Argentina is very large. This seemingly obvious fact has been vividly demonstrated to me over the last few days. I’m heading north, planning to visit Bariloche, before crossing into Chile and heading for Santiago to resume the urban/hacker part of my trip. In order to avoid a 400 USD flight from Ushuaia to Bariloche, I thought I’d give the bus a try.
From Ushuaia, I caught a 12 hour bus ride to Rio Gallegos, then a 4 hour layover followed by a 14 hour ride to Perito Moreno (a town that, confusingly has the same name as the glacier). My camera was stolen from the luggage rack above me while I was asleep. Conclusion: I hate buses.
I hung around Perito Moreno for a day because I was hoping to visit the Cueva de los Manos, which features prehistoric painting done with a primitive form of spraypaint. However, the cave turned out to be crazy-inaccessible: about 160 km from Perito Moreno by car. It’s currently low season for tourism, so only one guy was taking people out there, and he was only doing it once he had enough people to fill his land rover. Perito Moreno is a depressing little mining town, and I had no desire to hang around there for days waiting for more tourists to show up. I figured worst-case, I’d rent a car and drive there myself (car rentals were only around $35 USD per day in Ushuaia), but it turns out that there’s no car rental open in Perito Moreno during low season.
The other option is to approach the cave on foot via a 12 km hike up a canyon starting from Ruta 40 (the main highway) about 75 km south of Perito Moreno. By all accounts, the canyon is very beautiful. I made an attempt to hitchhike south along Ruta 40 to the start of the trail, but waiting for an hour and a half on Sunday, I saw only one vehicle. It was a silver pickup truck, and it didn’t stop. Ruta 40 is sort of like the Route 66 of Argentina, but even moreso. It is probably the most desolate and least-trafficked highway I’ve ever seen.
I abandoned my futile hitching attempt and went to the bus station instead.
“Is there a bus leaving for Bariloche tonight?”
“No, sorry, not tonight.”
“Ok, what about tomorrow?”
“Let me check…nope.”
“When is the next bus to Bariloche?”
“Hmm, let me see…uh, it looks like they’ve stopped running. It’s low-season now, you know?”
“Fantastic. Look, what leaves tonight that’s going north?”
“You can go to Comodoro Rivadavia for 70 pesos, it’s only 5 hours.”
“Great. One please.”
Which is how I find myself in Comodoro Rivadavia, an industrial port city on the eastern coast. It’s much larger than Perito Moreno, but not significantly more charming. According to the local government website, the notable sites in town include some park, an overlook that might be scenic, and, interestingly, a Petroleum Museum. Apparently this is an oil town. If there’s a nice part of town where all the petromillionaires live, I haven’t found it yet.
At least the wikipedia article is worth a look, if only for the awesome Entertainment / Local Rock Bands section, which reads like it was written by members of said bands, emphasizing the “huge part of the history of the city” they have played in their “short but prestigious performance” career.
Right now, I’m killing time in a run-down public library that feels both heartwarming and depressing in that unique mixture found only in underfunded libraries. There are school kids helping each other with homework, a blind guy listening to books on tape, and a blue collar guy tapping out a résumé. But all the bookshelves are dilapidated, and the average age of the motley collection of computers looks to be about 10 years old. I’m reading an anthology of classical mythology I snagged at the hostel in Ushuaia.
At 9:30 tonight I’ve got a bus to Bariloche (finally) and I’m excited because it’s a “cama” (bed) class. All the buses I’ve rode so far have been the euphemistically-named, “semi-cama” class. You or I might also call this type of accommodation, “seats that recline a tiny bit”.
I hope Bariloche turns out to be cool. The whole Perito Moreno stopover was an ill-advised detour that I regret. South America is so much larger than Europe that poorly choosen side trips wind up being that much costlier in terms of time and money.
Haha that “Rock bands” section is great. Who knew all it took to be considered an important and influential band in Comodoro Rivadavia was to play Chevelle cover songs (who are nowhere near one of the most important bands to come out of Northern Illinois)? Speaking of crappy grammar, who puts quotation marks around band names?
~Steve