We took another overnight bus south ... again. It doesn't seem to bother us anymore. Honestly, its almost like staying at a hostel, except you can't lie down to sleep. If I hadn't been woken up by water (from the air conditioning system??) dripping on my forehead, I would have comfortably slept through the night.
I started to get nervous when the sun came up and we were driving down a gravel road--a road that is supposed to be a national highway. The sage and other knee-high underbrush spread as far as the eye could see on either side and we would only pass houses every 20 or 30 minutes. I started to be very concerned that the "town" we were headed to would be a few houses and we'd be stranded and unable to find a bus for the final 300 kilometers to the sheep ranch.
It turns out I had reason to be concerned. Even though the bus route goes within 75 K of where we need to be, there is no transportation across that stretch. For better or worse, we resisted to the temptation to hitchhike from the prairie crossroad. Now we are hanging out in the town until our next night bus, which will take us to the coast and then farther south, to a city that definitely has a bus going past the ranch ...
Currently Seth is finishing Great Expectations while I write this post. We're sitting in a museum/coffee house and I'm trying mate, the Argentinian herbal coffee substitute and national obsession. It's a bit bitter, but on the whole quite tasty. The best part is the ritual that goes along with drink: fill your pot mostly full with herbs and pour in a little hot water and sugar. After you've finished, you pour in a little more water and sugar and keep drinking. The mate straws are stainless steel and have a little filter at the bottom to prevent ingestion of the herbs themselves--they also look like something straight out of Lord of the Rings, which certainly adds to their mystique.
So here we are in cowboy country ... hoping to get to our ranch ... and hoping somehow we can watch the Super Bowl. Wish us luck.
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