After the poolside party with the Yankees, Luke and Jade, and a host of other good people it's time for some more bus travel.
36 hours in a bus seat, with only 1 hour off the bus to buy a second ticket. What worries me is how adebt I am at sitting in a chair and doing absolutley nothing at all. As long as I have a ipod of music, a iphone full of podcasts, the Angry Birds game, and the occasional film that works on the bus telly I can easily sit there for days.
It brings my laziness sharply into focus, I really am very very good at doing nothing at all. I'll happily sit and breathe for long periods, and when that gets tiring I'll have a nap. I might have myself committed when I get home, then I can sit in a chair all day AND get free drugs.
The first leg I do with Luke and Jade, we plum for the best bus we can find from Igazu to Buenos Aires. We are given booze and decent food, much nicer than plane food, and then Luke and I 'liberate' a bottle of champagne from the fridge while the hostess is asleep. I have to smuggle it off 'Great Escape' style in the morning. We go our seperate ways at the bus station, me onto another bus, them to Buenos Aires and beyond to New Zealand. I will miss them a lot for the next few days.
I suppose the reason why I can sit on a bus so readily for such a long time is the pay off when I finally stop.
To see Patagonia? I'd have sat there for 3 weeks. Well not really, you'd have to throw in a few 'gentleman time' stops and very fast WiFi for a 3 weeker.
I'm not sure if it's because I am in Patagonia or it's just that I'm not siiting on a bus, but as I walk along the seafront, with the warm sun loosening my tight, bus cramped muscles, I find myself deliriously happy . Young couples sit together on walls and benches, canoodling their afternoon siesta away, they get 4 hours off over here, from 12pm-4pm.
Lots of people are out walk/jogging, they smile sweetly as they pass the cleary Welsh me on their way. People love it when you say you are from Wales here, and they love you more when you say that you can speak Welsh.
Not so much the English, they don't like the English much here, and it doesn't help that every town has a street called Belgrano somewhere. But here, closer to the island, people have been shouted at and abused while they wander around the town.
I walk for 3 miles along the beach up to the embarkation museum. It's a little white house that sits on the top of a hill, just above the site of where the Mimosa landed full of Welsh settlers in 1865. They have designed the museum in a way to tell the story through the eyes of one of the passengers, a girl called Catherine. It explains the struggle to get to Argentina from Liverpool docks, and the problems they faced when they tried to build a life here. Even if you're not Welsh the history and story is very engaging and the little old lady who works there speaks Welsh, not Welsh as I know it or speak, it's Welsh with a strange lilt to it, with accents on letters very different to how I would say it. Her family were settlers and it's amazing to speak to her for a while and find out that there's a growing interest locally in the Welsh history of the place. I leave and as I walk back to the hostel I realize that I've spoken more Welsh to her in 2 hours than I have to anyone else over the last year. A sobering thought for a first language Welsh speaker.
The loneliness of the lone diner.
Now I've dined alone lots of times, mostly when I have been away for work, and of course whilst doing this trip, as well as those times I've been stood up.
I really don't mind the stares from other diners, or the over attentive staff, it's as though they feel sorry for you because you must be such a loser that nobody will even eat a meal with you, but for me it's never been a problem.
But it's gets bad when you have to eat alone in a empty restaraunt, because over here nobody eats until around 11pm! 11! My Mum needs to be sat down for dinner for 6:30pm, 7pm at the latest, any later and it's,
"Oh my stomach Gareth, I'll toss and turn all night. ooohhh and the wind! No, no, book the table for quarter past six, and we can't have anything with bell peppers, they're agony for me the other way out. I'll not sleep a wink"
I've got to see the penquins at 8am tomorrow so I'd like to be asleep by 11, so I find myself sitting down for dinner as the chef is warming the grill. It's quite the cultural kicker. I bottle it and head out to a bar to waste some time. Eventually I walk back in at 9:30pm and there are some 'early bird' diners in, so I sit down again and order a steak and Malbec.
Only 2 of us are sitting alone, and as I glance across to him I can see that he's ordered strong, a huge cut of loin beef arrives on his table on one of those mini heater thingy's, similar to the ones you see at a showy Chinese, but with loads more class. I got severe meat envy. The Bastard. And he looks good eating it, he looks like a cross between a Chilean miner and a moustached Frenchmen. I feel like a child against him. My meat envy properly kickwhen my food arrives, don't get me wrong, the filet is a work of art, but for volume and girth, the meat on his grill is monsterous. I finish my steak and head for the door, I swear I can hear a snort of derision from the French miner, but I turn round and he's just blowing his nose, then sets about finishing the bead basket and salad!
The penquins are fun to see but yet again television has lied to me. I expected them to all be huddled together in a huge ball like I've seen on the BBC, but they're not, they're all dotted around hiding under bushes in penquins sized divots, sheltering from the massive winds, I wished I'd thought of that because it's brassic out here.
That night I wander around the town and see a poster for Sepultura, they are playing a gig in Puerto Madryn! which is a bit like Coldplay playing a gig in Runcorn, a bit strange. I decide that I have to go and witness this explosion of Brazilian metal, with a massive throng of crazy Argentinians. Except it doesn't really go down like that. The gig has been moved from the local football stadium to a basketball hall. The expected crowd of around 20,000 is slightly less. 800 people. It's a very odd state of affairs and they of course won't serve booze inside so everyone is getting smashed in the car park. I've never understood this sort of policy on drink and drugs. if you don't allow drinking in the venue then everyone will just get smashed before they arrive, and you'll still have the same problem that you're trying to avoid by not serving booze!
The gig is cool but we leave and head to a bar, by now it's about 12:30pm, we sit in the bar and have some cocktails in a booth. In the booth behind me a woman is sitting breastfeeding her quite clearly 4 year old daughter. Now I know which part of that is worse but breast feeding in a bar at 1 in the morning? It's nuts.
We leave and we go back to the hostel.
The following day I head to Gaiman, a tiny village where the Welsh history is at its strongest. They have traditional Welsh tea houses and period buildings. The museum is run by Fabio, and he's a little odd and quirky, but a good laugh to chat to. I eat Welsh cakes and chat to the owners and genrally try to imagine moving somewhere that has nothing, and then you try to build something. It's a wonderful couple of days.
But I need to keep moving, and the next few days promise to be full of excitement and fun-
remedial horseriding
making new friends
watching a Frenchmen at work
visiting some of the best vineyards in the world
and more bus rides.
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