Our journey back to Argie was far more smooth. We spent 1 more night in El Calafate before catching the 3am bus back to Bariloche - a 32hr journey. And if only it was 32hrs........
Not even 1/2 way though the journey we were stopped by another road block. But this was not to be for just a few hours. Oh no! These guys meant business. They were burning tyres and had home-made petrol bombs at the ready. There were only about 30 of them but they were not budging. Night time came and we realised we were going to spend the night there. We awoke the next morning to find a bigger pile of tyres burning and more demonstrators. We had now been on that bus for 30hrs but the weird thing was no-one seemed to be that bothered about it all.

The demonstration was over oil workers wanting more money, even though we had been told that they actually did earn good money already. The town we were stuck in is build predominately to house the oil workers and the houses were all big and very nice. So, how they have the cheek to block the ONLY road leading from the north to the south of the East coast, we did not know. There were 2 policemen present who stood from a distance overlooking, but did absolutely nothing to move the strikers on.

By now, Stu and I had fallen into a bus coma, hours passed and we were oblivious, we just sat in the same spot watching movies, reading and sleeping. We even watched the 3hr film "Benjamin Button" twice back to back. We were too comatozed to get up and tell the driver that we had just seen that film. Most people eventually left the bus and went back to where they`d come from or walked across the blockade to get a taxi to take them to the next bus station. For us, sadly there was no point in doing this as there wld be no other buses to Bariloche other than the ones stuck this side of the blockade. So, the bus became our home for a grand total of 55 hours!!! We spent 3 nights and 2 and a half days on the bus. Or to put it another way, we spend 1/3 of a week on a bus. To ass insult to injury, there seemed to be nothing done to find an alternative route until we`d been there nearly 24hrs. Eventually, the bus took a dirt track through some waste land and we were on our way. But then shortly after the bus stopped and the driver jumped out and got into a 4x4 and sped off into the distance. Stunned and comatozed we were left wondering "what now?"
10 mins later the driver was back and all the other bus drivers circles him whilst he explained to them that the dirt track was too hilly and would not be safe for double decker buses. NO!!!!!!!!!!!! So we had to wait whilst all the other traffic passed us before we cld turn round in hope of finding another less hilly track. And we did and this time we really were on our way to Bariloche. But why didn`t they just look for a detour earlier.............we will never know or understand.

We arrived in Bariloche to the happy embrace of our dear nutter Kelly. We check into our dorm to have a suprise re-union with Jane, who we`d met in Mendoza. This time the sun was shining and we could actually see the beautiful lake and mountains. We stayed in a wicked hostal called Padu and spent our evening eating and drinking. One night there were these 2 Argie guys BBQing half a lamb. Stu quickly befriended them (I wonder why!) and not only did they share their lamb, but they shared their bottle of Fernet (the national spirit thats made from Artichokes and tastes like medicine). At 2am they had finally cooked and eaten their lamb, polished off the fernet and we ready to hit the town. They kept insisting that we join them, and couldn`t understand why we would want to go to be at 2am.....crazy Argies.