We took a bus trip to Bariloche from San Martin. The actual distance is only 170km but you have to navigate around a series of lakes which made it a spectacular journey. The trip took 4 hours and it was 3 and a half through National Park and forrest with lakes and rivers everywhere and the snowcapped Andes mountains all around us. It would have been awesome if the bus stopped for scenic pictures but unfortunately they were just taking us straight to Bariloche! Hiring a car and doing that journey yourself would be a great day well spent.
Our plans at this stage were to head straight down South. Why?? Because while Melbourne has had an unusually hot spell for winter, so it seems has South America and there is NO epic powder in Argentina (seems we were spoilt and our expectations set high in Chillan, Chile). It’s unlike Argentina from what we’ve heard. If you look up photos of San Martin, the place is covered in snow (which is what we were looking forward to), but unfortunately, no snow in the towns at the moment. The days have been sunny and beautiful, and therefore more conducive to sightseeing and not snowboarding. Therefore, we decided to go straight to the bottom of Argentina and catch a…. wait for it… 30hour bus trip from Bariloche to El Calafate.
Short (Funny) Story:
We arrived in Bariloche in the afternoon, and looked around the bus station for buses to El Calafate (which we knew there were). We couldn’t see any carriers anywhere… So I looked up the website of the bus company we were looking for, google mapped the street address, and it showed us a spot down the a bit. We didn’t want to carry all our bags that far (the snow board bag 2 backpacks and our smaller backpacks), so, as we’ve done so many times before, we loaded the bags all into a taxi (they put the front seat down flat for the snow board bag and we squish in). As is usual, the taxi takes off, THEN we show him the address we want…
He looks confused…. We show him google maps and see “terminal de omnibus” because OBVIOUSLY there’s another terminal in the town. The taxi driver points behind him, does a U-Turn, and drops us back where we got into the taxi (laughing). We get out of the taxi and he still motions at the fare to pay! So we paid him the $2 for the trip around the roundabout and hung our heads in shame (while laughing hysterically) and walked back to the bus terminal we’d just come from.
We finally found our bus carrier (different part of the terminal) and booked our crazy long 30 hour bus trip to El Calafate which only leaves the next morning at 9am…. So we walked BACK out to the taxi area (hoping our last taxi driver had moved on and wasn’t still laughing at us) and we got a new taxi to go find a hostel for the night!!
Timeframe: 18th – 19th July
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