Dead to the world

If you know me, you know I like to sleep.  I need my sleep.  I am not an early riser.  But when I travel, I sacrifice these tendencies.  But when Marieke and I decided on Argentina for this trip, I just wasn’t expecting the sacrifice to be so pronounced.  Here’s the problem:

Argentinians eat late.  Really late.  As in restaurants are usually empty at 10pm, not because everyone has finished eating, but because they have yet to arrive to eat.  Combined with rather slow service, it’s hard to get dinner done before 11:30pm.  Which actually makes sense, when no one goes out to the bars until well after midnight.  Never mind if you want to see a show, which apparently don’t start until 2:45am.  It’s no different if you’re at an Argentinian home, or having asado at the hostel.  They’ve configured their barbecuing to cook as slow as possible to accommodate their late eating habits.  Seriously, one time we had an onion on the grill for three hours and it was barely ready.

Slow cooked food

If you’re moving that day, a lot of the buses tend to go in the late afternoon, inevitably arriving late.  By the time you check in to your hostel, make some dinner (or not), and try to get organized for the next day, again, you’re lucky to be in bed before midnight.  And that’s without socializing, which appears to be really hard to avoid.  Especially when you continually run into people you’ve seen from days or weeks earlier, with many travelers taking similar routes.  One day we arrived in El Chalten at 7:30pm, found a hostel at 8:00pm, found a bottle of wine at 8:30pm, ate dinner at 11:00pm (the kitchens are typically really busy from 8-10pm), and headed to bed at 12:15am.  We were the first ones in our dorm rooms to get to bed.

Waiting for a 3am bus in Barreal

If you’re not moving that day, you’re probably signed up for some sort of tour, which inevitably starts about 8am, requiring a 7:00am start at the latest.  If you’re heading on your own steam, you’re probably getting up between 5:30am and 7:00am, to get on the trail by 8:00am.  Then after 8-10 hours of hiking with bags, you prepare dinner and head to bed.  Which is never early enough.

The longest road in Argentina- over 5000 km long- we did pretty much all of it

All of this is possible due to the ridiculously long days.  The longest day of the year was December 21, when it seemed to get dark at 11pm, and started to get light at 3:30am (or that’s what people told us- we slept in past sunrise).  On the positive side, you have a seemingly endless amount of daylight in which to get things done.  And in Patagonia, where there is always another place to explore, this is coveted time.  But of course it also means little time for sleep.  When you do have a quiet day, it’s hard to go to sleep when it looks like it’s 3 in the afternoon.  We finally slept in til 10:30am on Christmas morning because we had nothing planned for the day, and the hostel mercifully had blackout curtains.

A very early sunrise from the bus

Argentina is a big country.  Inevitably, you will have to take overnight buses.  Granted, the buses in the country are fantastic, but they can’t unfortunately prevent screaming children sitting in front of you or a man snoring next to you.  To compound matters dinner tends to be served at 11pm, just when you’re convinced you heard the ticket agent incorrectly, and that dinner won’t be served at all.

Late night bus dinner

There is however one ray of hope.  Siesta.  That five hour period between 1pm and 6pm when everything shuts, meaning you can’t even hope to errands done, leaving ample time for a nice nap.  While this sounds good in theory, in reality you’ve probably already checked out of your hostel as you’re waiting for an overnight bus, have work to catch up on, or need to change flights or book hostels.  Or catch up on blog writing of course!

Argentina, and in particular, Patagonia, is also expensive.  Meaning you don’t want to hang out for a couple of days just to rest.  You want to make the most of your time here.  Sleep when you’re dead, right?  Combined with the cheap wine….well, the end result tends to mean a few missed buses, a few wrong turns, and a few decisions made in zombie-like states.  But hey, this is a vacation after all!

Wine country