BA to Bariloche.

It was the last day before the Easter holiday, so everyone in Argentina were on the move. I was lucky and got the last ticket on the bus to Barloche, a small town in the Andes mountains which should be perfect for hiking.
I took the underground to the train and bus station, and to put it this way, I was not alone. When I got into the bus station there were so many people there that I could barely move around to find my platform. On my ticket it said platform 37 to 51, so I made my way to the screens with information about these platforms. Argentina is supposed to have some of the best bus system in the world, and by the number of people that were at the station, I was really hoping they did.

I tried to talk to some locals, but they could not help me much because the whole system was different than usual. I just had to watch the screen and wait. My bus was supposed to leave at 21:00, I got there at 20:00, and when the clock hit 21:00, there were still busses that were supposed to leave at 18:15 that had not yet left. I talked a bit to some Argentinian ladies that helped me listen for information about me bus on the intercom system. Around 22:30 my bus came up on the sceen and I rushed to my platform. The bus left at 23:00, only two hors late. I had yet not bought my return ticket, so I started to get worried about getting a ticket back to Buenos Aires in time to cath Maria, the Danish girl who I planned to go to Uruguay with.

Not long after departure our first hot meal was served. The only seat open when I bought the ticket was on "cama", the middle class. It was a large seat with a full legrest, and I could lay almost all the way down. It was something quite different than buses in Asia. With the pasta and beef they served red wine, but I was shocked when they started pouring 7-Up in the red wine, and later Coke in the white wine. It looked horrible, and there was no way I would try it. Apparently, however, this was very popular in Argentina. I asked for just wine, and can still not understand how they can ruin perfectly good wine with soda. Disgusting! They made up for that by serving champagne and whisky on the rocks.
There were several hot meals, a few decent movies, and of course, a couple that were not so good. A concert DVD with Ricky Martin being the worst. I tried to listen to my iPod again, for the first time in ages.
I got a good sleep on the bus, and the scenery that went by on the second day was fantastic, so the 20 hour busride was more pleasant than boring.

I was a little surprised about the farming I saw across the country. I expected to find enormous kettle ranches like the meat factories along M5 between LA and San Francisco. There are thousands of cows on a small amount of space, the fields are brown because all the kettle step down the grass. Here in Argentina I could see large fields of grass with just a few cows on it, they all ate natural grass and seemed to have a pretty sweet life. I wonder if I just missed the big ones, or if the massive beef production is an acumulated effort by all the small farmers around the country?

The bus terminal in Bariloche was almost empty, and by that the extreme opposite of the one in Buenos Aires. I asked all eleven companies, and one of them had a ticket that would get me to Buenos Aires in time to go to a a drum show, and to Uruguay with Maria.