A bit more Hurry Up & Wait

Up and about, and time to checkout. Another of those "hurry up and wait" times, where I have to check out by late morning, and my bus isn't until late evening, so I have a day to burn in Puerto Madryn. In the end, I spent much of this with Julie, my Quebecoise friends from the Asado night, down at the covered beach shack the hostel keeps on Puerto Madryn beach. There we chilled out, occasionally went out into the sun for a while, had a couple of beers, and chatted for a bit with Gaston, the owner, when he turned up. After that, we went for lunch at El Nautico, my dinner venue of the previous night, where we enjoyed the Menu Ejecutivo, the set-price menu. This is pretty common in Argentina, and while this one was a bit more expensive than usual (Ar$35, about GBP5), this included a starter, main course, desert and drink. The latter was supposed to be half a bottle of house wine each, but as Julie had red and I had white, and they were all out of half-bottles, they gave us each a full bottle for the same price! So I got ham with potato salad, white salmon a la española, then neapolitan ice-cream, with a bottle of white wine, for five quid. Result. Much of the afternoon was then spent either on the net or lounging around the hostel reading, before heading back to the bus terminal. There, I was amused to discover that my Israeli friends from earlier, Ben and Michel, were on the same bus again, although they were getting off in El Bolsón a couple of hours before me. The Mar y Valle bus didn't do the movie thing, but the food was ok and once again, miraculously, I actually slept a fair bit!