We are becoming quite the savvy bus riders. Our experience has taught us that long bus rides, 12 hours for example, can be enjoyable when properly prepared.

Today we are traveling from El Chalten, the little town on the edge of Parque Nacional de Los Glaciares, to the little town of Perito Moreno. The bus takes the rough and tumble Route 40 the entire way and since this is the only road that connects the few towns in this region, the fact that it is mostly unpaved does not matter, except to bring the speed to 20 km per hour in some sections.

Back to our preparation for this enjoyable ride: pack a small bag with the essentials. Camera, deck of cards, ear plugs, water, chocolate, salami, cheese, almonds, an apple, peanut brittle, and water. (We don't drink much of it though....bus banos....no bueno....save for emergencies.)

An unexpected stop at the only building for miles around about 7 hours into the 12 hour trip provided the opportunity to purchase potato chips, bread in a bag (with chocolate chips) and a jumbo bottle of Heineken for David. Now we are taking in the sunset behind a distant mountain ridge and the tv at the front of the bus just started playing 70s disco music videos. Strangely wonderful.

Part 2, the next day, the next bus.

So we didn't submit the blog before we already got on another of two buses the next day totaling 12 hours ( Argentina is super big) headed for the wildlife peninsula town of Puerto Pyramides. We had a bit of a tough time walking around in the dark in a new town that seems to be the windiest yet unsuccessfully searching for the municipal campground. After stopping at a hotel that was full we were directed to Mini Camping Raul, which is basically a guy's house and we get to put up a tent in his yard. It was really much more surprising than it seemed at first. He had a beautiful flat lawn and garden, clean separate bathrooms with instant hot water, and he was the nicest guy ever living in a one room house and talking a mile a minute repeating most things consistently. He said he was a policeman because he had a hat that said police so I wasn't exactly sure what to believe at first. However we woke up in the morning around 10 as we had in late the night before and he made us some hot water for coffee and began to ramble something about "papas" and disappeared and came back with a sackful of potatoes he just dug out of his garden as well as wonderful fresh beans. He proceeded to make us some hard boiled eggs and cooked the potatoes with a piece of steak. I also had some bread with fresh jam he just made using berries from his garden. Absolutely amazing breakfast out of nowhere. To top it off our stay and the breakfast he didn't ask us anything for was only $5 total where this town is really overpriced to begin with. He must not make any money, but he loves having tourists and continually rambled in Spanish as he showed us all the notebooks filled with comments and pictures from everyone who stayed with him over the past 12 years. He sang songs, and actually did show us pictures of his military and police days and some seven children. Raul is no joke.