The long road home

One thing that I forgot to mention was the stars. Out in the Andes, so far from the rest of the world and so high up in air, the sky is more clear than anywhere else I've ever been in my life. It floored me. I was shocked into silence gazing up at the stars above the snowy mountains. If you'd asked me how many stars I could see, I would tell you "all of them". The sky was filled with stars, and in the middle was the spiral arm of the milky way, with all of its nebulous clouds of stars visible arcing across the sky.

Anyway.

Woke up monday morning at 650 AM as the plan was to meet at the other house at 7 to depart. We get the four of ourselves up, packed, and dressed. We never even met the other people who were snoozing when we went to bed and were snoozing when we left. In this entire trip, every day we got up while it was still dark out. We walked over to the other house around 715 where, surprise, no one was even awake yet. We yelled them out of bed, and I settled down to watch the a volleyball tournament on tv.

Left Malague around 730, stopping off at a convience store for breakfast. Banana, yogurt with cereal, orange juice. Everyone got cheap sunglasses for the snow glare. Five hours later we got up to Las Lenas for a short day of skiing. I was still sore and my skiing was shakey so I only got about five runs in. Still, these are huge runs, so they took me the entire time we were skiing. One of the runs was the best run I've ever done in my life. The lift line was about 20 minutes of waiting due to its popularity, and at least 10 minutes of ascent at a45 degrees up to the peak of this massive ridge. The view from the top was incredible. THe run was classified red but it skied like a blue in the states. It wound its way down and around the main peak, passing craggy huge peaks on either side. It was as though we were skiing in a ski resort of giants. Its hard to describe the absolute scale of the place. It was a really warm day, even warmer than sunday. I skied in a tee shirt and a nylon shell jacket. Great weather.

Anyway, at the end of the day, around 3 pm, we took a group photo at the base and drove back out to Los Molles where we dropped off the ski rental equipment. The tiny bus felt much more open. Remeber, that we're lugging ten people, six snowboards, and four sets of skis and poles INSIDE the van. After we dropped it all off, we had a long 5 hour drive back to Mendoza. We didn't run into any incident until we got to Mendoza when the guy who was driving took a wrong turn down a one way street. Innocent mistake, especially in a strange city when we were looking for a gas station to fill up the van before we returned it. We turned off of it quickly, but we'd attracted the attention of the police who pulled us over. We explained the situtation in our broken spanish, and the police gave us a break (they really want to be nice to the rich foreign tourists) and escorted us to the gas station where they sat and watched us. I was concerned that they would keep following us after we{d filled up, but they stayed and we dropped off the van with no problems.

It was 10 PM and we were all famished, so we found a cafe outside on a pedestrian mall. Mendoza is actually a nice little city, much more laid back than BsAs with quiet squares and a very closed downtown. Shared beers, wine, and had a great ravioli for dinner. By the time we'd paid, it was 10 PM at night. Our bus would depart at 7 AM in the morning. We split into two groups. One went to a hotel and the other group decided to pass. I figured, by the time we would have gotten to the hotel, checked in, and showered, it would be 2 AM at LEAST. It just was not worth the money to get a few hours in. The shower would have been nice though.

So the five of us hit a beatles themed pub and killed a litro of a Andes beer ( all the local beers in argentina are very light ) and killed an hour. We walked around in the steets for an hour or so before winding up at the bus terminal. We each grabbed a bench and laid down with our heads on our bags. There were other people there too, mostly travelers like us and a few security guards. I caught sleep in snatches of about 45 minutes, waking up every hour or so. Slept like that until about 5 AM when the security guard made us all sit up.

There's never a night so cold than when you sleep on a bench. I felt like crap, and I looked about as good as I felt. My hair was so greasy it was a fire hazard, I hadn{t showered since skiing and the long drive, and my face was still badly sunburned from the first day of skiing (forgot suntan lotion that day, and I'm STILL paying for it). We walked around the streets some more looking for an open cafe. Nothing. Went back to the station and found a place that finally opened. Had a cafe con leche and medialunas. Man, that coffee would have been fantastic at triple the price. Met the more delicate members of our group at the cafe and then we all hopped on the long bus back to Buenos Aires.

The bus departed at 7 AM, and arrived in BsAs at 11 PM. With the hour time differnace, thats still 16 hour of riding a bus. This coach wasnt nearly as nice as the one we took in. It was $5 cheaper, but the seats didnt really recline that much, the in'drive movies were pirated copies, and we made about ten stops throughout the day. It was interesting to see the small towns in rural Argentina, but when the bus spent two hours rolling over a dirt road in the middle of pastures, I'd had enough. We were all stir crazy at hour 13.

The movies were entertaining though, in spanish with english subtitles or viceversa. The Pacifier, Pirates of the Caribbean (the first one) and Click. Click was really stupid, but it was interesting because the premise is Adam sandler is an architect with so little time for anything other than his work that he gets a magic remote to fastforward and control time. Predictably maudlin results, with a typical, and it was just a dream ending. It was funny as we're all architecture students watching it, and we were making sarcastic "now what did we all learn from this movie?" comments.

Finally, finally, finally pulled into the BsAs Omnibus station and shared a cab home with the chicas. Aldo and Jamie were still out at dinner, so I was so glad to get a shower for the first time in literally 2 days. I realized that I think of Buenos Aires as home now, riding back on the bus.

What a trip! What an experiance! I wouldnt do it again, but Im so glad I did it. What were we thinking!? Crossing a foriegn country over 800 miles for two days of skiing. Renting a bus and road tripping across the wildreness in South America. Showing up in a ski resort late at night with ten people and expecting to find a room. Man, it was great. I remember thinking about how things work out, and I remebered the conditional for that theory that I'd forgoten in the comfort of my daily life; things work out because there is no plan B. ITs either glorious success or cataclysmic failure. There were several points on this trip were we teetered pretty precariously.
Nonetheless, this will be a trip I'll never forget.

It's not every day that you take a weekend ski trip to the Andes.