Do you remember when I spoke of my 14.5 hour bus ride from Sydney to Byron Bay? Remember when I vowed to never take a bus overnight again? Do you remember that I have since then taken no less than 7 overnight buses? Well, to be fair, most of the ones since then have been much more spacious and luxurious. Some have even been longer. In fact, I’ve been on a few buses that have even lasted 24 hours. The seats in those ones were as large as lazy boy recliner chairs though. And they reclined almost to the floor.
Well there are only a few options on how to get from El Calefate to Ushuaia and one of them is a bus ride that is supposed to be between 16 and 18 hours long. Yuck I though, but I can handle it. There was only one option for the company to take though. It was far and away better than greyhound Australia (EVERYTHING is). But it is by no means a bus that would inspire words like luxury or even comfortable. There is another catch to this bus, bye the way. It only leaves once a day from El Calefate and it’s at 3am. So you have to stay up almost all night in order to catch it. Then you can sleep in the bus for the next day right? Well there are 4 boarder crossings involved as well. Exiting Argentina, Entering Chile, Exiting Chile, and Re entering Argentina. This is why it takes between 16-18 hours to get to Ushuai (the farthest south city in the world). Or you could just fly, provided you can afford the extra cash, oh and if you booked a minimum of 3 weeks in advance.
FmyLife.com is a great website where people share their stories that fit into the category of FML (Fuck My Life). People share situations of being shafted anonymously in-front of millions of daily readers. Then we all have a vote (in true Internet 2.0 fashion) and the person with the best story makes it to the top of the page until someone else’s story bumps them down from the king of the hill. Most of the readers are folks in a professional career job, sitting in-front of a desk, trying to procrastinate through their morning until lunch. What they are really trying to do is escape from their reality of being too scared to shake up their life a little. FML mends their wounds though, submerging their problems below the very best problems that the Internet community has to offer. “My boss yelled at me today.” doesn’t sound too bad in comparison to “Today, I received my passport in the mail. They got my birthdate wrong. Then I picked up my birth certificate that I had sent in with the application. Turns out my parents have been celebrating my birthday on the wrong day for 16 years. FML” Or “today, I wanted to have a good lunch with my wife before fasting for my surgery which I may not survive, she decided getting her hair cut was more important. I ate alone. FML”
Here is my story in FML fashion: Yesterday I boarded a bus that was supposed to be 16-18 hours long. At the first boarder crossing the Argentinian guards decided to preform an Italian strike (when you show up to work, but work as slowly as humanly possible.) It took 6 hours of standing in line to cross through the first boarder. After 21 hours, it was midnight the next day and I began to walk off of the bus, pissed that it was five hours late. The driver told me that there was 3 more hours until we were going to arrive. FML
This is unfortnuately the true story of my journey to get to Ushuaia. Fortunately, the town would prove to be my favourite I’ve been to since I got to South America.