Days 147 & 148 - Monday 13th & Tuesday 14th February 2006

Not wanting to overstay my welcome and having enough of the big city, I made up my mind to catch a bus south to Patagonia. Martin gave me a lift into the centre where I bought a ticket to Puerto Madryn, a mere 19 hours distant.

After I had purchased the ticket I had the about 6 hours before my bus departed so I took the opportunity to have a final wander around BsAs, as well as a steak lunch to set me up for the journey.

The bus left at 3pm, exactly on time. It was scheduled to arrive at 10am the following morning. For the A$150 ticket I got a fully reclining leather chair/bed, blankets, dinner, breakfast and drinks (including a whisky to send me off to sleep). Pretty comfortable yes - but it was still 19 hours on a bus. There was a lot of time to read, to think, to watch movies and to look out of the window at the hundreds of kilometres of absolutely flat, barren landscape. No hills, no trees. Only shrubs. Apparently in winter it gets pretty windy in these parts!

Sunset was a long drawn out affair, taking about an hour to fully disappear. After that there was little to do except watch another move (Cell Phone or something) and try to go to sleep.

I reached Puerto Madryn roughly on time the following morning, thus completing my first 1500kms in South America. I found a hostel to stay in from Tourist Info and at A$18/night it was ok value.

I felt a little hazy after the journey so I didn’t have much success when I tried to concentrate on planning my next few days. I took a walk to clear my head and was pleasantly surprised to discover a 5km expanse of golden sand. Apparently I was the only one in the region who didn’t realise this was a major tourist spot for Argentines. To go along with the Argentine sea, there were a sea of Argentines sunning themselves on the sand. I have no idea how many, but I would guess there were about 20,000 people on the beach, along with the thousands of US folk who were on one of the three cruise ships that were docked in the port.

The perfect opportunity had presented itself, and I spent the day taking it easy on the beach. Although the air temperature was roasting hot, the sea temperature was definitely not the Caribbean! More like Clacton I would guess.