8am...I scramble out of bed and trundle downstairs to meet our host George who kindly offered to assist and call the bus company for us. As you would have read from Rach's blog yesterday, there was a snow storm that forced the closure of the road between the Chilian/Argentian border. The first thing I see on George's face is concern and in his best but broken English he tells me “probably zero chance”. Hmmm, I drag Rach out of bed as Gladys had already started setting out the breakfast table and over our croissants and cereal, we decide that the best option is to head to the bus station for further details.
We pack up our room and head back down to say (...what we think will only be a temporary...) goodbye to George and Gladys who have been absolute fantastic hosts from 816 B&B. George had booked us a cab and we jumped in and headed off to the bus station. On arrival, we head to the first Andes Mar ticket office we find. We walk up to the counter and, as always, ask “do you speak English”. The guy tells us “a little bit” and we tell him that we have a ticket to Santiago leaving in 45 mins. In response, all he gives us is rapid fire Spanish, not even talking slow in any attempt to see if we understand him. Rach and I just look at each other in stunned silence, then we say “Arhhh, any English??”. He writes down a platform number for us to go and visit which basically ends that conversation. We left the office in search of platform 17&18 as instructed from our unhelpful Andes Mar employee. On route, a bloke (who was clearly trying to sell us tickets to somewhere) asks us in English where we were headed. We told him that we have tickets to Santiago however have heard on a snow storm that has closed the road. He very helpfully takes us to another ticket office (this time the 'International' Andes Mar office') and asks the girl behind the counter what the deal is.
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