I am sorry to those of you who read this, I am honestly the worst blogger in the world. I always think of something else I would rather be doing than updating my life, but my life this past week has been pretty insane, and I definitely need to keep it in writing. I have also made a pact to myself to update every week until I leave!
This weekend (which turned into a full week) the other CMU students and I made the trek to the beautiful town of Bariloche, Argentina. We didn't have class on Friday and turned in our homework early for our Monday class, so we could have a full, 4 day weekend relaxing (ha) in Argentina. We bought our tickets beforehand to get there and back, so we wouldn't have to worry about buying tickets to get home while we were in Bariloche (once again, HA). We arrived on Friday and it was gorgeous. Our hostel was on top of a hill with views of the lake and mountains behind it, the sun was shining, we went shopping at an awesome craft market and got steak at a famous restaurant. All of Friday we couldn't stop talking about how much we LOVED Argentina and were so pumped for the rest of the trip.
On Saturday, we were thinking about maybe renting bikes to go riding around the city, but decided to save that for Sunday instead. We wanted to just explore the city, eat good food and relax. We ended up at a nice place for lunch that had views of the lake, and when we were done we walked down by the lake to take some photos. We noticed while we were on the beach that off in the distance it looked like it was going to rain, the clouds were really dark and looked awful. Everyone else cleared the beach, so we decided to follow. As we were walking back, I noticed that white things were falling (I originally thought they were coming from the pine trees we were walking under) and one got caught in my eye, and it stung SO badly. Me and Lena kept feeling them, and could not, for the life of us, figure out what the hell was falling from the sky. We were discussing what this weird stuff was that was falling, and I commented on how dusty my jacket was getting. When I said that, Lena finally figured it out: it was ash. At this point, we were a little curious/scared/thinking WTF and it started getting heavier and heavier. We randomly ran into some Americans on the streets, who told us that it was from Mt. Osorno (which we later found of was Volcán Puyehue) and that it was errupting, but we weren't in any danger. We got back to the hostel, turned on the news, and found out that a volcano in Chile was in fact erupting, and the wind direction had lead the ashes to Bariloche. It continued to fall all night, and when we woke up the next morning, the city looked like a giant sandbox.
As you can imagine, a town covered in ash doesn't present many opportunities for doing fun things. Our bike ride was out, kayaking-out, stores were closed, nobody was around, and we had no way to go anywhere, because the bus station and the airport were closed. We were literally trapped in Argentina. The passage way that we took to get to Bariloche was about 2 km away from the volcano, later in the week we learned that the road was covered in 60 cm of ash. The next closest passage, in San Martín, was also closed. Even the passage we ended up taking in Mendoza was closed due to a snow storm. So, we were stuck in Argentina, had nothing to do and nowhere to go. This was Sunday. Our tickets to leave were scheduled for Monday at 9 AM.
On Monday, we went to the bus station hoping that our bus wasn't canceled. It was. All buses going to Northern Argentina were canceled. Anything going to Chile was canceled. We literally went from company to company asking for buses, nearly everyone laughed and told us there was absolutely no way we were getting home. So, we went back to the hostel to try to wait it out. We were going crazy trying to think of what to do. Wait in Bariloche for the pass to open, go to Buenos Aires and hang out there (my thoughts were if we were stuck in Argentina we may as well do something fun), or try to find a way home. We deliberated for a day or so, and decided the best thing to do was get home. We had already missed three days of class, and with finals week approaching, we thought we shouldn't miss more than we had to. Plus, at this point, we were starting to hate Bariloche, and home sounded pretty amazing. We asked the bus station workers, our hostel workers (who were awesome btw), and even one of our professors what we should do. The Bariloche pass would be closed for at least 20 days. The next pass was closed, and nobody knew when it would open. The only sure pass that we knew we could go through was Mendoza, which was 1000 km north. We had to do it. We bought our tickets, and left on Thursday afternoon at 2:30 PM to start our 4 bus journey home.
No comments:
Post a Comment