Traveller´s Fables: The Bus and the Backpack

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Originally uploaded by Becky Barrett.

A young (ish) woman from London town had set forth on a great adventure to far-off lands. After learning enough of the local language to order herself wine and a bed for the night, she felt she was ready to ignore the advice of her trusted companion, the Footprint Guide to Argentina and attempt, by herself, a visit to a strange town where, rumour had it, lay the bones of the largest meat-eating dinosaur that had ever been found on the earth.

So, she reserved a hotel room, not knowing what it might cost, and found a bus that would take her to her destination, not knowing when it might arrive. She sat quietly on the bus, with a feeling of nervous anticpation in her stomach. The bus attendant, a kindly man, who had observed her feeble attempts at communicating with the other passengers, told her when the bus had arrived at her destination, and helped her off with her bag before the bus, full of sleeping passengers, continued on its way.

As she gathered her things together, she looked around and realised that the bus had left her on a deserted highway with no bus station or nearby town in sight and she, alone and confused, was stranded in the dark in Patagonia at 10pm with a heavy bag upon her back and without a map, a mobile phone reception or a clue.

And the moral of the story is: When travelling for the first time to a strange town in Patagonia by yourself, try and arrive during daylight hours, as next time you might not be able to count on the only other person who got off at the same time as you getting her dad to give you a lift to your hotel.

Fortunately, the hotel was lovely (although it did blow the budget) and I could enjoy sleeping with my curtains wide open and waking up to watch the sun rise over the lake. The dinosaur bones were pretty cool too.