aiming for puerto madryn
dec. 29
we left bahia blanca in the wee hours of saturday morning (3am wake up for a 4:40 bus) after spending our last day there wandering the plazas and shops. our afternoon to early evening was occupied by a three hour long conversation with juan carlos, the gay hairdresser of bahia blanca. juan had aquired a limited english and between his english and our poor pitiful spanish, we whiled away the daylight over cocktails and cigarettes, discussing his and our travels. when asked where we were going next, we said viedma. juan about fell out of his chair. "why?" he exclaimed, "there is nothing there!"
i then had to try to explain that it was okay that there was nothing there. i kind of like going to places where there is nothing but people living their normal lives.
weary of the mishmash of spanglish, we excused ourselves and mosied back to the hotel, picking up a bottle of red on the way. tam and i jockied the wooden slat shade to our room´s veranda with a chair so we could sit outside and drink that bottle.
three a.m. came awful early.
------------------
the bus ride to viedma was not long and we exited the station at about seven something in the morning, tickets in hand for the next day´s bus to puerto madryn. viedma is the provincial capital and sits across the river negro from carmen de patagones. the riverside parks on both sides of the river filled with people picnicing and swimming, but both towns absolutely dead otherwise on a saturday. we cooled our feet in the river, had an early meal, and then heads to the pillows for the again early bus appointment the next morning.
------------------
the ticket said 07:10
we figured we should be in the lobby calling for a taxi by 6:15. as it turned out, i was an early riser and we were asking for our taxi right at 6:00, according to my watch.
why "according to my watch"?
what happened next became a frantic and anxiety rising exchange of guestures and broken spanish. first, the desk clerk told us in slow and articulate spanish a bunch of words that we did not know, except the part that sounded like "son seite" and "taxi". we figured she might be trying to tell us that we could not get a taxi until 7:00, which ment a very close call to making our bus! oh, no!
i then tried to explain that our bus was at 7:10 and we really needed to get to the bus station before that and was there anything she could do? she said no, so i tried again with different and grander guestulations. she said no, and then started showing me her watch and motioning with her finger around the clock face one hour, saying a lot of words i did not understand, and ending with english, "all of argentina".
oh. no. oh no!! some sort of daylight savings thing had occured overnight. it was not that a taxi was coming at 7:00.
it was 7:00 right now!
we left bahia blanca in the wee hours of saturday morning (3am wake up for a 4:40 bus) after spending our last day there wandering the plazas and shops. our afternoon to early evening was occupied by a three hour long conversation with juan carlos, the gay hairdresser of bahia blanca. juan had aquired a limited english and between his english and our poor pitiful spanish, we whiled away the daylight over cocktails and cigarettes, discussing his and our travels. when asked where we were going next, we said viedma. juan about fell out of his chair. "why?" he exclaimed, "there is nothing there!"
i then had to try to explain that it was okay that there was nothing there. i kind of like going to places where there is nothing but people living their normal lives.
weary of the mishmash of spanglish, we excused ourselves and mosied back to the hotel, picking up a bottle of red on the way. tam and i jockied the wooden slat shade to our room´s veranda with a chair so we could sit outside and drink that bottle.
three a.m. came awful early.
------------------
the bus ride to viedma was not long and we exited the station at about seven something in the morning, tickets in hand for the next day´s bus to puerto madryn. viedma is the provincial capital and sits across the river negro from carmen de patagones. the riverside parks on both sides of the river filled with people picnicing and swimming, but both towns absolutely dead otherwise on a saturday. we cooled our feet in the river, had an early meal, and then heads to the pillows for the again early bus appointment the next morning.
------------------
the ticket said 07:10
we figured we should be in the lobby calling for a taxi by 6:15. as it turned out, i was an early riser and we were asking for our taxi right at 6:00, according to my watch.
why "according to my watch"?
what happened next became a frantic and anxiety rising exchange of guestures and broken spanish. first, the desk clerk told us in slow and articulate spanish a bunch of words that we did not know, except the part that sounded like "son seite" and "taxi". we figured she might be trying to tell us that we could not get a taxi until 7:00, which ment a very close call to making our bus! oh, no!
i then tried to explain that our bus was at 7:10 and we really needed to get to the bus station before that and was there anything she could do? she said no, so i tried again with different and grander guestulations. she said no, and then started showing me her watch and motioning with her finger around the clock face one hour, saying a lot of words i did not understand, and ending with english, "all of argentina".
oh. no. oh no!! some sort of daylight savings thing had occured overnight. it was not that a taxi was coming at 7:00.
it was 7:00 right now!
posted by warpup at 2:57 AM
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