End of the year, end of the world

Can´t go much further, cuz there ain´t no more land...

So Puerto Natales, Chile for New Years... So much has happened since the last post...

I took a 26 hour bus from Bariloche in the lake district to Rio Gallegos on the southern Atlantic (by the way the moon is upside down here if I never mentioned this before... the light moves from left to right down here to become full, instead of right to left like in the northern hemisphere. This casused me some alarm as i have taught hundreds of children the saying, ïf it´s light on the right, the full moon´s in sight¨ i still haven´t found a good ryme for here, but I think the problem is the ryme might be in Spanish...)

Rio Gallegos is a town full of wind and natural resource merchants. nothing more. They told me the next bus to Chile was in 5 days, to hell with staying 5 days in that town, I found an appropriate Argentine town on the boarder about 45 minutes to Pto. Natales... The bus driver was standing at the counter ready to go, so I followed him out with my bag, and spent another 5 or 6 hours on the bus. I got to Rio Turbio around 2 am with no where to go, and here it is cold and windy at night... I Sat at a bar until it closed and then wandered into the town´s central city bus lot. I spent the night (about 3 hours) sleeping in bus 9, and in the morning woke up to a very unhappy bus driver...
No entiendo, no entiendo. I think he wanted to call the police, and then he wanted me to give him money, ( I wonder how much 3 hours on the floor of a freezing bus costs? maybe 3 pesos.) I didn´t want to give him any money so I left, I waited in a taxi dispatch office until my bus left for Chile, all the while feeling a little like one the the outlaws these pampas are famous for.

And now I am in Puerto Natales, 53 degrees due south from Vermont. It is almost the end of the year and I can see the light of the sun until 11:30 at night. On the first of the new year I will start my wandering among the southern ice fields, the largest permanent ice outside Antartica and Greenland...

Next time there will be pictures...

Be well friends.