To start our trek to the southernmost city in the world, Ushuaia, Argentina, Lauren and I were facing two long bus rides. The first was to Rio Gallegos, estimated to be 36-40 hours. From there, we’d have to catch another 12-hour bus ride to Ushuaia. Most people break this up into at least 3 different bus rides over 3-5 days, but the season wasn’t right to visit the sites in-between, so Lauren and I decided to fill our daypacks with books and get it over with as fast as possible.

But as a goodbye present from Buenos Aires, we nearly got robbed for the second time in that city.

The last time we were in the bus station in Buenos Aires, a man had come up to us randomly and told us to watch our daypacks. Lauren and I were getting tired of all these warnings: having traveled for months and living in New York, most of the beware-of-pickpockets warnings were old news.

When we went to the bus station this time, we piled our bags together as usual and stood near a window to wait for our bus departure to be listed on the departure board. While we were waiting, a woman tapped on the window and motioned towards the pay phone there. I tried to understand what she was motioning but couldn’t.

At the same time, a man tapped Lauren on the shoulder and pointed to the woman at the window who was trying to get our attention. I realized she was asking if the phone worked, so I picked it up and listened for a dialtone. It worked and I nodded towards the woman.

In the meantime, I heard Lauren yelling and I spun around to find her in some kind of skirmish. It turned out that Lauren had realized in the knick of time that the man who had tapped her on the shoulder had picked up her daypack (with her passport, our bus tickets, and the cameras) and started walking away. With her “lightning fast reflexes” (as she likes to say), she managed to grab her bag and another backpack (thinking that it was mine) and the man dropped it and walked away. My backpack was safe and sound, but the Argentinian whose backpack she mistakenly grabbed started yelling at her, allowing the robber to get away, which probably was a good thing — Lauren was so riled up she was ready to “kick some ass” (again, her words).

We realized later that the woman at the phone had set us up. She could have easily come in to check the phone herself, and there actually many payphones that were closer to her than the one we were standing by. She was the distraction, like the shoving incident in the subway days before (see: “Discovering Cheese, Espanol, and Tango“).

We were on the bus before we were able to calm down from the incident. Lauren kept repeating, “he doesn’t know how lucky he is…”

The bus ride was… well, thirty-eight hours and pretty boring. It started at 8:30pm, ran for the entire next day and night, and we arrived at 10:30am the following day. In total, two nights and a full day on a bus whose toilet said “ONLY LIQUIDS.” We tried to use our time as best as we could: I managed to make Spanish flash cards; Lauren read hundreds pages of her final Dark Tower (Stephen King) book. We were entertained (willingly and unwillingly) by an assortment of movies and horrible 1980’s music videos. We wrote a few blogs on our new Palm toy. We got three meals a day, including a hot dinner; but they totally skimped us on drinks again, giving us only a small cup of soda with meals and nothing in-between. Luckily, we brought nearly 5 liters of water with us just in case…

From our last bus ride, though, we knew it would get cold on the bus.  We were smart this time, bringing all of our winter clothes (all, as in, the one set we have) and a sleeping bag on board to keep us warm. By the time we finally arrived in Rio Gallegos, I was fantasizing about brushing my teeth, taking a shower and lying completely horizontally on a bed. Before we left the bus station to go find a hostel, however, we decided to check and see when the buses to Ushuaia left the next day. I stayed watching the bags (vigiliantly this time) as Lauren went to find out about tickets. Five minutes later she came back.

“There’s one leaving in five minutes,” she said. “You wanna go for it?”

Feeling my dreams of a bed float away from my grasp, I responded, “Okay…”

“Are you sure?” Lauren asked, probably noticing my disappointed and weary face.

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, let’s do it.”

So Lauren bought the bus tickets and we rushed out the door to catch the next 12-hour bus ride. This bus wasn’t semi-cama, just a regular Greyhound-like bus.

And this ride was slight less pleasant. To get from Argentina to Argentina, you have to go through Chili. (Seriously.) This meant we had to get off the bus four times: once to “immigrate” out of Argentina, the second to “immigrate” into Chili, the third to “immigrate” out of Chili and the last to “immigrate” back to Argentina. In all, this day-long trip took up two pages of our passports with all the stamping.

Right before the last stop to immigrate back in Argentina, I had a premonition (read: random too-much-travel anxiety) that the official would forget to stamp my passport. As we started leaving the immigration office, I checked my passport and realized that the official indeed had forgotten to stamp my passport. (How one forgets to stamp a passport when all one does all day is stamp passports is beyond me…). Luckily, I caught it in time and we got him to fix it. We’re not sure what would have happened if I didn’t have the proper stamp, but I’m sure it would have involved a lot of money, time and pain…

On this last ride, we were given a cold sandwich and NesCafe for lunch but no dinner. By the time we arrived in Ushuaia at 10:30 that night, we were both starving.

When we stepped off the bus into the freezing Ushuaia air, we were bombarded by people offering us hostels. Lauren and I had a hostel in mind already, so when we saw a taxi pull up, we asked him to take us to Roca and San Martin where the hostel was located.

“Roca and San Martin?” he asked. “It’s right there, a block away,” pointing down the street.

We were impressed by his honesty. Many taxi drivers we had met along the way would have pack our bags in their trunk, driven us around the block and tried to charge us US$5.

We thanked him and headed down the hill, Lauren practically sprinting to get out of the cold, and found the hostel we were looking for. The rooms were slightly more expensive than we had hoped, but it was warm and right there, so we dropped off our bags and headed out to find food before all the restaurants started closing.

That night we slept in a bed for the first time since we had left Buenos Aires. We were glad to be in Ushuaia, but we were also done with 50 hour bus rides to the End of the World. From now on, we’d only be traveling north, and no more than 30 hours at a time.