Ruta 40, Chubut, Argentina
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
This road runs the from the Bolivia border all the way to south Patagonia running parallel with the Andes to the west. One particular stretch running from
El Chalten to
Esquel is all unpaved and very remote for most of the journey. I was taking the route from El Chalten to
Bariloche, a 30 hour slog in a full cramped bus. The first part of the journey was hard to come across sleep due to the rough ride. This was just the start of a particularly event journey. Early the following afternoon i was at the back of the bus enjoying some fine tunes and riverting novel, when the bus decided to serve off the road. Due to the road being raised slightly the bus lurched horribly close to toppling over, luckily it got stuck in the lose dirt before this happened. The driver tried to no avail to get us unstuck but it was obvious we weren't going anywhere. So we all had to exit via the drivers door as the other door was wedged in the ground due to are angle. Then one driver disappeared jogging off down the road. We all knew we were in the middle of nowhere with nothing but Patagonian wasteland surrounding us. The other driver stopped every car, van that came past but all just shook there heads and drove on. To add to the confusion two guys decided to fall in these random mud pits on the side of the road, which was followed by uncontrollable laughter from most passengers. They didn't see the funny side. After 2 hours of not having a clue what was going on the driver that had disappeared re-appeared on the back of a Caterpillar. We were saved. Sadly in the dragging of the bus the toliet decided to empty itself, leaving us with a lovely stench for the rest of the trip.
A journey that felt like hell at the time, but for
Bariloche it was well worth it and of course the story.
