Road to nowhere

25/4 Petrified forest, tick. Leave sleepy Sarmiento on next short hop.. 6-hours to Esquel. The bus is nearly empty (with 2 services running daily the whole of Sarmiento could probably leave within a week, what keeps the bus company in business, and the town populated, is a mystery)

Top deck, front-seat position affords me spectaculars views... of just about nothing. Buts it's actually quite refreshing after all the diverse scenery of weeks gone by.

But the emptiness doesn't last long (except in my heart of course, cue violins)

Esquel
26/4 Arrive at Esquel, a random destination chosen because it was the end of the line. I try the latin-american approach to finding accomodation, i.e. don't plan anything, and find myself in a hostel full of ... latin americans. Neat trick, i make a mental note to try this more often. The opposite approach is to go online and book an entirely English-speaking hostel which has 95% rating for its cool vibe, and equal rating for proportion of travellers on their laptops booking their next destination online for an entirely English-speaking hostel which has a 95% rating for its cool...

Oops sorry got stuck in an infinite loop there. Where was I? Esquel. But not for long. Was hoping to catch one of the few trains left in South America, but sadly it only ran on Saturdays, and I had pressing nothings to get to in the next town.

Bariloche

27/4 Arrive Bariloche (aka Braziloche, due to number of Brazilians who come here skiing)
Pretty little town which makes nice chocolate and tasty beauty queens.

But my life is feeling empty like this pool out of season. Then for a moment I see the light, but I meet some hippies and eat this wild apple..

I also meet probably the maddest but also warmest and liveliest Spanish teacher in Argentina. She lives in a tiny studio room with her 10-year-old son and cat. Her name is Ivone and you can find her advertisement on the noticeboard of a local supermarket, Todo. She is a great teacher and less expensive than going to a local language school.

So I decide to stick around to study a bit, and if I'm going to be miserable I may as well do it in confort... the hostel I'm staying in is a penthouse apartment with spectacular views and a wonderful lounge in which to ponder, read, or doodle your heart out...

In the hostel I meet an aussie couple on an 8-month honeymoon, that's quite an impressive honeymoon. They're a friendly couple and together we plot to undertake a road-trip together. That i'd only driven maybe 3 weeks in my life, in 2 hire cars, and crashed one, were small details that didn't enter into planning. Which is just as well, since two days later as I rallied our 2WD hirecar over the mountains on muddy dirt-tracks they probably would have gotton out and walked the 60 miles of no-mans land we had to cross. Instead they just prayed we wouldn't slide off the narrow tracks into the chasm below.

6/5 Night before setting off on roadtrip. I get last minute nerves and it takes me a while to realise why, but when I do -- that I just need to identify and assert my needs regarding the itinery -- i'm happy. Which is good because we have a great time, and Gus & Jess are great travel buddies.

The 6th May was also the return date for my flight back to London, which would have been tricky to catch because I was more than 4000km from Rio airport. So I changed my ticket, pushing it forward by about a year. Ok enough of that.

And finally, Happy Birthday Geraldine... I miss you. X

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