Contingencies

When I went to collect the bus ticket from the ticket booking place it turned out they hadn't booked them. For all Argentina's strengths, one thing one learns here is that you can plan a logical doable route from A to D, via B & C, and somewhere along the way an Argentinean ticket agency will cock everything reet up. Bus companies cancel your booked bus with no reason, domestic flights traditionally leave late (and sometimes, I've heard, hours early) and other times the tickets given are just wrong. Today though, the ticket agency just straight hadn't booked the bus. And it was now full.

Yey.

You've got to keep contingency plans up the old sleveses. It's a factor of travel world-wide, but seemingly more important here than other places I've mosied through. Apparently, one day recently, of five flights leaving Ushuia three were cancelled. So instead of wait a day for the bus V & I book a flight from Ushuia to El Calafatte the same day.

Having thought Lady Luck had other things on, she glanced on and helped us aboard our flight for a punctual departure. Sat in possibly the nosiest tristar ever (engines attatched just behind my window), I reflected on the fact that for an extra 25 of my meaty sterling poundses, I'd turned an evil 20 hour nightbus into a 1 hour flight. There's the silver line. Plus once airborne, and flying the whole journey at low altitude, Valerie and I get to spy the dark Andean giant mountains turn to crazy red and blue lakeland, then to sea, an odd pockmarked moonscape & finally to open brushy desert. Choice.

Two disappointingly dry queso y jamon sangas and a half cup a coke and we're in a shared taxi to El Calafatte town with two randoms. The taxi has the seemingly compulsory cracked windscreen and an amusing old driver keen on laying out the facts in his breast English. 'El Calafatte is equidistant latitude to London, in the South'. No surprise really, it looks pretty similar. Apart from all the desert, the brush & tumbleweed, the ridiculously big sky and huge lake, the 80km/h winds and the town itself, which on first inspection resembles a makeshift refugee camp. It's a 45 minute ride from the airport to the town, and the less-than-busy tourist information sits alone, slap-bang half-way between. Good tinkin. The place is so unforgiving & desolate, thry could just put up an A-board outside saying 'There's nothing to see here'.

The town itself is completely bent on tourism, dressed in rodeo-chic ('faux-dio'?). Wood-fronted restaurant after souvenir shop after restaurant after bar after souvenir shop line one long and overpriced main strip. You want a stuffed penguin? A cowfoot mug? A 12-inch hunting knife? A full horse hide poncho? You got it.

Though be warned, although possibly twenty ATM's are dotted along the drag, they are merely for show. You'll have to try at least 5 cajeho automatico's before finding one that dispenses wonga. More often than not they'll have a hand-written sheet of A4 taped over the screen saying 'Out of Order' in Espanol. But when you find one that works, you'll be allowed to withdraw a daily maximum of 50 whole quid in crispy 100 Peso notes. Should you have to buy anything with such a denomination, your shop assistant will deliver a look like you just ate their favourite child. Furthermore, should you try and get smart and, after withdrawing cash, duck inside the bank to break the notes (if the bank is even open) they won't have change. I jest not. It's hill-hairy-arse...

El Calafatte is a spendy one track town, pimping the hell out of a massive great glacier called Perito Moreno. We decide to check that on our way back through in a frew days and sign up with a group of 6 to head a few hours North the following morning to got 'SUPERTREKKING' in El Chalten. Before dorming down we hit the supermarket for ravioli & tomato goo and settle in with fellow backpackers over cheap plonk. Valerie has got to know me well enough at this stage to take several steps back before I open any tin, sachet or drink.

Right - time to flush this blog! Check the shortness! A mere slip at seven hundred words! It's all about your reading pleasure...

Adios muchachos,


Barnacle