Anything a Scentist Can Do, I Can Do Better

I am on a bus that I lovingly call 'Land Boat.' It's like I'm riding a vibrator through an ocean during a hurricane/earthquake combo. Somehow they even oversold this 1000 degree relic and people are  sitting/roasting in the isles for the first 45 minutes or so. Luckily I was smart enough to buy a 10 peso rock bread sandwich to nourish myself for the 6+ hour ride. 

It's really no worse than an AirTran flight. 

We took a 6 hour bus to a city called Bahia Blanca, a city not worth staying in. So we got an overnight bus (the pinkeye? The blackeye? The stinkeye?) to Neuquen. 

The city of Neuquen- skip it. But they do have the Giantsaur - the world's biggest carnivorous dinosaur. And that's not his name. You can google that ass.  

 In the museum that holds the actual fossils from this monster, things start to shift away from giant lizards and towards HYDROELECTRIC POWER! that's right kids, they bait you with dinosaurs and switch to a dam. I was really confused. "this is a dino egg, this is a gajillion-year-old mosquito....and this is a model of our power plant." 

Then the guy that drove us to dinoland was all "let's go SEE the hydroelectric power plant, very important" (as a side note, 'very important' is thrown around down here like 'genius' is in LA, neither words have any meaning to me now)

So we see the dam and then get a picture with a really cheesy dinosaur on a hill (better than dam) and then drive back in silence (also better than dam) 

We actually did have a conversation on the ride  that we have with whoever we meet, from any country. Health Care. We always end up talking about healt care. maybe people like to hear that Americans have it shitty and the future looks grim.  

After a visit to a nice river beach, it was time to leave this town. we decided to leave early in the morning. 

That evening, we talked to some older Argentina/Brits. we talked about hiking and the horrors of instant coffee.  The nice old man (he was a non-dinosaur scientist) told us to hike a mountain called Colorado in San Martin de Los Andes, our next destination.   His wife told us so many things I can't recall a single one. But I did watch a giant flying bug sit on her head as she prattled on. I couldn't take my eyes off it. I was going to tell her but I didn't know the etiquette and hoped it might sting her to liven things up. 

Early in the morning at the bus station I saw 30, maybe 40 kids about 13 years old lined up for my bus. Kids that age are the same all over the world. They suck. So I made myself sleep by saying  "this isn't happening" over and over like I was a victim of home invasion as they went to the bus bathroom giggling in pairs. 

When I got off the bus in San Martin I was confused why I had not been there the whole time. It's in the Lake District of the province and is surrounded by the Andes mountains. Everywhere you look is like a postcard; snow capped mountains, that Colorado ski town architecture, crystal clear lakes and stray dogs everywhere. Perfecto

I had already lined up a place to stay, but we met Mario at the bus station. 

Oh, Mario. 

 Mario is about 5'1", the son of Italian immigrants and kind of a round man.  He looks to be 60-65 years old. And his pants sag like little wayne. 

Mario is the kind of guy that would sell you a book off his bookshelf rather than let you borrow it. When you find your own name in it, and remember you loaned it to him last summer- he would be no where in sight. 

After no haggling at all we had a room at Casa de Mario; private room, private bath, "breakfast", and cable TV full of terrible Larry Levinson movies- for $25 a night. (I say "breakfast" because instant coffee and a piece of toast is only breakfast in prison.)

San Martin reminds me of Park City. -it's full of assholes in bad hats.  I kid.  It's a ski town with one small main drag full of shops and restaurants.

Food- amazing and cheap: Wild boar, giant steaks from different animals, trout

I'm pretty much always prepared to fill my fat face with food- that's a given. But having heard it was summer in South America I wasn't prepared for anything but sunshine. 

"let's hike that Colorado Mountain the scientist told us about", katie said to me early in the day. 

Sure, I thought. If that old scientist can do it and keep such a nonchalant attitude, it should be easy. 

Before you hike a mountain you sign in at the forest ranger station so they know where to look for your body. Seemed normal. 

This mountain was about 1800 meters straight up. At first it was nice and fun. 

After a while the wind picked up and then there was snow everywhere. Just as I has feared, we lost the trail. 

The sun started to set so we took shelter in a small cave. We found the remnants of other dumb dead hikers from long ago: bones covered by tattered No Fear t shirts, a pile of flat faced children huddled together for warmth. They were long dead so we searched their pockets for food and only found frozen bottles of Fanta. (Fanta stays in business solely from Argentina. They even put it in their beers) I could tell Katie was starting to loose it because she was talking nonsense. About how she wanted to watch Conan even if he was on TBS and when were tube tops gonna come back in. I built a sad fire out of a teepee of Marlborough Reds and a precocious mountain goat stomped it out. I wanted to feast on his haunches.  On the brink of hypothermia I drifted off to sleep. 

At daybreak I could tell by the smile on Katie's face that she was dead. That bitch is not a morning person. In the sun I saw that our cave was just a sewage drain, and we slept no more than 200 meters from a Howard Johnson. I chuckled to myself as I removed Katie's jewelry and headed to the pawn shop. 

I'll actually have a video that breaks down the barren, windy, subzero apocalypse that is the summit. I'll add it to the blog if I can find a decent Internet connection anywhere.