Otherwise known as "The Toilet Blog", rumours have it that this short story is being picked up by the esteemed Spanish director Pedro Almodovar for translation to the big screen. The film will be titled "Todo Sobre Mi Baño".
* A note on toilets in South America. Due to weak water pressure in the plumbing, you aren´t allowed to flush anything that didn´t come out of your body. This includes toilet paper. So you are (usually) provided with a bin to put your used TP into. Also the toilets often don´t have any TP so you have to always carry your own supply. The towns generally have no public toilets aside from some service stations and in public buildings such as bus terminals, some supermarkets, libraries etc.
We boarded the small school bus to Perito Moreno from El Chalten along with many other international backpackers and exited stage left. For those that don´t know I am a big fan of drinking water, and when I can´t get that I choose chocolate Big M Edge for its excellent hydration. So that morning was no different to any other and I had by then drunk probably a couple of litres of agua. There were no toilet facilities on our bus. The fun begins. I began to squirm and fret a little but relieved myself by discovering we were stopping to collect some other passengers. I jumped out with only 2 minutes to use, oriented myself to the best angle for privacy in front of two bus loads of tourists and pissed. Problem solved.
We soon ran out of sealed road and literally crawled along the dusty, slippery and dangerous dirt road to Perito Moreno, for long periods averaging between 20-30km per hour. Better safe than sorry, I suppose. Half an hour later we stopped at a service station and I picked up a quick game of wind-assisted hackey-sack with some young American folk. The next leg of the journey passed slowly and, without knowledge of when the next stop is, drinking water had to be restricted despite an underventilated and hot bus. But we pulled in after a couple more hours of Patagonian nothingness near a lake at an estancia (farmstead) called "Estancia de la Siberia" - or just "Siberia" as we liked to call it. By that stage I think most of the bus was ready for a toilet break - in my case literally. I jumped out of the bus and made for the baño, first in line. In there I realised I needed to change my style - let´s just say sometimes you need to squat rather than sit on the loo. So as I was mounting I heard a loud crack and realised I had broken one of the 2 flimsy wall-mountings for the cistern and snapped the PVC pipe connecting it to the bowl. Water flooded into the room, but luckily drained into the shower drain. A bit of a predicament. As the water continued to flow I finished my proceedings, then had to wrench the pipe in place and push the button at the same time. I then left, put my head down and tried to ignore the line of 7 people waiting behind me. Sorry folks. Sorry Siberia.
The next leg of the journey was the longest. After about an hour we came upon a car crash. A hire-car load of young tourists had been driving too fast (easy to do) and rolled their Peugot, luckily landing right way up, but trashing the car´s exterior and windows. They were fortunately all OK, and the bus stopped to assist them in driving the car back onto the road and with some minor first-aid. After almost an hour we continued along with the 5 tourists from the car. Our next scheduled stop was almost 3hrs away, and Michelle was beginning to need to pee. Two hours later, she asked the driver how far away the next stop was and was told 45min or so. She tried to sit it out cross-legged but eventually was forced to stop the bus, head to the back and drop the pants. However she wasn´t the only one and a posse of pissers helped to wet down the road, including a blase Frenchman (who we later met and chatted with - nice guy) who wandered to the back to join the squatting girls. We decided this was due to the difference of urinary cultures between France and most of the rest of the world.
The next stop was another tiny homestead in a tiny town which looked like it had come from the early 20th century in the Wild West. We eventually made it to Perito Moreno, a redneck one-street town with a very expensive accomodation due to it being a necessary stopover on the way to Esquel. While searching for the most affordable accomodation Michelle got her first propios (advances) from some local young men who were across the street calling to her. We had read about this machoism in the Lonely Planet as being the dominant culture in Latin America, but this was her first experience of it and I still haven´t got any! We also got some food at a local bar which was a cultural experience. At the place we stayed there was an open pipe under the urinals so you could watch and smell your pee drain away.
The next morning I used the toilet in a different hostel before boarding the bus. It was a ceramic-lined hole in the ground with ergonomic feet holds so you didn´t slip while squatting. We had a different bus for the day, this one equipped with a toilet. The ventilation in there seemed to be uptaking a lot of dust as every time you went you basically breathed dirt and warm air mixed together. We eventually returned to sealed roads and reasonable speeds on our journey to Esquel. Upon reaching our destination we hurriedly transferred to a waiting taxi and in the process my orange juice container tipped over in my bag. A slow stream of juice dribbled down through my bag, my crutch and into the seat of the taxi, so when I got out of the car at our destination in Esquel it felt and looked like I´d pissed myself.
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