The Craze for Travelling

The plan had been to meet at the corner nwar our hostels at 7:45 am and the walk to the bus station nearby to catch the 8 am bus towards Rio Tranquilo. This bus stops at Villa Cerro Castillo where we wanted to do the full day trek to the Cerro Castillo mountain.
We woke up at 7 am and were ready to go by 7:30 am. There still was no reply from Hristo regarding the availability of the beds for the 2 of us in their hostel. So, we left our bags in the hostel and extended our stay in the current hostel only. We were at the agreed corner waiting for Hristo and Maria at 7:45 am. No one showed up. Hristo's status on the Messenger was still showing inactive for 14 hours. We assumed that the party in their hostel had lasted till quite late and they were not able to get up. After waiting for a few minutes, Melinda and I went to the bus station. There, we figured that since it was a Sunday, only 1 bus out of the 3 that leave at 8 am was going and that too was full with no places available. We tried negotiating with the driver directly but were told that all the seats were full. The bus left at 8 am without us. Having nothing to do, we sat outside the bus station eating biscuits and other snacks we had packed for the day. Just then Hristo and Maria reached there. They were surprised we had not waited for them at the agreed place while we were surprised that they had not responded to our messages for 14 hours and then had appeared 5 min after the bus had left. To which Hristo was surprised that he had not received any messages and not known which bus stop to go to had gone to a different one 1st and had got late due to that. It was then that we realized that due a recent update of the Apple OS, he had stopped receiving notifications for the last 2 days.
In any case, there was not much we could do here now, so we decided to go to the other agency (Don Carlos) that we had been informed, had a bus on the same route at 9:30 am. We reached the agency to find it closed since it was a Sunday and they had buses from Mon-Fri only.
Having nothing left to try for this day trip, we went and had our breakfast. After that, Hristo and Maria decided to go for the walk they had missed the previous evening while Melinda and I went to the park in the central plaza to enjoy the sun in the cold morning. While sitting there, just on a hunch, I decided to check if the tourist information center nearby, was open on the Sunday. It was!!! 👌👌
There, upon asking if we could do anything nearby in half a day, they suggested we go to Coyhaique National Park. We didn't even need a bus to get there. The entrance was 2 kms from Coyhaique town and a 1 km inside from the main road. I messaged Hristo about this and that Melinda and I were planning to go for it. Now, that we had fixed the messenger problem, he received them immediately and messaged back that they too would join. We decided to meet up at a common point outside of the town. Around 1 pm we met up and walked North across the bridge to the side path that lead to the entrance of the national park. The path was quite steep and it ws quite sunny. The views of the surroundings were quite breathtaking.Leer más