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Martyn's Story:
So I am writing this on a bus travelling from Los Antiguos to El Chalten, the bus is not Peggy. I don't know any of the people on this bus, my wife is not on this bus. I am currently driving along a route that I have now seen three times. The landscape is desolate, there are miles and miles of dust and nothingness. I am basically in a desert. You don't need to see this once, you absolutely do not need to see this landscape three times. I am on the bus for what will be fourteen hours, this could be a long blog. I had to stay in a dorm last night, which wasn't terrible but still not what I would have wanted. I had two small, very small, empanadas for tea last night at ten o'clock in a bar come shop come ice cream parlour.
Alone, and in the doghouse in every conceivable way.
It all started with a blown tyre, like you would see in a gran prix. We were travelling down a stone road and the tyre shredded, the outer casing came off the inner tube and the inner tube was in bits. It happened on a road where there is nothing, barely any animals, barely any vegetation, no other people, nothing. Just miles and miles of horizons of nothing. The driver managed to get the truck/ bus to limp back to a small town, if there are twenty people permanently there I would be surprised. It has a shop, but nothing else, its only business is as a comfort break for people on route forty.
After much discussion and talk the decision was mad to attempt to repair the tyre one last time. Finally after an enormous effort we managed to get the hub of the old wheel off, and it was time to replace it with the new one. Stop reading if at anytime you see where the story is heading. While a group of us attempted to replace the wheel I felt my ring catch on the wheel and decided to put it in my pocket. Lisa was not happy, and told me so.
Finally with the wheel replaced we set off four hours behind schedule. An hour or so back on the road Lisa told me to put my ring back on. Cue dramatic eastenders style music as I searched all my pockets. It was not there. Cue start of the nightmare. I searched the bus, it wasn't there. Oh dear. Massive massive oh dear.
I lose stuff all the time, it started with my brothers camera on a field trip in Germany, I have not been allowed to forget that. I have lost stuff on this trip, am I careless? I try not to be but I guess i must be. This trip has been particularly painful as I have lost item after item. But nothing more painful than this.
After searching the bus for the ring and coming up with nothing, I made the decision to head back to the small town in the middle of nowhere. Luckily we managed to stop a bus coming the other way and hop on that. While at the site I looked in the place we changed the tyre, nothing. I got help, bizarrely, from an ex secret service guy from America. Still we came up short. Back on the bus and feeling terrible, I had no other choice but to continue back to where the day had begun and then beyond. I passed through the town we had been in the previous night and an hour later I got off the bus and in to a dorm at the end of the bus line. It wasn't terrible but fourteen hours away I had a room and a bed and apparently a micro brewery waiting for me.
I needed a beer, and went for one with an Aussie, poor guy had to listen to my problems. There I had a snack and watched a local football game, at which point a drunken bloke with two kids tried to talk to the aussie and I. I am not entirely convinced the guy likes the Brits. He shook the Aussie guy's hand and when he looked at me shouted 'soy argentina' loudly and repeatedly. That was all he did, for the next five minutes he pointed at himself shouted that he was an Argentinian. And shook the Aussie's hand. We left, quickly. Poor Aussie was at the end of his trip and had had to listen to my problems and shake a pissed Argies hand repeatedly.
The next morning I was back on the bus. Eagerly anticipating getting to the site and having another look. Unfortunately this is not the movies and there is no happy ending. How long will I be in the dog house, who knows. I have had thirty hours of pain and self loathing. It hasn't helped get the ring back and hasn't much help me get through the journey. Fourteen hours is a long long time on a bumpy ride through the Argentinian outback.
Lisa's Story:
With Martyn gone I arrived in El Chalten alone, it was 11.30pm and we had left at 6am, everyone was tired and hungry after the events of the day. I was worried about Martyn as although the tour leader assured me that the driver of the bus he had left on would look after him I know Martyn and envisioned him leaving the bus after he got back to where the ring was lost and hitching a ride with a passing car in order to get back as soon as possible. I half expected him to be there in the morning when I awoke, but he was not.
I had two choices, to sit around waiting for Martyn, which would be 10.30pm if he did what he was told to do, or I could go on the ice trekking excursion we had planned to do together. I went for option 2 as I may as well have gone back with Martyn otherwise, not that I had thought about doing that at the time he made the decision as I was much too angry.
I crossed lake Viedma by boat and took in the icebergs that were floating all around, I was so impressed by the colours and was sad that Martyn was missing it. After sailing around the magnificent Viedma glacier I attached crampons to my boots and climbed up onto the glacier itself. Walking on the ice was easier than I had expected and it was fascinating to learn about how the glacier was formed and how it changes day to day. I was able to look down a 20meter crevice and enter an ice cave before ending the trip with Baileys on the rocks with 500 year old ice chipped off the glacier with my ice pick.
That evening I returned to the hotel, went for a beer and joined the group for dinner. I only had soup as I was sure Martyn would want a huge steak once he arrived and having missed him for the last 30 hours or so I wanted to eat with him. I left the restaurant to go to the bus station to meet him but as I approached I saw him coming up the road. The first thing he said was, "I didn't find it." I didn't care though, Martyn was back safe and that of course was what really mattered. Going back for the ring was probably the best thing he could have done, even though it is lost forever it gave me time to put it all into perspective.
- comments
Andrew Sorry to hear that you have lost the Ring. I won't ever mention that you lost my camera all them years ago, AGAIN. A tip, if you get a replacement ring. Twirl it on your finger so you know it is there, and if you need to put it in your pocket, put it in that small on or one with a ZIP. Finally, DOH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
Ruby Oh no, what a nightmare, but as you said Lisa, it puts everything into perspective. On another good nite, England beat France. Allez Les Blanc!