You know you´re in a 3rd world country when...

At 6 PM, we boarded a bus in El Chalten to take us back to El Calafate, where we would catch our bus to Rio Gallegos, where we could finally board our bus to Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world, and the last stop on our 18 day Patagonian adventure. Aside from the 30 minute delay in departure (due to a family of 5 that showed up so late that we actually had to turn the bus around to pick them up), we made it to El Calafate with no issue (around 9:30 PM). Since our bus from Calafate to Rio G didn´t leave until 3 AM, we met up with a couple Australian girls we ran into a few times along the way and finally sat down to a meal to get acquainted. We went to a nice spot a little outside town that boasted veggie and organic options. The meal was pretty good, and brought us all the way to 1 AM, at which time we gave hugs, exchanged emails and headed back to the bus station.
At 3 AM, we got our bus (comfy Cama seats thank goodness) to Rio G. Around 7 AM we arrived at Rio G, grabbed a seat, waited in line for the bathroom and then boarded our Semi-Cama (not comfy!) bus to Rio G. Less than 2 hours in, we made our first stop at Migrations/Customs at the Argentinean/Chilean border. Without more than a Espanol grunt in explanation, we filed into the Argentine departures office, where we waited in line for about 40 minutes to get our passports stamped by 3 chit-chatting women behind the window. We were instructed to get back on the bus. About 20 minutes later, we were told to get back off the bus, get our bags out of the undercarriage and go back into the border-control office. We watched, as they plugged the baggage scanner device into the wall (haha, really?) and then waited in line again as they checked off our names on a printed out sheet of paper and put our bags through the ominous device. Again, back on the bus. Another 20 minutes pass and with another Spanish grunt we are told to get off the bus AGAIN and re-enter the building on the Chilean side to get stamped into the country. All in all, 2 hours and 45 minutes later we finally got back on the bus and drove into Chile.
We got a little bit of sleep before we were woken up again to find that the bus was being driven onto a big ferry (the bus - and every other vehicle on the ferry was left running for the whole journey - along with fuel trucks stamped "flammable") and we were off on a rocky journey across some channel, somewhere. I thought I saw dolphins in the water, but the boat was rocking so hard when we got off the bus to investigate, that we had to get back on almost immediately and sit down (I was told later that there were lots of dolphins!). We hit land again and got another couple minutes of sleep. A little while later, we pulled into the Chilean departures border control office, went in, got a stamp and then back on the bus. We felt lucky to get away with just waiting in one line, but then we started to get nervous because we didn´t have a stamp for the return into Argentina, and there was no other office in sight. After about 25 minutes of driving marked with blasting our horn at the sheep who were in the road (but not slowing down at all, mind you), we pulled into the Tierra del Fuego Argentinian boarder control office, got our final stamp for the journey and were back on our way.
We made a couple more stops along the way, in Rio Grande, some yummy bakery and again so that the bus driver could add windshield washer fluid (about 5 minutes after we left the bakery...hmm). At 10:30 PM we finally rolled into Ushuaia (an hour and 1/2 late), which was freeeeezing (well, nothing like MA, but cold for us!), and made our way to the hostel. That was when we ran into our friends (as mentioned in the below post). All in all, it was a long ass day. And the fun part, is that we get to do it all again tomorrow...
:)