I arrived in Calafate on a bright, breezy, almost hot afternoon. I took a cab into town from the remote, modern and subsequently shockingly out-of-place airport and drove through the barren, windswept landscape - a land seemingly devoid of any plant life taller than my kneecaps. The hillsides barren of most everything but little tufts of grasses and tiny green shrubs. It reminded me of a staring too closely at an impressionist painting, just little dots and splotches of color. I half expected the land to appear vibrant and alive if just viewed from space.

Calafate is a generally uninspired and uninspiring town of tourist shops and hotels; it’s existence, it appears, solely to cater to the thousands upon thousands of tourists who pass through en route to see the Moreno Glacier, Fitz Roy or the Towers del Paine. Basically, people like me.

I was staying in a bland, yellow box of a hosteria, it still under construction, just past the pavement and four blocks from the heart of town and, as I would later learn, one block from the local whorehouse. The bathrooms were new and clean, although the stalls were apparently designed for anorexic hobbits as anyone larger than your average jockey would be unable to bed over to pull up his pants once locked inside a stall. Still, they had hot water, and in the grand, global pantheon of hostels and guesthouses, that’s pretty much the gold standard for me.

My room was tiny and cramped but with a comfortable bunk bed that soon saw me sacked out for another post flight siesta.

That’s when I met Hans. Hans was my roommate, a roofer from Sweden, my age, with sandy blonde hair (go figure) and a tightly cropped beard, a la Miami Vice. He is on his second tour of South America in as many years, and, like me, he just didn’t see enough on his first go.

I left for my usual new town ritual of walking around to find an Internet café in which to waste still more of my life by posting inane stories about walking around looking for internet cafes. Calafate’s streets were teeming with tourists, and the prices were adjusted accordingly. I know I shouldn’t complain about having to spend an extra two dollars for dinner, but after three weeks in Argentina, I have already reset my baseline. And frankly I just don’t think an entire three course Italian dinner with wine should cost me twelve bucks when I can get that same meal for eight in Buenos Aires. It’s not right I tell you. It’s not right at all. When I get back to the sates I’m gonna have a helluva time eating anywhere other than off the value menu at Taco Bell. Thirty-nine cents for a taco? I shouldn’t pay more than twenty-nine for that.

After a couple hours clawing at my eyeballs and lamenting the lack of broadband at the only internet café in Argentina with an actual laptop connection and a generally unfulfilling (albeit very filling) dinner at buffet a couple blocks away, Hans and I met for drinks at one of Calafate’s two local bars. Honestly, despite its immense popularity and my visiting it no less than three times, I can’t remember its name. Not because of the amount of alcohol I consumed, but really, when it’s the only place to go, who the hell cares what it’s called?

We shared some drinks and watched as the strange brew of local Argentines and random backpackers began to fill the place late into the night. Hell, as we didn’t arrive until midnight, it must have been after two before the place began to hop. I stopped with the alcohol somewhere around drink three, but Hans kept them coming. It was three or four in the morning I suppose when the alcohol-bloodied eyes of Hans first spied Juliet. Juliet was a young and striking Argentine with dark hair, a big smile, a green shirt and tight jeans. I will say if the sight of her was the result of beer goggles, then I am starting work on my beer belly today (actually drinking a Quilnes as I type this, Sean, you would be proud). Hans couldn’t take his eyes off her, and despite my constant encouragement, he wouldn’t make the first move. Me, I figured that as he needed a wingman, and since I didn’t speak Spanish, nor was I interested in hooking up with her, couldn’t understand if I was getting rejected anyhow and generally couldn’t hear anything over the pounding music, I would just go open the door for him. So I walked up, said the only words I knew in Spanish, and as expected, she couldn’t hear me, didn’t speak English, and the conversation pretty much died right there. Which, come to think of it, isn’t all that much different than most of the conversations I have had with pretty girls in night clubs in the United States.

However, I did, as I had hoped, open the door for Hans who was soon deeply engaged in that drunken shouting match that qualifies for conversation on a noisy dance floor and shortly there after was dancing with her until the placed closed sometime around five.

Despite his most valiant efforts, Juliet left Hans with only a hug and a wave, and I was left with a seriously intoxicated Swede just shy of dawn in deep Patagonia. Having just endured my third late, alcohol fueled night, I was positively desperate for a bed and as many uninterrupted hours of sleep as possible. As Hans stumbled down the streets of Calafate shouting “las chicas!” and looking for another bar, I made my way back to the hostel and sweet, blessed unconsciousness.

I arrived, however, to a dark lobby and a securely locked door. A door the desk manager had promised us was open all night.

And this, boys and girls, was when Jimbo lost his patience. Insert your choice of properly offensive four letter words shouted to nobody in particular. It really doesn’t matter which you prefer. I’m fairly certain I used them all.

As I was pounding on the door, just hoping to wake someone, and giving very serious thought to waking someone with a nice, hefty rock through the window of my room, Hans wandered back up, having been unable to find another pub in Calafate. It was now six in the morning. I was cold. Exhausted. And homeless. I had absolutely zero interest in walking around Calafate aimlessly for an hour with the Swedish meatball who keeps shouting for the chicas, but that’s what we did. I figured if I couldn’t sleep, I’d go back to drinking with Hans. To our dismay, no other bars were found, so I went back to our street and walked into the hostel next door to see if they had room. They were sold out. I noticed they had an Internet connection and asked if I could use it for an hour, just so I didn’t have to be standing around in the cold outside or wandering around on my tired, booted feet. He told me the computers were for guests of the hotel only – the guests who were all currently and properly sound asleep. So I pulled out my wallet and offered him the price of a room rental (twenty-five pesos), just to sit in front of one of his (empty) computers for just one hour. He still declined.

It was at this point I realized again that Americans are just way, way better at capitalism.

Hans then asks him the same question he has been asking me, the police officers walking their morning beat, and about seven or eight dogs along the way. “Donde esta las chicas?”

“Across the street. La Cabaret.” For seventy pesos (about $25) we can each have our very own chica – for twenty minutes. My mood instantly changed, and I started laughing at the fact that my hostel was right next to the whorehouse, and that the one other person awake at this hour seemed to have a working knowledge of their price schedule.

By this time it was just shy of seven, the morning was already bright, and our hostel should have been opening momentarily. We walked back for another round of pounding on the door, and this time, a groggy, stumbling guy in a t-shirt wandered out to let us in.

I climbed into my bunk, didn’t bother taking off any of my clothes, and didn’t wake up until one.