Backtracking South...

Today my bus ride continues.  Another movie.  Another meal.  More farmland as we rolled through La Pampa region. 

By midday, we hit the suburbs of Buenos Aires.  Wow, traffic was bad.  Really bad.  It seemed to take us over an hour to get to the bus station. 

As I watched the gridlocked traffic, the bustling people, and the dense buildings I made the decision that I wouldn´t stay in Buenos Aires.  At the bus station, I´d immediately look for a bus heading back south to the coast.  I hadn´t heard from my girls in Uruguay.  I didn´t want to head to Punta del Este on the slight chance I´d bump into them - especially if I was going with Adam anyway in a couple weeks.  And I didn´t want to just hang in Buenos Aires myself.

  A big place to be on my own, and I´d risk duplicating "tourist" things that Adam would want to do too.

So, upon arrival at Buenos Aires bus terminal - which is huge by the way, with puertas for over 70 buses at once! - I looked for a bus to Mar Del Plata, or even better, the smaller town of Villa Gesell.  As luck would have it, I found a bus company that would take me to Villa Gesell, and the bus was leaving in 30 minutes! Perfect!

The 5 hour journey back down south the Villa Gesell was ok.  I slept for half of it, and sat annoyed by the loud talkers in the seats behind me.  They talked for 5 hours nonstop.   And of course, what was more frustrating than anything was they were talking in Portugese so I couldn´t eavesdrop!

When we arrived in Villa Gesell, I was unsure of where to get off the bus.

  I didn´t have a map of the town.  I didn´t have a place to stay.  And I wasn´t sure how many stops we were going to make in town.  I certainly didn´t want to miss it!  (In the previous town we passed through 30 minutes ago, we had only made one stop - at the bus terminal.)

So at the first stop, I asked the driver if it was the terminal.  He said no, and that he would tell me when we got to the terminal.  Ok, I thought, good.  So that´s what happened.  I got off at the terminal stop.

It was 9pm and lucky for me, there was a tourist office right next to the bus station and it was still open.  So I went in to see if they could help me find a place to stay.   Well, they at least provided me with a map, and some directions of how to find the decent hotels.

  The bummer was all the hotels were back at the spot where the bus made it´s first stop - about 35 blocks back down the road.  Shoot!

But, for whatever reason, I decided to walk rather than find a colectivo (local bus).  Maybe it was the fact that I´d been on a bus for the last 29 hours that made me decide to walk.

The trouble was, when I got to the hotel area, it was almost dark so difficult to "rate" the hotels visually.  I walked by the few that Lonely Planet recommends, but they were off the main drag on a very dark street.  I didn´t like that.  So I opted for Hospedaje Villa Gesell, right on the main drag of Avenida 3.  Owner / operator Antonio seemed like a nice guy, who lived on the property with his family.  And he offered me a pretty killer price - 50 pesos for a private room and private bathroom, complete with cold water showers.  (Though actually it was apprently user-error.  They showed me the second night how to get the hot water.)

After checking in and taking that cold shower, I headed out to dinner.  But places were pretty jammed so I headed to Lonely Planet recommended Sutton for a pizza and beer.  Nice outdoor seating, and met a moza (waitress) there named Yanel who was very pleasant and friendly.  (Turns out she quit her job the next day.  At least that´s what she said when I ran into her on the beach - more on that tomorrow.)

My next stop was El Jirafe.  But neither place was really happening.  It was like 1am or 2am by now.  I´d had enough and called it a night.