Onwards to Patagonia

All good things seem to end so quickly, especially with us having to depart from the beautiful Colonia del Sacramento so soon. But there’s still much more to look forward to as this part of the trip could just be one of the most exciting sections. All will be revealed in time! Finalising plans was the main activity on the Buquebus ferry back to Buenos Aires, other than a short nap. On arrival back in Argentina at eleven o’ clock at night, we were a little bit puzzled on what to do about getting to the airport, especially since the number thirty-three bus which we needed seemed to pass us at the bus stop even when we were flapping our arms up and down frantically like penguins just to flag in down. We probably waited for almost an hour before deciding to make way for Retiro, Buenos Aires’ central bus station. It was dodgy as sin! It was fairly lonely and two stray dogs chased cars, again barking mad, and one poor cyclist got the rough end, although it became apparent that they weren’t out to attack but only to scare. After another thirty minutes or so in this dark area we asked a local where to catch the bus to the Aeroparque (the smaller airport in the city that largely operates domestic flights) and he pointed us to a distant section of the bus bay, where there were just two other people waiting for their transport. After they had been picked up we were the only ones there even though there were people talking and lying on benches in a small park across the narrow road.
We had been spotted by a poor, hungry young boy who was definitely undernourished and when he came over asking for some food we took great pity and gave him one of the cheese spread rolls that we made for our midnight snack. A taller boy then came over and he looked in an equally bad state with scruffy clothes and a thick blanket round his shoulders. He was also hungry and Jon put his hand into the supply of cheese rolls and passed him one as well. “Pan de Queso”, he said as he passed it to the lad. The only snag was that Jon had completely forgotten to put cheese in one of the rolls and he looked somewhat miffed and screwed it up in his hand. “Oh! Desculpe!”, said Jon apologetically as he reached and passed him another, this time with cheese in it! Both boys then started getting nasty and got their pens of weapon out in a threatening way shouting, “Money, Camera, Money!”. Since these kids looked high on glue or something, they probably weren’t fully aware of what they were doing so we chose not to thump each one in the ear. “Te matar!”, they continued, which we believe means “I’m going to kill you!”. The two halfwits probably thought that their pens were machine guns of some sort. Anyway we both remained calm and insisted that we had no money. They looked at us confused as to why we weren’t scared and went on their way! However, we didn’t hang around in case they had more of an army round the corner so we bailed and got a taxi. In fact the taxi was that cheap that we really don’t know why we just didn’t get one in the first place.
The sunrise over Buenos Aires as we got on the plane was beautiful, and there were amazing views of Tierra del Fuego as we stopped in Ushuaia (temperature: 5oC!) We arrived in El Calafate, a surprisingly large town in Southern Patagonia, where the temperature was a pleasant 12 degrees. The main street consists almost entirely of gift shops, expensive restaurants (ouch, we were stung for a pizza and ravioli) and a casino. We headed straight for a small camp site on the edge of town to save a few Pesos and to acclimatise for our forthcoming trek into the wilderness.