And in this episode...

The bus journey from hell inclusing ´when films go bad´ 2
and One of the Wonders of the World (in our opinion)...

We left the hostel to catch our bus at around 5pm, but upon arriving a couple of guys we met at the hostel, one of whom spoke Spanish, found out that both their and our bus were delayed for about an hour (turned out to be an hour and a half late leaving Puerto Madryn...). This gave us enough time to get to know them both a bit better - Dieter from Belgium (who spoke a mind-numbing 6 languages) and the really amusing Charles from Holland (why are Dutch people always so jovial?) who decided to pass the time by drinking 2 litres of gin and tonic (but never really altered his jocular grinning state - amazing...) Anyhow after about half an hour the guy who runs the hostal we´d stayed at showed up out of breath after running from the hostal to the station. He went straight for me saying ´You didn´t pay me´, ´I need the money for my family´ and that kind of thing, despite the fact I had already paid up the other guy who works there. After a few minutes of him refusing to believe us and him calling me a liar (amongst other things in Spanish) I got him to recheck with his employee as I remembered a problem with the change when we paid, hopefully it would jog his memory. It did, and they apologised (of sorts) and bade a hasty retreat tail betweeen legs. Such a shame as we were going to write to the Lonely Planet and let them know how nice it was but after being called a thief, a liar and other Spanish things (a peso, a piella, a jug of sangria??????) we have decided against it...is you do happen to read this it´s called La Tosca in Puerto Madryn btw...

So eventually the bus came and we were on our way. No sleeper buses made the 16 hour trek so we were in a regular national expressesque one and it was bad. For starters our connection was at 2pm, and we were already scheduled to arrive at 1.30 (1 1/2 hours late) if there were no more delays), they also seemed unable to get the temperature right, with air-con on it was (ant?)arctic and with it off it was like Bangkok in the wet season - humid to say the least. Then the film to end all bad films (an d you thought Sniper 2 was bad...) `Exit Wounds` `starring` Steven Seagal - how has this guy made a creer for himself. Not only can he act about as well as the cast of Eldorado, his films are all the same, and the one possible savig grace of a bad acting film star, their looks, does not save him...he is seriously ugly. By the way I lifted this from www.IMDB.com as I thought it put it pretty suscinctly...

Where to begin? The acting? Don't go there. The action sequences? The film itself is an action sequenced intruded every now and then by neanderthal dialogue.

Nobody can get anything out of this film, I would have enjoyed myself more if instead of letting my friend choose the video, he simply pummelled me into a coma with the box. Insert it into the video and it does just that anyway.

Seagal can't fight anymore hence the crap close-ups and extended gun battles. DMX is nothing special. Still, the studio's make 'em, and the morons lap 'em up. Stop, and think before you waste your time with this, you could be doing so much more with your life. And if you see a friend in the same situation I was in, simply take the video from their hand, and beat them senseless with it. All the comments can be found here

And then at 2am the worst thing in the world that could have happened (barring us having an accident/breaking down), did. A group of gypsies and their badly behaved smelly kids got on seemingly with all their worldy possessions (the adults not the kids) and decided to disrupt everyone to try to get to their seats. It turned out our seats were double booked but we refused to move, having seen them transferred from another bus, and suspecting their tickets were from the other bus. Now I`m not great with kids at the best of times but these little buggers...Christ, by the end of the night we were devising ways to divert the adult´s attention so we could throw one out of the skylight. It wasn´t just that they were badly behaved (although they were...) it was the complete lack of attention the parents were giving them (especially the Mum, who obviously considered it highly normal for a five/six year old to scream all night, shit herself, and approach strangers and hit them). How we survived without killing (or at least maiming) them I`ll never know, but we did, just. Anyhow we finally arrived at 2pm, and fortunately our driver had the foresight to flag down the connecting bus and we arrived (on a sleeper bus during the day, oh how we didn´t laugh at the irony) in El Calafate at around 7pm. 24 hours of bus nightmare hell...we´d like to say never again, but unless we can find some cheap flights, and/or a pot of gold we are going to have to at least 3 more times...

Anyway onto El Calafate where we now reside. We are staying at the youth Hostel (believe it or not the first time on the whole trip we have stayed at an HI affiliated hostel) which is really nice although a bit out of town. They do massive steaks for tea though for 3 quid so they´re top grade in my book. Anyhow today we went on their tour of the Moreno Glacier, one of the few advancing glaciers in the world. As I (think I)´ve written before it is the famous one where all the ice crashes into the lake as it advances at about 2m a day. Our tour guide, Diego, sporting O´Higginsesque sideburns, was genuinely funny, cracking jokes in both English and Spanish. some of his best quips were self-depricating humour about the population of El Calafate never incrasing much (due to heavy drinking and fighting with knives) and the like. The trrip we took went along the back road so we avoided most other tourists and got to see some local fauna...mainly birds. We saw condors swooping, hawks hovering, and many other species I forgot to write down (lapwing, yes I think that was one...) We also saw a group of 10 or so flamingoes, we´ve never seen them in the wild before. Despite the 2-tiered foreigners Vs nationals pricing system that Argentina seems to have borrowed from Asia we thought the national park entry fee (4 quid) was reasonable even before seeing the glacier. Our first view was from about 7km away and the size of it was amazing, some 20 kms deep, 60m high, and 4 kms across. It made the NZ glaciers we saw seem like childs play. The glacier itself was named after Perito Fransisco Moreno who first explored this area. (Perito means expert bythe way, as he was an expert in exploring obviously...) He is held in really high regard here as he was paid for his exploring in land, including alot of land near the glacier itself. Being a thoroughly decent chap he then gave the land back to the people of Argentina with the only proviso that the land remain as it was then for evermore. This created their first national park. Our group had a little walk to the right handside of the main trails and as we turned the corner to view the glacier close up for the first time it decided to advance a little and icee came crashing down. Although we were still 500m away the noise was deafening and the sight enthralling and we stayed and watched, and even caught a couple of clips on video. It´s difficult to describe how amazing the whole thing is really but just take our word...it is stunnning, on a scale you can only imagine. We then continued around the boardwalks for a couple of hours before finding out that the boat trip had been cancelled due to the fact that icebergs had obstructed the launch. Diego then tried to get us on another boat that left from a different pier but it jetted off just as we approached the car park. There were no ther planned launches today so we left a little downhearted....but we had such a good time we have decided to go back tomorrow. this time to do an ice trek on the glacier, somethign we wanted to do in New Zealand but didn´t get time to. The one we´ve chosen also has a boat trip which goes from the good pier so we´re pretty happy all in all.

In other news we got an email saying the Galapagos cruise we thought we´d booked has been reserved for someone else, we´ve got to wait until Friday to find out if another 2 spaces have become available. We´re not too happy as you can well imagine. Every cloud though, as we have also found out that some of Jen´s patients have paid up (some 10 months late) so we´ve come into a small amount of cash.