Carretera Austral (Part A - to Bariloche and back)

We need your help. If anyone knows Pacha Mama (the Chilean name for mother earth) please contact us immediately. We want to know what she likes to eat. Here in Bariloche we can probably find it and send it to wherever she is. We can build an altar and sacrifice it right here if needed. It is the begining of April an we had no rain all through the Carretera Austral. Let me say that again. NO RAIN. Actually, we did have 15 minutes of rain that came especially when we needed a rainbow for the pictures. As if the whole nature was recruited to help us compose the photographs. And not only in the Carretera. Until now we had the most amazing weather we could've expected, even though we are almost out of the season. But first thing first. This story begins with a bus.
"The busses in Argentina are the best ever" said the experts. As if...
We ordered two tickets to a bus from El Chalten to Bariloche from a guy that yelled "Balagan" everytime Oren was around. Lilya managed to avoid the treat, since no one belives she's an Israeli. This was the first bad omen. The second was the bus that looked small and not really up to the task. But the last omen came 5 minutes from the beggining of the ride. The bus driver (or his 10 years son) cound't use the manual gear properly. We jumped everytime he changed a gear until we stopped just outside the town and the other driver gave him a quick driving lesson. From there the memory of the ride becomes vage. A 33 hours ride through the unpaved rute 40 took more than 44 hours, when the bus broke down for several hours every now and then. One of these stops ended with an entire bus assembeling inside a small pub in a ghost town in the middle of nowhere at 2 AM.
We got to Bariloche one day before Pessah feeling as if it was us who got out of Egypt.
The Seder was held at the next evening in a large indoor basketball court that was arranged as a dining room for 700 people. The whole street was closed to protect all the Israeli backpackers that migrated to Bariloche from all over Patagonia and the lake district in Chile and Argentina. The noise was unbelivable and the Pessah songs sounded like a cheering in the basketball cup final in Yad Eliyahu. On one side, the fans of Hapoel Rabi Tarfon and on the other - Macabi Rabi Akiva. But the real mayhem started as soon as the food came. 700 hungry and tired youngsters grabbed as much as they could take. Any attempt of the 4 waiters to serve the food to the tables came upon a wave of people that entered the kitchen and took anything they could. At the end we did not leave hungry but mostly because of the enormous amount of beetroot we ate.
In the next two days we tried to find a car for rental. The Easter this year came a day after Pessah, and lots of Israelies and Easter bunnies (or Argentinians on vacation) rented cars, so by the time we got there, we could hardly rent a bike. At the end, we managed to rent the last Toyota Hilux in Bariloche, together with Gabi (a girl) and Achia (a boy), an Israeli couple that we met in the Torres del Paine. We drove south for two days via Ruta 40. This legendary rute (as the Lonely Planet defines it) is a boaring, mostly unpaved, road that took us deep into the Argentinian Patagonia - the land of the ships. In Perito Moreno (a small city, not to be confused with the name of the Glacier, the street, and everything else in Argentina called after this advanturer) we met Ohad. Ohad was one of the most annoying kids in the one of the groups in Hugei Siyur that Oren had guided 11 years ago. Ohad is still quite annoying, but now he is all grown up. And he is standing right behind us while writting these words and agrees with the description.
In the next morning we crossed the border into Chile and started driving north in the famous Caraterra Austral. In part B we'll tell you all about the wonderful days in the Carretera.

Tip 1: Try to avoid the busses that go from the south to Bariloche through Ruta 40.
Tip 2: If you decide to take part in a Seder in a Beit Habad, bring with you a lot of patience and holliday spirit (and eat something before that).