretty spectacular road trips).


09:45  The bus passed the turnoff to Tronador. I felt a pang of sadness about leaving my splitboard behind. I wondered where my badass guide friend Melitta was in her Patagonian adventures.

10:00  Passed a pair of cyclists. What an incredible trip that would be, I thought. I thought about the shoulder injury I developed during my last big cycling trip (a month through the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, and Eastern Germany), realized it was over 7 years ago, felt sad that I haven't managed to heal my shoulder yet and get back on a bike, and nostalgic about what a great way to travel it had been. I had done that trip and other memorable adventures around Europe with my boyfriend of the time, a long relationship that was difficult and rocky from the start but held together by the glue of our mutual love of outdoor adventures. Although after the breakup both of us had felt bitter about all the time (6 years) we had "wasted", I realized in retrospect I wouldn't trade that time for anything. I did so many cool things with him and I learned so much. He didn't mean to be a confidence-shattering, insufferable asshat. He had done the best he knew how to do, and gave me some very happy memories. At the same time, I felt very glad that relationship was long over and that both of us had moved on in our lives. As I thought about the cyclists with the mountains rolling past my fishbowl windows, I felt layers of scars, having healed, dropping off.

Mountain, viewed from my Fishbowl of Awesome

10:30  When dreaming about this South America trip, I had originally had big plans to drive the whole way, and would often daydream of driving for endless hours in the wild wasteland of Patagonia. Dreamed of the music I would listen to, the things I would see, the freedom I would feel. Here I was on a bus, certainly a different experience but, I thought, far more comfortable and relaxed. I realized that I was sitting there, watching my childhood and adult dreams come true as the mountains continued to roll past. I felt achingly happy.

10:40  Crossed a turquoise-covered river with views of distant mountains covered in snow. There were a few wood lean-tos announcing a small human population, but not much else.

More mountains. Curva peligrosa = dangerous curves.

11:20  I woke up from a short catnap to a caramel-filled dark chocolate on a napkin on my armrest, a gift from the Canadians sitting behind me. The bus arrived in El Bolson, with horses being ridden down the main streets, little hippie shops, lupine lining the road in their pink and purples, and huge mountains looming at the outskirts of town. "Mom would love it here," I thought, as I savored the chocolate.

11:40  The Canadians and I made lunch, combining our food stashes: baguettes smeared with butter and meat pate with some of my sliced bell peppers. It was filling and we felt clever, having brought such a nice picnic with us.

11:45  The bus steward came upstairs with trays to serve us lunch: raviolis, cornbread, little savory pastries, rice with carrots and peas, and juice. This came as a complete surprise to the Canadians and me. Not one to ever waste food, I shoveled it in, and felt utterly and overly stuffed.

Lunch #1

12:00  Uuuuuuhgggghhhhhh why did I eat so much? But I still couldn't keep my hands out of my bag o' chocolate. Someone please take it away!!

12:10  Chubut. The landscape looked like Wyoming with big snow-topped mountains on the right side and rolling steppe to the left. This was the Patagonia of my imagination. Road still paved, despite rumors of this trip being a poorly-maintained dirt road nightmare.

12:20  The driver's assistant curtained off half of my fishbowl windows, reducing my view to half. Tempted to open them back up, but don't want to be That Entitled Jerk who keeps the rest of the bus from napping.

12:40  Now I'm napping, too. Zzzzzzzzzzzz

13:45  Stop in Esquel with a 10 minute bathroom break. It took me 5 just to extracate myself from my seat-nest. No toilet paper in the bathroom. Good thing I had my tissues on me.

14:00  On the road again. There's some movie playing in the background involving the pope...and aliens? There's a stargate or something. And religious opera music. Ooooh, I hear Tom Hanks, I know what this is.

14:20  Flamingos! Hanging out in a salt pond. No photos, blew by them too fast.

15:00  Tubut. There's a big Argentine flag and a road sign: Las Malvinas son Argentinas. This would not be the last of these huge signs I'd see on the trip. I had been warned: never ever ever call them the Falklands in Argentina.

15:30  Now I'm suddenly driving south on Hwy 395 with desert on my left, snowy dry mountains on my right, driving south along the Eastern Sierras. I've been here dozens of times before. Except this time I'm in the magic rolling La-Z-Boy that I always wished I had for the drive. I pulled out my Spanish books, I schlepped four of them with me, hoping to do enough review so that I could abandon them somewhere and stop hauling them around. Over 6 weeks later as I finally write this post, I'm still hauling them around.

Hi, Eastern Sierras. Except in Argentina.

16:00  Stop in Chubut.

17:00  It's now a less-dry version of the Mojave. The road is smaller and older, but the scenery is the same. I flew across the world to road trip through California.

17:30  Pavement ended. Dirt road started.

18:10  Back on pavement in scrub desert.

19:00  The road signs no longer say Ruta 40. Still in the desert, but still pavement. Braved my first on-bus toilet experience since I brilliantly timed this trip for a heavy day of my period. Dealing with the DivaCup on the bus was a surprisingly non-unpleasant experience.

19:20  Lake! Big lake! Looks like the sort of place that would have good microbial mats. Alas, no stop.

20:20  Desert desert desert. Onto Kindle reading now: Cheryl Strayed's Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar. Downloaded this out of curiosity when I saw it mentioned in her list of books after finishing Wild (her bestseller about her time on the Pacific Crest Trail). Admit to crying several times at particularly touching stories and responses. Say what you will about Cheryl Strayed, but we could all learn from her empathy and kind way of viewing humanity.

Oil derrick at sunset in Patagonia

21:00  Now it really looks like California, oil derricks everywhere. They kind of look pretty at sunset.

21:20  Dinner served. The food on this trip has been surprisingly good (if very benadryl-requiring for this allergic-to-milk-products-and-eggs little defective human)

. All that's lacking is a bottle of wine.

Dinner

The final rays of sun reflected in the bus window.

21:30  Wait...is that the ocean? Where are we?

21:45  Now the ocean is on my right. This is all wrong. I am so confused.

21:50  Okay, ocean is back on my left. I think this is acceptable...

22:45  Sleep.

01:20  Stars! Look at those stars!!

05:15  Sunrise over the pampas.

07:20  Breakfast.

That's right, breakfast. Cake, cookies, and candy.

08:30  We were supposed to be in Rio Gallegos by now. We're still in the Pampas. My bus connection to Ushuaia is in 30 mins. Will I make it?

08:45  Still no Rio Gallegos in sight.

08:50  In the outskirts of Rio Gallegos. Asked the bus driver if I'll make my connection or what my options are. Bus driver briefly panicked, then called ahead. My bus will wait for me.

09:00  I am packed and ready to jump off this bus.

09:13  Bus pulled into the bus station at Rio Gallegos. I was quickly ushered off, my bags found and thrown into the bus to Ushuaia, and swept onto the Ushuaia bus. My Canadian friends still sleeping, I didn't get to say goodbye.

09:15  Ushuaia bus departed, the assistant handed out Chilean immigration cards. But...Ushuaia...is in Argentina... Chile? I looked at a map. Oh, duh. I suck at geography. Do I have any food products to declare? Yeah, only a giant grocery bag full. Let the frantic eating fest begin! Also, if they confiscate my chocolate I'm going to throw a screaming crying fit.

This is a photo of the sun starting to go down the day prior, but I ran out of photos for this part of the story.

09:30  Reading Charles Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle, which seemed appropriate reading given my destination. I now have an easy answer to that "If you could go back in time and meet any person, who would it be?" question: I would go back and apply for the job of cabin wench on the Beagle and relentlessly follow young Darwin around on his adventures. I love the mix of nerdy observation and absolute joy he takes in the beautify of the natural world. Charles Darwin, I want to look at your slightly phosphorescent self-regenerating jumping pyrophores in your cabin with you.

Prior to being one of history's most recognized names in science, Charles Darwin was a kid who loved being outside, loved collecting beetles and studying geology, and annoyed his father by not being too interested in medicine. One day during summer break he comes home to a letter offering him a spot as a 'gentleman naturalist' (i.e. his dad would have to pay his way) and companion to Captain Fitz Roy aboard the H.M.S. Beagle for a planned 2 year voyage (it ended up being 5) around the world with a focus on developing hydrographic maps of and surveying coastal Brazil, Argentina, and Chile as well as returning a few kidnapped natives of Tierra del Fuego to their native lands.

He was 22 when he left aboard the Beagle. He was still learning: studying books--especially on Geology--given to him during the voyage by Fitz Roy. Reading the Voyage of the Beagle is like watching a movie of Darwin's formation as a scientist. The best part is he was young, and had a passion for adventure, asking Fitz Roy to let him off on land to, say, ride a while across the pampas with gauchos or climb a mountain. While sitting in the bus reading, I developed a serious crush on young Darwin (even if he was only 22...).

Here's one of my favorite endearing passages, about Darwin playing gaucho and trying to use bolas:

"One day, as I was amusing myself by galloping and whirling the balls round my head, by accident the free one struck a bush, and its revolving motion being thus destroyed, it immediately fell to the ground, and, like magic caught one hind leg of my horse; the other ball was then jerked out of my hand, and the horse fairly secured...The Gauchos roared with laughter; they cried out that they had seen every sort of animal caught, but had never before seen a man caught by himself."

10:00  Border. Saw and chatted with a Korean guy I met in the hostel in Bariloche, random. I got another pair of stamps in my passport, bringing the South America count to six. We will get at least two more today and even more in the days to come. This is starting to look like my previous passport with the pages full of Slovakia/Poland stamps from biking back and forth across the border along the Tatras. So far, I still have my chocolate. The world is safe.

10:45  Still at the border. Made a bathroom stop. This one was less fun with the DivaCup: hovering over a shit-smeared toilet seat in a bathroom with no soap and non-working sinks while trying to wipe out and empty the cup with nothing but kleenex without getting my hands too bloody...ick. It's been nice on the bus trip generally but the changing thing is still a trick I haven't quite gotten used to. Those assholes better let me keep my chocolate or heads are gonna roll.

11:10  Border checks complete. They let me keep my chocolate. Thank God.

11:15  I'm in Chile. Plains, ocean, sheep, and guanacos. This is the other side of Patagonia!

11:45  We arrived at the end of mainland South America. Loaded the bus onto a ferry to cross the Strait of Magellan (another one of those almost mythical places that I am totally geeking out about visiting). We didn't even get out of the bus, bus just drove right onto the ferry, no big deal, ferry crosses the Magellan, as we cross lunch is served. We offload from the ferry into Tierra del Fuego. Tierra del Fuego! I made it!!

Lunch. Eaten, of course, in the fully-reclined La-Z-Boy position. Not sure what half of this was, but I'm pretty sure it was egg and cheese. More benadryl.

12:10  Phone battery died. Using my solar charger for the first time on this South America trip. Lunch must have had cheese somewhere I didn't see, loaded myself up with Benadryl. Naptime.

12:50  More flamingos! Still no photos, though.

13:10  Dirt road begins.

13:30  And now...I'm in Scotland? Sheep everywhere. Except there are also guanacos.

14:50  I really, really have to poop. But No Pooping Allowed on the Bus (there are actually signs that say this). Popped a mystery blue pill (not so mystery: immodium to stop me up for a while).

15:00  Border crossing number 2 at San Sebastian, the air is significantly cooler here. They have bathrooms! Hooray! After doing my business (and, yes, washing my hands) I ran into the Mainguys--my French friends from the Green House hostel. Friends! Also heading to Ushuaia on a different bus! I was so busy chatting with them that my bus almost left without me.

16:00  Still in the Land of Many Sheep. Sheep, sheep, nothing but sheep. I am out of water. Do I open up the box of juice? If I open the juice, I'm almost certainly going to make a giant mess of spilled juice everywhere at some point.

16:30  I opened the juice.

The Juice

17:15  Naptime. Sheep sheep sheep sheep sheepzzszzzzzz

17:50  Woke up to a very different view. Is this Darwin's "impenetrable forest"? No more sheep.

18:00  I SEE MOUNTAINS!!!!

18:30  Aaaaand, now I'm in Norway (bus trip: North Cascades to the Eastern Sierra to the Mojave to Patagonia to Scotland to Norway). Oh I love mountains. Love love love mountains. Not just "I think mountains are beautiful and I appreciate them" love mountains but "this bus just turned a corner and there's a  really good-looking mountain and now my heart is beating all crazy and I want to jump out of the bus and run up to it and give it a giant hug" love mountains.

19:30  This place is stunning. Wow. Huge mountains, sparkling lakes and sounds, more huge mountains...wow.

19:45  Ushuaia sign, really? We're...early??

20:00  Arrival, a full hour early. Unheard of! Now, to find a hostel...

Ushuaia! The "end of the world" (= fin del mundo) sign.