A New Trip

The bus was fleeing Horcon as I stepped out from the dank confines of my rented room and into the buttery mid-morning sun. I was operating on minimal rest. The night prior the rhythmic clapping of the Pacific lulled me to sleep. Around three in the morning, drunken yelling jolted me awake. Outside my door, I could make out the shuffling feet of two men gripped in a fight. In their haste, a car door was left ajar. Its speakers screamed a face melting Santana guitar solo into the night- the perfect accompaniment for the dull thuds of fists on faces. I leaned forward in bed and checked that the door was locked. This easy access to the door was the room´s only luxury. I lay uneasily for the rest of the night, enveloped in the top comforter.

The old bus sputtered towards me. I flagged it down. The driver impatiently waved me aboard, giving me no time to stow my pack in the bus´s rear compartment. So there it sat next to me in the first window seat: a big, blue gringo eye sore. The bus soon filled and my seat occupying bag became the focus of every embarking passenger. Forced to stand in the aisle, they glared down at me and my pack with concentrated disdain. I took my queue and relinquished my seat to the first taker. But this did little to quell the bus´s growing indignation over my selfish storage. I could feel everyone´s eyes silently condemning me. I threw down my shades that previously held my hair back, and pretended to sleep. This proved especially difficult as I was standing.
The scene became increasingly hostile as every decrepit old foggie from here to Viña crawled aboard. Finally, overwhelmed by all the unwanted attention, I asked the bus driver if he could stop so I got put my bag in the back. He refused. Instead he told me to toss it up on his dash board. I returned to the seat, grabbed the bag and navigated awkwardly through the crowd of passengers. A faint applause broke out in my wake celebrating the local victory. The bag took up most of the right side of the windshield, a definite moving violation. But with little Argentine children riding on the back of motorcycles without helmets, I was sure the local authorities would not pay this breach in safety much mind.

The bus docked in Viña around midday. I immediately booked a ticket on an overnight trip back into Argentina. Hours later sitting on the second story of the bus at a border crossing, I let my eyes glaze to passengers scurrying around mounds of luggage below my window. The scene melted into a brewing stew of colors. I let my mind wander. Flipping through the thoughts of past adventures and adventures soon to come, I realized that the nature of my trip had changed. I was out of Patagonia. No more treks. No more rivers. No more doing really. Now was a time to cover ground. A time to push hard for the last month, and see the rest of Argentina.