Day: 186
That was pretty much the plan for the day, other than a little wandering and reading poolside.
Day: 184
I made it to Mendoza just before 9am this morning, and with Evon, a Dutch girl I meant on the bus we set out to find a hostel and get situated in this new province. It was no problem to find a bed, and after a quick breakfast, we wandered into town looking for whatever was going on and to get a layout of the land. Before we knew it hunger from eating shitty bus food caught up with us. We found a street side cafe and ordered some sandwiches and a beer.
I had just finished my sandwich, and was carrying on a decent conversation when a local walks by, pulls his cell phone out of his pocket and drops his keys.
“Senor!” I yelled. No response.
“Senor!” Nothing. I grabbed his keys and chased him the 10 yards to get him back his keys.
“Gracias.” He thanked me. When I turned back to my seat everyone was looking at another man now crossing the street behind where I was sitting. with my bag and chair sitting on the corner.
The other man, while I was distracted returning the keys, had grabbed my daypack (complete with passport, Ipod and the $1700 70-200mm lens I had) and tried to walk of with it (my camera was on my shoulder). While, obviously, in their criminal recon it didn’t occur to them that I had clipped my pack to the chair I was sitting in, and when he tried to walk off with it he also dragged the chair behind him. This made such an awful racket that the Evon, the waiter, and two other tables of people who had been watching me return the keys, turned and stared at him. He quickly decided his cover was blown, dropped my bag/chair combo on the corner and ran across the street. It happened so quick that it took everyone a second to realize what was going on.
When I got back to the table, I was dumbfounded by what had happened. These guys were like lightning. I have heard stories, and read about it on the Internet, never thinking it would happen to me. Also, I always feel kind of lame clipping into furniture like I am repelling. I guess after a year of being cautious I just needed a reminder not to go slack on my lame security measures, because it was all that was needed to foil these shady fuckers.
I also guess I can’t be nice anymore. No one gets their keys back now!
Day:183
I took exactly five pictures today. Four of the sunrise on my way to the bus station, (might be the second ever sunrise pic on “Mom Says…”) and one of the bus around four in the afternoon at a stop. Other than that my day involved sitting in the last row staring at the seat in front of me and listening to the entire 20 hours of music my Ipod provides before it dies.
Day: 182
Sometimes people have told me life can overwhelm at times. While I have briefly experinced this at moments in my life, today was easily the exact opposite. Just sitting on the beach, drinking beers and people watching can quickly force you to lose touch with any form of reality(although, perhaps, my reality is already skewed compared to others).
It was Alessandro, Eleanor and my last day traveling together before we all set off on different routes. Alessandro was going further up the Atlantic coast to visit an Argentine friend, Eleanor was going to Buenos Aires to meet another Aussie then travel onward to Rio in Brazil for Caranval, and at 7:30 tomorrow morning I must once again climb aboard a bus to take me the last 1500 miles (and 24 hrs) out of Patagonia and into the Argentine wine country of Mendoza. Quite exciting, they serve the best food on buses (once again sarcasm)!
Anyhow, be ready for another exciting bus post tomorrow! I know they are the best ones of this whole trip. I guess all the time in buses is my purgatory for the life I lead, and one I will gladly accept.
Day: 181
I don´t really feel like writing to much today. Here are some pictures of a day spent biking a dirt road with Alessandro, Ellie, and a pair of British girls. We saw Sea lions, had a badass beach picnic complete with wine that I had carried on my back for 20 kilometers. The best part of my day was seeing the diagram of Sea Lion sex.
Day: 180
Finally getting off the bus around 2pm, I staggered into the beach town of Puerto Madryn, Argentina. Alessandro, Ellie and I quickly wandered the town (thankful to not be sitting) and found a little hostel. We made lunch and decided on an afternoon of no great activity, just recovery time. You´d be surprised what that much time on a bus will do to you.
The day went on mellowly (not sure if thats a word), with a few cups of coffee, a few bottles of wine and a dinner at a seafood place a couple blocks from bed.
I tried, but the today I really felt my creativity waning.
Day:179
As the title explains, today isn´t going to be exceptionally interesting. By 11am the three of us were on a bus out of Chile into Rio Gallagos, Argentina. A few border crossings and we made it there a little before 6pm.
With the Lonely Planet, and my own powers of observation quickly realizing there was nothing to do here, we bought more tickets to continue north the 1000 miles to Puerto Madryn. A resort beach town on the atlantic in central Argentina. Still classified as Patagonia though.
Our second bus didn´t leave foor a couple of hours so we found a little cafe for some coffees, a bottle of wine and a couple plates of papas fritas (fries).
The bus ride, other than the excitement of first class-like seats and the entertainment of You, Me, and Dupree, was lame (the movie too, was lame. I give no recommendation of it). Listened to a lot of music and Eleanor and I both finally took sleeping tablets she had to pass out around 2am.
Day: 178
The priority of today was, of course, to see some penguins. The tours didn´t leave until later on in the evening so Alex, Eleanor and I started our day with a late start (much due to the late night from the day before) then it was off to the gigantic graveyard just outside of town which houses some huge musoleums as well as graves stacked atop each other for the lower classes of Chilien society.
Bored of death, we went for a cafe con leche and passed a slow afternoon in a cafe on the main street anticipating our evening among flightless birds.
Our tour guide (who was actually just a taxi driver) picked us up at our hotel and took the long road to get us out to the penguin colony, about an hour away. Eleanor and I (Alex had declined, saying he had seen penguins before) had extreme fun taunting these little guys and learning how to speak penguin (which is more difficult than one might expect.). Our “tour” was far too quick, it being the actual first nice afternoon (weather wise) we had in a long time, but before long we were on our way back to the hostel.
Back at the hostel (later):
“I just checked my e-mail and realized it´s Austrailia day!” Eleanor (being an Aussie) said to me.
I figured it was some big doings down under from the excitement on her face and asked “Well, how does one celebrate Austrailia day?”
“Normally we just get drunk and grill something…” Me, being a man who is always willing to indulge in the culture of others, was happy to be deputized as an honorary Aussie for the evening and forced to drink excessive amounts of booze.
Sometime later I asked what the day celebrated, and to my amazement she actually didn´t know. She figured it was important and we just decided to figure it out later, seeing as we were already deep in celebration.
Day: 177
Getting into Punta Arenas in the early afternoon with Alex and Eleanor there wasn’t much to do. We found the soonest bus ticket to get back into Argentina which was the morning of the day after tomorrow. The only real draw of Punta Arenas is it’s nearby Penguin colony and since we had a couple of days we planned that for tomorrow and set out to find lunch.
Lunch took place at a small Chilien dive bar, with many rounds of beer, lots of meat and many more beers it was soon time for a siesta. The afternoon flew by.
By early evening we were just sobering up, we decided on a walk and dinner(primarly to find a couple of pictures).
“Want to get drunk?” she asked me around 9pm.
“Sure”
It wasn’t long before we had bought a bottle of Stoli and were blowing the rest of the night in a vodka induced haze.
So far this town is treating me well.
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