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Delirium, food, beer and hippies are the only four words that can accurately sum up the town of El Bolson. After arriving from at 10:30pm without a clue where the hostel was we found a pizza place that served excellent, excellent food and beer. It was at this point that the travel/hiking/lack of sleep and food induced delirium set in. It reached its climax when we discussed the possibility of spending the next day relaxing in the hostel garden eating food, drinking locally brewed beer and generally lazing around...at this point Lucie almost burst in to tears at such a joyous prospect. The next morning though we realised it was not to be, it was chucking it down. However the log cabin like hostel proved an excellent place to sit around in the warmth playing cards and unwinding, despite the ever present South African man who was strange to say the least. The only time we ventured out was to have a look around the craft market in town where we endulged in empanadas, pizza and waffles(con dulce de leche, chocolate y crema por favor!). After this we found a little place that sold an array of beer made with honey, chilli, chocolate and raspberrys amongst other delights. Having sampled this we returned to the hostel and played more cards before heading out to dinner. The food at the restaurant, while excellent was rather poorly translated...for example my "lomo a la pimienta con papas a la crema" should have been translated as "peppered loin steak with creamy potatoes" not the rather disconcerting and not entirely appetizing "loins to the pepper with dads to the cream". The next day was spent finding a bus to El Calafate...the only one available was scheduled to last 30 hours, without food service and in the cheapest seats possible...excellent! After sampling the finest empanadas known to man(the cheese, sausage and mustard one in particular was world class) and preparing food for the bus we stumbled upon the true El Bolson experience. The girls that ran the hostel invited us to the opening of a new bar that night...a hippy bar, their words. Having taken a taxi that seemed like the start of a documentary on how backpackers disappear, a long journey across a river and up a winding, rocky and unlit road into the mountains we came upon clearing in the woods to be greeted by a wonderful sight. A log cabin that had home-brewed beer, excellent pizza and entertainment provided by a group of 30-something year old men sitting cross legged on the floor playing instruments ranging from the sitar and the didgeridoo to the spaceship like "Hann" steel drum. We settled down and were entertained, sinking a few beers and chatting to some of the characters who were cutting about, notably Martino, an Austrian man who had moved from Vienna(and we suspected some job involving science) to El Bolson in search of a purer life. At around 12:30 the hippy music was replaced by a woman doing a DJ set of hardcore trance music, this brought out the weird and wonderful Marco, a man who danced like a hyperactive monkey on acid...a description probably closer to the truth than I would like to think. Anyway at around 3am we headed back to the hostel in order to get a semi-decent sleep before the bus, only to find that we would have to climb the fence to get in to the hostel as all the staff were still at the bar. The next morning the bus to El Calafate began. Despite being well stocked with food, snacks and some red wine the bus wasnt the best. This was down to three factors, firstly legroom, secondly the choice of films(some awful viking/horror film, the sorcerers apprentice in spanish, some argentine sitcom film and the piece de la resistance...Pamela Anderson starring as an assassin in some weird sci-fi, pseudo nazi world...the only consolation was a dubbed version of Saving Private Ryan with english subtitiles) and thirdly the fact that it took well over a day. Arrived in El Calafate safe and sound though.
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