The Road to Ushuaia

The road to Ushuaia-
Little girl in pink pants and leopard hoodie shakes a pink haired Barbie as we wait for the Don Otto bus that left us in Trelew. After 45 minutes of gassing and cleaning it returned and we were officially on our way to Rio Gallegos, perhaps Ushuaia and the southernmost city on the planet. It is well guarded. 30 hours of bus travel - if they are on time as there are border crossings into Chile with possible luggage searches, a ferry to drive on to- to reach Tierra del Fuego.

The plains and the intermittent clouds and curtains of rain with cobalt blue skies remind me if Arizona, as do the rainbows. Only here you almost have nothing to break the endless flat swell of scrub, save a rough estancia road, an old metal windmill, a barbed wire fence, a cow, a puddle like a small handful of raisins swimming in a huge dumped out stockpot full of oatmeal. Massively, massively flat - 360 degrees of horizon flat. the upper story of the bus allows for views penetrating several miles, occasionally a massive downward sloping sink, a shallow sloped canyon and the view extends and the feeling is truly endless almost frightening-like looking into the vast expanse of the moonless night sky. So empty so lonely, a trillion shrub stars...

The clouds make it past the curve of the horizon and the effect is haunting, it doesn't seem possible that there could be anything else out there. Even air. Wyoming, Arizona, Utah, Kansas - combined they don't come close in the singular sense of vastness. After two straight days and one night of driving across the top of a giant table, the sea sometimes visible to the east but in all directions almost never is there a tree or a shrub greater than five feet, the swell of a steep cliff or hill is almost nonexistent - we finally reached some deeper and broader canyons at sunset. The canyons were quickly swallowed into the flatness again but to the west the low cumulus caught the orange and pink of the fading light, deep purple to the east.

The fixed monotony of the patagonian earth is heavily contrasted by the fluidity of the sky and forces the eyes upward to something non-static, something that exudes color besides drab brown and dark green. Shifts contrasted in the skyscape allow the usually slowed perceptions of clouds to rush like rivers. Two days in the Patagonian plains is teaching me a zen-like awareness of speeding time. My own time-lapse. As the dusky color was slowly dying we finally dropped into a wider canyon and some heavily wind-stressed trees near a tiny estancia -and then after a minute they were gone again. Some cone shaped hills appear.

Slowed traffic. Glad we are not at the front window again and on the left side of the bus, looking east and the side where the blazing rainbows popped in the afternoon sun -and thankfully impossible now to see the crash carnage on the right. No stops, no towns or cities from Trelew all the way to Comodoro Rivadavia some 6 hours. We arrive in darkness. The city looks like it survives on industry from a massive cement plant and like seemingly all cities in Patagonia it seems to survive because it connects a port town and has one of only two paved highways stitched to it.

On our way out the bus driver drove over something, a small car perhaps. A minute later the driver spun us into the Don Otto mechanics shop where three grease monkeys ran up. Now they are gunning the engine intensely. I suspect we will have to do a bus shift. The three year old that joined us here is making loud farting sounds. He plopped down in the seat directly in front of me, smacking the window and screaming, "Pee pee, mommy, agua!" Could be a long night.

We apparently got the all clear because we are backing out... Makes me a bit nervous because it was a hell of a slam we endured. Ricky Martin is grooving on the tv making it all seem alright. I am anticipating a second shriveled steak milanesa and canned fruit dinner that so far rivals airline food in the sketchy department. Maureen and I were looking forward to the massive ham and cheese sandwich but it seems those are reserved for the semi cama (bed)trips, not full cama, a step up in reclining comfort but a step down in food. Our bus was nearly two hours late so essentially our lunch was out first dinner.

As we roll out of Comodoro riodavia I am half expecting us to shed a tire and slide to a stop on the axle. Impossible for anyone to tell how bad the suspension may be with the wind and uneven road. Time to heed the advice of Fernando and utilizar al cintoron de seguridad.

Ringtone of the guy behind us is the bow chicka bow bow and rings nonstop - maybe he really is the smooth latin lover.

We made it about an hour and a half to the Caleta Olivia and we are now waiting for near an hour at the terminal. Dinner was served, better than lunch which wasn't too difficult a task. I caught the word mecanico from the last announcement so it appears they are trying to do a repair as we sit in the omnibus terminal. Malbec wine was a nice compliment, worth the extra hundred or so pesos for the extra food and vino tinto.

12.30 and they finally shut off the bus. Strong smell of gasoline and many tools clinking, thumping from the back engine compartment. Maureen comments at our good fortune of not booking a bus out of rio Gallegos in advance as we likely won't be anywhere near there when they all leave tomorrow. I can hear mecanicos shouting at each other. "Una hora, una hora." It's now been well over two hours since we parked here.

1.40AM and the bus was fired back up. High rpms for 10 minutes and I am getting worried about asphyxiating. Headache and blazing hot, zero airflow. Sprinkling outside. Tools clinking, doors slamming... Maybe? 1.50 and we finally back away from the terminal.

The morning sunlight cuts through the curtains. Outside the super-heated bus there is slightly more relief to the pampas but still not a single boulder or cliff anywhere. The shrubs have shrunk in size considerably and are now drab brown but mostly yellow with dried grasses. Sheep wander about. A size able lake in a shallow bowl looks to be natural. Difficult to gauge size and distance out here without anything that will betray a sense if scale. Still no trees or buildings. Nothing green at all. Supposedly the welsh who were the first euros to settle here in 1865 nearly died the first year and had to he rescued by the local indigenous. Not used to raising cattle or sheep or farming in such a dry expanse so different in climate from nearly perpetually wet Wales.

We are trying to estimate when we might arrive... 10am? Noon. We started more than two hours late, sat in the Trelew terminal for 45, dealt with mechanics somewhere south of Comodoro Rivadavia while they kept us locked in the bus for at least three... Way off the 6.30 mark, already after 9. I am headachy and anxious to be moving, still slightly nauseous. At least they turned the vents above back on. I opened the bathroom window slightly to get a taste of long forgotten fresh air. It was cold.

Flamingos, ducks and cows hang out in a roadside lake/puddle. Crawling across the seats in front if us wearing just a diaper and t shirt is the tiny three year old toothily grinning at us. Puffy cheeks and large dark eyes.

Perhaps the most striking observation about this landscape is that for nearly 30 hours of travel from north to south there has been hardly a single boulder or cliff, nothing but softer earth and shrub. How could it be so scoured clean? Truly a climber's worst nightmare. Broken in the east only by the ocean and to the west by the Andes there has to be hundreds of thousands of square miles of this nearly featureless terrain.

Little small ostrich/emu like birds, the first larger animal besides livestock and vultures have been spotted - a couple small knots of them just off the highway. Just saw our first gaucho on a horse at the outskirts to rio Gallegos... Only 4 hours late... But late enough to miss the bus to Ushuaia and there is not another one until tomorrow morning. We switch gears and opt for Calafate as the next bus is in just 1.5 hours thinking we can just go to Ushuaia from there...