Güer Aike

We awake and pack our bags, and yet again we are leaving another wonderful place. The hostel Chepatagonia is a perfect example of how it should be done. Its the cleanest hostel weve stayed in and the staff and owners have been wonderful. We have shared times with great people including Mateus, Marie and Ali. Just as were packed we see 3 people who had been in the same hostel as us in Rosario, and you wouldnt expect this as there are so many hostels in town, but its a small world and im grateful to be seeing so much of it. I try once again to get hold of mum as i havent spoken to her in several days and still have no joy, so i call my sister to see if she has spokennto her recently. She tells me mum is at the hospital as one of our oldestnfriends and my godmother is on a life support machine and there isnt any chance she will pull through. Its at times like these inwish i coild just timewarp myself back home, even for a couple of hours just to give mum a big hug.
Thenshow must go on though and we have a bus to catch in an hour. Todays journey involves 20 hours on our first bus to Rio Galleous and a 4 hour connecting bus to El Calafate ....We are off to the glaciers
The bus is late and Mateus has come to the station to see us off. As were stood on the platform i see someone waving erracticly on the Mendoza bus to realise its Ali. We bid her farewell and beforw long our bus arrives. For the first time we have opted for first class as Mark is still not well . There is always an option to fly but this is considerably more expensive and when there are 1 of you its doubled .We board the bus and really it's luxury there are huge leather seats with foot rests that can be lifted wwup so you have a 180 degree bed. Dinner is served as soon ss we are seated and we tuck in to ham and cheese , cakes and a potato tortilla and the complimwntary glasa of vino. An hour into the journey and we pull iwnto a yard, we are here for nearly an hour and its to get a tyre changed but our connecting bua leaves at 9am from rio galleous and on time we were due to arrive at 7 so now are going to be cutting it fine. I take a amall siesta and were woken by the bus stopping and being asked to get our passports out. A federal soldier inspects them and asks where we are from I reply England and he's now talking in Spanish ro the female federal soldier that has joined him , he starts asking questions in Spanish and luckily one of the bus staff join us to translate . My bum is proper twitching and I wonder whether it's because I look so different from my passport. Ten minutes pass and we are let on our way again. We arrive at Comodoria Riviera and I can't wait to get off and have a cigarette. My nerves are shot, I really must step up my Spanish as I am pretty sure the language barrier will get worse the further south we go. Back on the bus I set my seat for sleep mode only for our trays to be brought out fo dinner. This time we are served chicken escalope with mashed potato and of course ham and cheese on top. They also have cheese ham and a cherry on a stick. Dinner is served with wine followed by champagne, first class really is the way to travel full up and tired I recline my seat and sleep for the remainder of the journey awoken at 5 am to a breakfast of coffee and cake.Read more