day 1: eres re linda and puerto madryn

day 1 started out great. i got out of spanish early and rushed home to pack my clothes for patagonia. i even had time to go for a short run before the ballz long bus ride. cat, bri, and i took the colectivo aka bus (which was really crowded and we looked stupid with our huge backpacking stuff at 5 in the afternoon) to the terminal. like usual, the bus left late, so we had extra time to chill outside in the mendoza sun. our bus left from mendoza at 7pm and didn't get into puerto madryn until 6pm THE NEXT DAY. somehow we all forgot that we were going to be on a bus for almost 24 hours. here is a map to show you just how long it was:

although we were dreading the ride, it turned out to be the best one of the entire trip. i think we watched over 6 movies. but the best part was that our bus attendant, gabriel, kept us entertained. i think he was fascinated with the fact that we were three americans with no plans traveling through argentina. here is a funny story: he came back to talk to us at some point and obviously the question tenemos novios? (do you have boyfriends?) came up. i thought i would be really witty and say no, but i'm looking for one. so i did. cat and bri and i cracked up because it was a joke, but he didn't get the sarcasm. instead, he points to a guy two rows in front of us and says "has visto mi amigo?" aka have you seen my friend up there? so then i tried to cover up my mistake and kept insisting that it was a joke and that i really was not looking for an argentine companion. gabriel still didn't understand so he asked me if i wanted to meet his friend, who OBVIOUSLY could hear this conversation because he was literally 3 feet away. so then gabriel goes to tap his friend on the shoulder. at this point, i am so embarrassed and cat and bri are practically peeing their pants from laughing. so i recline my chair so his friend (who looked like he was pushing 35 PLUS he had a snaggletooth...gross) couldn't see me. after that whole thing settled down, gabriel's friend kept turning around in his seat to look at us. then some 90s slow jams came on to break up the 93485 movies we watched, so of course we all started singing them. it was at this point that we had been on a bus for more than 15 hours, fyi. so now it looks like we're serenading this man on the bus, although we were trying to serenade each other. so then, gabriel comes back to talk to his friend. his friend turns around as we're singing shania twain and yells "ERES RE LINDA" to us. so we stop singing and burst out laughing because he literally just said "you're really pretty". to this day, we still don't know who he was talking about.

then we played bingo. except this bingo was way better than the old people bingo. because it was called "bingo andes mar". andes mar is the bus company. also it was all in spanish obvs and i found out that i actually do not know all my numbers in spanish. so that was fun. but the best/worst part was that gabriel asked us what we thought the prize should be. joking, we said una botella de vino, a bottle of wine. soooo whatdya know, the prize was a bottle of wine. good job americans. worst part, bri was so close to winning, but the bottle of wine went to some ungrateful old person upstairs on the bus.

 then, gabriel comes back around and hands everyone bus evaluations, to see what the company can do better or worse, you know, like end of the year course evaluations. i didn't want to put my name so i put down "kitty c. fairchild", cat's nickname and last name. as bri and i were trying to decipher the spanish and figure out the bus number, gabriel says in spanish "ahh, put down your number so that i can call you and go dancing". bri and i didn't hear it, but cat did and cracked up. so then when bri and i looked up, he commented that cat must be smarter than us because she understood the joke. bri and i, with our blank faces because we hadn't heard what he said, looked like idiots until he repeated what he had said earlier. dumb americans.

when we finally got to puerto madryn, we found a really nice hostel right next to the beach...hollahh. we decided to go out to dinner and get real seafood, which was delicious. okay onto the next day.

view from the hostel. note the proximity to the beach

other side of the balcony

inside da hostel