Skip to main content

16/1/2018 Arrival to Los Antiguos

...around 7:40am we stopped at a bus terminal in Perito Moreno. We though by this time we should be in Los Antiguos already. But we reached the bus terminal in Los Antiguos around 8:40am. The last part was on normal paved road. 

I could see that the Chaitén travel bus is already in Los Antiguos. And another bus just reached after us. 

The Los Antiguos bus terminal is similar size to that one in El Chalten. Has toilets inside and few travel offices. It is Tuesday, but most of the offices are closed. Since about 3 full buses just arrived here, it’s is quite busy, on the floor with people sitting and in the toilets too. We are waiting to get it more quiet here and asking about how to get to Chile Chico. 

We were told that there no service to go to Chile Chico anymore. The travel office is closed. And the only way is to walk or to hitchhike. It is nearly 20km from here to Chile Chico center and of it 16km between the border controls. As we are standing here, a Scottish woman Annie joins us and later Belgian-Italian couple joins us too. Because we don’t want to walk that distance neither we are sure with hitchhiking, the only option seems to be an organised trip to Puerto Río Tranquilo. 

This trip is sold in the Cal Tur bus office inside the bus terminal. Normally it is a round trip together with marble caves boat trip. But young English speaking guy in the office sells also one way trip only. It is organised by Los Amigos hostel and the price we paid was 1000 pesos per person. The bus is for tomorrow (Tuesday) morning at 8am. All 5 of us reserved the places for the bus, but paid later. 

Annie asked tourists office for printout of accommodation in Los Antiguos and together with with the other couple headed to the nearest one - Dona Juanita. There is a small grocery shop at the corner and we asked inside. The owners also do the accommodation and showed us nice Cabaña next to their house. 5 people can fit in, two rooms and a kitchen. 2000 pesos per night. So we each paid 400 pesos. 

After refreshment, we went to the town to withdraw some money from a cash machine. There is Banco de Chile and there was very long and slow queue for ATM. I didn’t need money, so went back to cabana to eat something. The rest of the guys were queuing for money and didn’t get any at the end. So better to have some cash before coming to Los Antiguos. This was the same situation like in Ushuaia - the cash machine didn’t allow to withdraw from foreign payment card, but allowed locals to get money out. 

I then went to pay for the bus transfer to Puerto Río Tranquilo marble caves directly to Los Amigos hostel. Paid by debit card. 

Later in the evening, went to the beach of the Lake Buenos Aires. Big waves and windy. 


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

24/1/2018 Chiloe Castro, car hire, Teneun, Dalhacue, Cucao

We woke up around 10am, Denisa went to buy something for breakfast and we ate in the hostel. Then we packed all things and left to the tourist information centre, where young English speaking girl gave us a business card of local car hire place we headed to straight after.   The car hire place we used in Castro Chiloe is called Hostal Cordillera. They asked us what type of car we want (no English speaking) and what the prices are. We chose the smallest car Kia Morning (3 cylinders) and the lady told us we need to wait until 12 as someone will return the car to use for us. So we walked to see the main church (UNESCO) on the main square and we bought some really tasty potato bread, or something, filled with minced meat. And also kuchen with special local berries called makui (they grow only on Chiloe). Each was only 1000 pesos and it was amazingly good (we ate the kuchen later on the road).  At 12, we were back in the car hire place. Jorge spoke very clearly Spanish a...

21/12/2017 Tango, San Telmo, La Boca, Caminito

10:40am, trying to get a taxi using BA Taxi app and no luck. It took me 15 minutes until I found one. Streets very busy, full of cars, traffic jams... We got to San Telmo 15 minutes later. Paid 200 pesos for taxi and went to our tango lesson. Gerry and Lucia were excellent, we really enjoyed the lesson with them and they spoke perfectly English. The lesson cost 700 pesos and it was good fun.   Then we walked to see some live tango performance to Plaza Dorrego, around 1pm and then had lunch in Pasaje Solar. Looked like French food type restaurant, but we were hungry, so stayed in. Decent lunch, paid 440 pesos for both of us, including two small beers, coffee and desert.  The next plan was to get to Caminito and google maps showed me where to take a bus number 33 apparently going there. First local public bus we were taking. Didn’t know how we find out where to get off and by mistake we crossed the bridge to La Boca and rather got off the first stop after the bridge. ...

3/1/2018 bus from Ushuaia to Punta Arenas (Chile)

As I wrote before, be got our tickets from Marga Taqsa office in Ushuaia (Juana Genoveva Fadul 126) on the day we arrived (Friday 29/12/2017). The bus company is Barria Ghisoni. It is standard long distance bus with tiny toilet and one deck. The ticket costs 1000 pesos (only cash payment) and the bus is leaving at 8am.   We got up at 6:20am, had quick breakfast and packed our rucksacks. At 7:30am we reached the omnibus terminal and handed our rucksacks to a guy from the bus. They didn’t want to see the tickets, neither passport. And they didn’t put any label on our rucksacks either.  Shortly after we departed on time, they gave us a Chile customs declaration form (I’ll upload later) to fill in. I was looking forward to have some amazing views from the bus, all the windows inside were steamed and wet, and it was raining outside anyway. So no views. There is no USB, neither good air con on the bus. The bus was packed.  The first stop is Argentinian b...