Carmen de Patagones, Argentina

It´s been a whirlwind 48 hours with not much happening, so this may be a confused entry.

Jumped on the train in Bariloche for a 16-hour ride from Westernmost to Easternmost Argentina, and was immediately greeted by about 30 13-year old kids heading out on a fieldtrip to the beach (much like the class trip to Washington DC I took in 8th grade) and the crazy British guy named Robert who I´ve now bumped into on the boat to Puerto Natales, the trails in Torres del Paine, the bus on Route 40, and the train to Viedma. It´s pretty uncanny. He´s a nice guy, older, very animated, and is constantly scribbling down notes. His handwriting is bad and I´ve never been able to figure out what he´s writing.

On this particular day, on which I learned that of several hundred passengers on the train I was impossibly seated next to Robert, it turns out that Robert was experiencing some severe nausea and general gastronomical discomfort, the development of which he described to me in excruciating detail during the first hour of the train ride.

"It´s really quite amazing," he´d say, examining his rather substantial belly with both hands, as though searching for a baseball that may have become lodged in there. "I´m really quite certain that I´ve no idea how this came on."

"Yes," I´d say. "It sounds awful."

"I mean, I´m just miserable," he´d answer. "It´s as though there´s something alive in there. I´m really feeling quite ill right now. I´m not certain how this will play out."

More rubbing of the tummy, to which we now add profuse sweating and shivering.

"I can´t imagine it´s anything I´ve eaten. Perhaps I´ve allowed myself to become dehydrated."

Later, when he was feeling better and the ride got a little bumpy, he did his best impression of that crazy piano player from the "Shine" movie, giggling uncontrollably in a way that betrayed his fears that the entire trip would be this bouncy.

"Oh-ho-ho! Here we go, Chad! Here we go now! It´s going to be a rough one it is! Oh my, my, my! Ho-ho! Dear, dear this could be a rough one, couldn´t it, Chad! Ho-ho-ho!"

Meanwhile, the 13-year old kids took a shine to me and gathered around in droves to chat in English and correct my Spanish and ask me to listen to their favorite songs on their CD players. It was good to be a curiosity rather than an annoying tourist for a change.

Enjoyed the perks of the train, which included the ability to walk around and even a decent dinner in the dining car. As for scenery, it was very much a repeat of Route 40, furthering my knowledge of the vastness of the nothing encompassed by much of this country. (8th largest in the world, I learned.)

The train arrived the following morning, just as I was finishing yet another breakfast of coffee and small pieces of round toast covered with this stuff called "Dulce de Leche" which essentially is a creamy caramel spread that is so addictive I´m convinced there are at least trace amounts of some opiate in there. Got to chatting with a guy named Jon from Brown U. who´d been studying in Mendoza for a semester and was now finishing off his time in Argentina by travelling around a little with his buddy on a very tight budget. He was kind of a slow-talking, granola-stoner type, and if he wasn´t from Cali or Colorado, he certainly should have been.

Met back up with him and his pal at the bus station and they were kind of a sorry pair. Even dirtier than me, with all kinds of odds and ends tied to the outsides of their backpacks with bits of twine and carrying torn plastic bags full of leftovers and a metal grill which they´d been using to cook. They said they were heading south.

"If you´re heading south, why did you take this train all the way east?" I asked them. They stood there, sleep-deprived and doe-eyed, staring blankly at me like I was a map of a city they´d never been to rather than a person who´d just asked them a perfectly reasonable question.

Something finally registered in Jon´s brain and he blinked.

"Oh," he said, as though he was thinking about it for the first time. He paused a second and then said, "I don´t know."

His friend then had the same revelation -- you could see it in his face.

"Oh, shit," he said, slowly letting one of his bags slip to the ground in a gesture that reeked of defeat. "That´s right..."

Keep in mind, these weren´t homeless guys -- one goes to Brown and the other lives in Monterey.

In any case, they finally bought a ticket to some godforesaken town on the eastern coast and headed off to a campsite to spend the night. After a quick pass through Carmen de Patagones, I´d decided it would be in my best interest *not* to stay there for the night and instead bought an 8pm ticket to Buenos Aires, making it two all-night trips in a row for me.

With 10 hours to kill, I figured I´d follow the fellas to their campsite while they set up their stuff and then head into town with them to grab some pizza and beers or something, seeing as how they were pretty good folks, the quality of whose company far exceeded their planning skills.

The walk to the campsite, though, went on much longer than I´d anticipated, and was punctuated with various fits of delirious laughter and beleaguered groaning as we turned corner after corner, negotiated a divided highway, and finally crossed a huge bridge. Jon´s buddy Rory was walking ahead and small pieces of food started to poke their way out of the torn shopping bag he was carrying. At one point, as we were walking single-file over the bridge, an entire loaf of bread worked it´s way out and fell on the ground without Rory even noticing. Jon turned around, giggling stupidly while the metal grill split into two pieces and fell to the ground as well

"Oh, man" he said to me, closing his eyes and looking skyward as he continued laughing deliriously. "Did you see that, Chad?"

I had seen it. I had also seen about enough. As politely as possible, I begged off and told the guys I was going to turn around and head into town, suggesting we try to meet up in a couple hours.

"Yeah," said Jon. "Good idea. Peace out, Chad."

As I said before, they were good guys and I really did hope to meet up and have a beer later rather than wander around solo for ten hours, but it was not to be.

Instead, I went to the tourist office where a woman who reminded me of the wardrobe specialist from "The Incredibles" gave me a 3-hour presentation on a 20-minute "historical walk" she suggested I take and loaded me up with 20 pounds worth of brochures advertising attractions around town which I would spend the rest of the day unable to locate. The place was absolutley dead, there were no people, and of the few establishments which existed most were closed. I finally gave up and went to have a beer at the only open cafe I could find.

Ten minutes after my beer arrived I looked up and there was Robert at a table across the room, sorting through the exact same unwieldy pile of brochures that I´d been given.

"Chad," he shouted from across the cafe, waving his arm. "Chad, hello! I´ve just had the most *extraordinarily* fascinating day! Isn´t this place marvelous?"

I went over to his table and set down my beer.

"Did you really see all these things?" I asked him, gazing down at the brochures for the abandoned fort, the secret caves, the captured British flag, the first school, the old house, the famous restaurant, the bar with the curious history.

Robert sipped his coffee and examined the mess of information spread before him.

"Not a bloody one of them," he said.