Ana_Ride to Bariloche

What a mission! From El Calafate to Bariloche 44 hours in a bus. Fun I know. We tried flying to Bariloche but there were no flight until March. The only way we found was taking Route 40 to Bariloche. It was suppose to take 36hrs but we were delayed 10 hours. Long story short the bus was late leaving for some mechanical reason so it was about midnight when we took off. Then next morning around 10am the bus stops in the middle of no where. There was another bus on the opposite direction stuck in the mud. Rain the night before and dirt roads not a good combo. So the bus took a chance and tried to get around it and NO LUCK. We were STUCK for 9 hours. At first we watch movies and it wasn´t that bad. Around 5pm we all were getting anxious. I was one of the few that spoke Spanish and English. So they were looking at me for answers. The bus driver, really cool guy just spoke Spanish. I kept asking for information. Thank goodness we got help around 6ish. A trackor got us out. I was SOOOOOOOO HAPPY!

We were on the road again for few hours. We stopped around 10:30pm for a bit to eat. Yeah, literally a bite to eat. We stopped in the middle of no where, it looked like a house. Not really a restaurant just a small market/kiosco. The owner, very nice man, said I only have bread and ham no cheese. Literally he brought the bag of bread out with some ham. At that point we were all really hungry and bread & ham was better than nothing.

In the place we met to bikers from Califronia (San Francisco and LA). They trip started in Alaska and they were riding their motorcycle all the way down to Argentina. Crazy. The briefly told us about their journey so far. The roads were really bad that day for them too so they didn´t get very far. Very nice guys. I was so fascinated by their adventure. The one guy, Sasha has been riding for 8 months. Really cool to see people from Cali.I have to say California is starting to be like home. I know I´ve had few homes and now Cali is my new home.
It felt great to find people from Southern California.

Finally we made it to Bariloche the next day at 8:30pm at night. I was so done with buses. I was cranky and I just wanted to get to the hostel. We wanted to figure out our next leg of the trip which is Pucon in Chile. We went to the tourist office and the lady was not very helpful. So we decided to take a cab to the hostel. The best idea of the day.

It was so nice to see the friendly face at the reception. Christian was so welcoming that it made all better in seconds. We took a nice warm shower. It felt so nice to stand there under the water.

One thing about this trip so far is that I don´t take things for granted. The smallest things make so happy and I appreciate them better. Like warm showers, warm showers.