Crossing Argentina

So the time had come to leave Buenos Aires, and our next port of call was the Patagonian lake district. Unfortunately it was quite far away, so we had a long journey ahead of us. Those of you paying attention will remember our epic journey across Brazil, the 5th largest country in the world , and so we were prepared to cross Argentina, which is merely the 8th largest country in the world – it’s not even as big as Australia.

We looked at our options, and using our patented ‘no overnight buses, stay near bus station method’ that we had honed to perfection in Brazil, it was going to take 3 days. However it turned out that the cities we needed to stop at, were vastly overpriced, especially near the bus station – one very average looking hotel had rooms for $140 AUD… our planning was not going well and we actually considered the overnight bus for a brief time. This would be a bus leaving at 4pm and arriving at midday the next day, so 20 hours… yeah call us wusses, but no thanks – I think if you are over 40 then you are allowed to chicken-out of overnight buses, and we are kind of resigned to the fact that someday soon it will be the only way to get somewhere and we’ll have to take one. The last time I took an overnight bus that I can remember was 2004, and CC says that for her it was 2001.

Anyway, we resolved our expensive hotel issues, and we were ready for our journey from Buenos Aires to San Martin de los Andes, with stops at Bahía Blanca and Neuquén. Both stops went as planned – we arrived in the early evening, went to the supermarket, and retired to the hostel for dinner.

I was going to work our how far the journey was, but very handily they provided this information when we arrived…