Argentina - Patagonia

From Bariloche to Viedma
It's true - they love their meat.  Dodo ordered a small portion and they warned her it wasn't much, just a snack, something to eat while waiting for the real portion to arrive.  When it arrived, I laughed.  She couldn't finish it and took most of it to go.  We continued to eat it at home for the next two days.

I assume this overeating culture came with the Italians but since Bariloche is firmly German in origin, it's hard to say. 

The Andean portion of Patagonia is beautiful.  Snowy mountains, large blue skies, lakes, interesting vegetation.

Bariloche was being guarded like a bank vault when we arrived, some kind of G20 meeting was taking place at a large hotel on top of a hill.  The president was in town, or so they say.

We stayed eight miles outside of town and took the bus in a few times.

I was feeling underwhelmed.  Nothing much has interested me since leaving Santiago.  It feels like Europe and the beauty notwithstanding, there is nothing new or different to discover.  Perhaps I am just tired.

I'd been looking forward to our train trip across Patagonia, a six hundred mile overnight ride from the Andes to the Atlantic Ocean.  I had visions of the Orient Express for some reason, I don't know why.  When this dirty old piece of junk pulled up at the station I felt cheated.  It was all in my head of course.

The departure time was 5pm and we were scheduled to pull into Viedma at 11am the next day.

We had a compartment to ourselves, the kind that has two bunk beds.

The dining car was utilitarian at best, the type of place you might shoot a scene from a Ukrainian prison film.

No complaint about the bunk beds, they were comfortable.

We pulled away and said goodbye to the mountains.

We'd soon be in the pampas.

We made a stop after an hour and a half.  I still don't know why.  We stayed there for almost two and a half hours.  Nobody got on and nobody got off.  Nobody explained, nobody complained.  Argentinians don't care about being on time.

There was an occasional building but mostly there was nothing.  Once you leave the Andes, Patagonia is nothing more than infinity covered in dust.

We continued to make stops along the way the next day.  During one, they off-loaded beds, boxes of roofing tiles and who knows what else.  Rather than arrive at 11am, as scheduled, we arrived at 4:30pm.  Nobody bothered to explain why or apologize.  I think that's just how it is here.