So far on our travels we have spent well over 200 hours riding on buses of all shapes and sizes, ranging anything from old, wildly painted school buses to double decker’s with fully reclining seats that are much like beds and everything in between. We’ve been on short 1 hour rides and also endured long 20 hours trips. We’ve had great service and poor service, tasty food and food poisoning…. But the one thing that we’ve never had was a breakdown or an event that didn’t allow the bus to pass. Considering the amount of time we’ve been on the road, it is really amazing to think that all of the routes worked out. We’ve heard plenty of stories of robberies, floods, political roadblocks, strikes and breakdowns, but somehow avoided all…. Until everything fell apart on our journey from Bariloche to Puerto Madryn.
It all started off quite well! Our bus departed Bariloche around 7pm and was scheduled to arrive in Puerto Madryn at around 2pm the next day after a short stop in El Bolson around 11pm. The “Don Otto” bus company coach rolled up to platform and we all boarded. It was one of the nicer buses we’d been on yet. Fully reclining leather seats would come in handy for the long overnight journey! Everything was going great and we were right on time until we looked out the window of bus and noticed giant plumes of smoke rising from the forest just past the town of El Bolson. We were both hoping that we weren’t heading in that direction, but it soon became clear that the massive smoke clouds were exactly where we were heading!! About 10 minutes past El Bolson the bus finally came to a stop where the highway was shut down by military patrol. Looking out the window we could see flames a few hundred meters away rapidly incinerating all the trees and homes in its path. It was pretty crazy that we were able to get so close, it would have seemed like a better idea to close the road in El Bolson several km’s back. As the fire progressed all the traffic, including our bus was told to return to El Bolson and stay there until the road was opened. We waited for an hour in town before our bus driver decided that they were heading back to Bariloche…. So back on the bus we went to return to where we started. It was turning out to be a 6 hour round trip bus ride to no where! Nice!! We fired up the laptop and started watching a movie, and after about an hour and a half we noticed we were now parked on the side of the road, not going anywhere. We thought maybe the drivers were switching, but after half hour we suspected something else must be up. Unfortunately none of the bus staff would come up to tell us what was going on. I think they really didn’t want to deal with the situation. Finally one guy walked past and mentioned that there was now a mechanical problem with the bus and we had to wait for a new one to come from Bariloche. The situation sounds pretty crappy, but it really wasn’t that bad thanks to the blooper videos and “Just for Laughs Gags!” they kept playing on the television! It was pretty funny stuff, perhaps more so than it should have been thanks to the fact we were so tired and frustrated. At 3 am we were finally back in Bariloche walking down the street looking for a hostel after the bus company dropped us all off at the terminal and quickly fled the parking lot without saying a word. 
In the morning we headed back to the terminal to figure out what our new plan was. We thought surely they must offer us some sort of refund or something due to all the issues the night before and additional costs of taxis, and hotels that we all encountered, but soon found out how customer service is in South America. Clearly we weren’t getting anything out of them. The office new nothing about the breakdown which added 3 hours to our trip to nowhere, and the best they would offer was a seat on the next bus at 7pm again. The lady mentioned to us that we could talk to the head office in Puerto Madryn and maybe they could help us out. That sounded pretty promising!! Haha!! They’ll tell you anything to get rid of you and avoid conflict!!We spent the rainy day chilling out at the hostel watching a few movies and enjoyed a massage. At 7pm we were back on the road, Round #2!! We made it slightly further than the night before when the bus slipped out of gear heading up a hill and came to a rest on the side of the road again! Seriously? 2 nights in a row?? Something went wrong with the gear box and the driver was unable to get out of neutral without stalling. We waited for a while before a few other bus lines stopped and put us in all the empty seats. We made it to the next terminal where a new “Don Otto” bus was waiting to take carry us for the remaining 14 hours.
We finally made it to Puerto Madryn after plenty of issues, but I suppose it was bound to happen sometime. A couple of days later we asked at the head office for a discount on our tickets to Buenos Aires which was perhaps the most ridiculous conversation we’ve ever had. “Don Otto” bus company blamed it on their sister company (even though we bought the tickets at a Don Otto ticket stand) and told us they’d be happy to give us a discount on the next bus ride, but unfortunately they didn’t go to Buenos Aires!!! Very crafty, haha!!! We asked the man several questions such as…. “Is this just an excuse to get rid of us?” or “Are you telling us to go to the other company because you know they can’t help us?” or “Are you just telling us a bunch of lies right now?”…. To which we replied with a big smile “Yes” to everything we asked him. We had a pretty good laugh, but it was pretty clear that even though he spoke great English he must not have understood everything we were saying. We finally told him that if he wasn’t prepared to give us a discount that we would book tickets with the other company right next to his stand. His answer was “No problem, go ahead… no discount”. I don’t really understand because the completion for buses appears pretty stiff, but the people clearly could care less… Spread the word folks!! I suggest a boycott of “Don Otto”!!! Haha. Oh well…. I suppose the one good thing that came from all the delays is that it gave us a little extra time to actually think about where we were heading and how much time we had left. After giving it some thought we realized that we would not have time to head all the way south to Ushuia (the most southern city in the world), particularly if we wanted to see some of Brazil and the Amazon (The real question was more like… +3 degrees or +33 degrees?). I think this is something we both kinda knew seeing as were running about 1 month behind where we had expected to be by now, but now it was actually time to face it. The new plan is to head directly to Buenos Aires after Puerto Madryn rather than continuing further south to Patagonia. 
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