beautiful nothingness

Hola! Lot's to catch up on... I've spent much of the past week traveling without simple luxuries like wifi and cell phones and toilets that you can put paper in. Last Friday was my last night in Bariloche, so I celebrated accordingly at the casino with my Argentine friend Mario. I could have done well, but I wanted to make my brother Aaron proud, so I played black jack until 4 am and lost everything.

At 6am [after a sad goodbye to Heidi :-( ], I jumped on a bus headed south through Patagonia towards El Chalten and El Calafate. Two days on a bus... half of which on dirt roads, and the landscape looked similiar to the picture I posted with the skull the entire time. I'll have more about those trips soon, but for now just some teaser pictures. I met a nice Canadian from Vancouver, an Argentine from Cordoba, and an Italian who has been living in Ecuador on the bus and have been traveling with them ever since. More to come... I'll be traveling to Buenos Aires on Sunday and from then on should have pretty reliable internet. Ciao for now...

Coffee

I want some... but nobody brews it here. It's all instant... blah. I never thought I'd say this... but I can't wait to walk into a strbks in Buenos Aires to buy a cup.

Laguna Negra

I had another awesome weekend of trekking through the mountains in this part of Argentina. Heidi and I met up with our friend Mario and three of his Argentine friends on Friday and set out to camp for the night. Heidi and I were treated to a 'gaucho' style dinner comprised of lamb, beef, and chorizos cooked over an open fire. After a couple mishaps involving the unstable sticks the meat was perched on, the meat took on somewhat of an 'earthy' taste, if you know what I mean. But it was an enjoyable dinner, and we slept well thanks to the sound of the river.

Saturday we made our way up to Laguna Negra, a lake perched high up in the mountains and fed by melting snow. So naturally Heidi and I jumped right in when we finally made it up the steep trail... it was definitely the coldest water I've ever been in. When we were close to the top of the mountain we were passed by a horse on its way down... the refugios in the mountains rely on horses to bring up supplies. It's really impressive that such a big animal is able to navigate through the rocks safely... if you look in the middle of the picture you can see the winding trail that we had just climbed.

BaRiLoChE

More pictures of mountains and trees to come... but I wanted to post a little more about Bariloche. Everyday life here is fantastic... the weather is great (cool mornings, warm afternoons), although it is almost always windy. Every day on my way to class, I walk down a street called Juremento, which has some great artwork painted on the walls lining the street. Juremento is also where South Bar is located... the bar where I took some salsa lessons last night. Thankfully, no videos or pictures were taken of that.

I've also found life here to be pretty affordable, even for a person with no income like myself. I can eat well for much less than 10$ a day, transportation is very cheap, and there is plenty to do within a short bus ride.

I've been sharing a lot of my experience in Bariloche with my housemate Heidi, or as I like to call her, Heidlbeck. She's such a sweet person and I'm going to miss her immensly when we part ways this weekend. I've posted a picture of her and Mario, our Argentine friend / tour guide, as Mario is trying to teach her a tongue twister in South Bar. I forget exactly what it was, but you can check her blog out and I'm sure she'll post it soon.

I also have made many other friends in Bariloche, a lot of them dogs. I've included a picture of me and one of my favorites... he gaurds a little kiosk near my apartment building. He has the smallest leg-to-body ratio of any dog I've ever seen... it's hilarious to watch him walk around because his legs are so short his stomach is almost touching the ground.

I should have more tomorrow about my weekend trip to Laguna Negra, but I wanted to post a bit about the town first and give my mom an update so she can sleep better at night. I'm alive mom! Stop worrying.

Ciao for now...

more trees and mountains

Short post today... just a few pics from the top of Cerro Otto, a mountain I hiked up last week. From the top there was a great view of the town and lake. Also included a pic of the moonrise Sunday night. Thats it for now... will spend the rest of the week trying to speak as much spanish as I can, drinking artisinal cervezas and figuring out what to do this weekend. Ciao

PS. I promise to post pictures of something other than trees and mountains soon. Stay tuned!

Tronador, Continued in pictures

Tronador

(Note: It takes forever to load pictures but I’ll try to get as many as I can on here. I think if you double click on the small ones you can enlarge them.)

I had an awesome weekend hiking on a mountain close to Bariloche on the border between Argentina and Chile. Saturday began with a 2 hour bus ride, the majority of which was on a single lane dirt road. Only Ailynn scribbling on a map could have designed a road with more twists and turns. (Sorry Ailynn, but I’ve seen your artwork, and you need some practice.)

I arrived with 3 friends from my Spanish school and one local, Mario, to Pampa Linda, near the base of the mountain, around noon Saturday, and we began our ascent of the mountain. We followed a river up a narrow valley and the path quickly became very steep. The forest was filled with huge trees and it had a familiar look to it, but little things like the foreign sound of unknown birds and strange weeds reminded me I was far away from home.

Before we could even see the mountain we heard deep rumblings, almost exactly like thunder, but it was a beautiful cloudless day. As we got a little higher we caught our first glimpse of the sounds origin. Perched above a cliff was a glacier, slowly cracking and plummeting to the rocks below. The sound was incredible and the origin of the mountains name, Tronador, or ‘the thunderer’ in Spanish.




We finally punched through the tree line and continued our trek up the mountain. The views were truly spectacular. Behind us was the valley we had just climbed out of, to our left was a cliff dropping more than 1000 feet to the valley, and in front of us was Tronador, an extinct stratovalcano with 7 glaciers on its peak. We finally arrived to our destination, Refugio Otto Meiling, around 5 pm, after climbing 1200 vertical meters. The refugio looks pretty much like a tin shack with a large kitchen downstairs and small mattresses covering the floor upstairs. They claim it sleeps up to 100 people, but that is with 2 or three people per mattress.

It wasn’t that crowded at the refugio, but I elected to camp out among the glaciers and under the moon for the true trekking experience. But before sleep we enjoyed the late summer sun, explored the glaciers, took wayyy too many pictures. I got a chance to play around with my new camera and was able to take some interesting pictures of the tiny signs of life above the tree line. I’ll try to post as many as I can!

The moon was almost full and the glaciers looked spectacular in the moonlight. I fell asleep quickly, but was awoken multiple times by the wind, which began gusting and buffeting the tent. When I finally woke up and couldn’t fall back asleep, I got out of the tent for my first of two really lucky photo moments of the trip. The sun was just cresting the horizon, and the refugio and the glaciers were cast in the perfect light for photos. The temperature had plummeted overnight and the loose snow on the glaciers had frozen solid, as had the small still pools where water had collected during the day, but it didn’t take long for the summer sun to get the rocks above freezing and the melting continued.



When everyone was awake we did a little more exploring, packed up the tent, and headed back down the mountain. It was a little sad leaving the refugio because the environment was so unique and we had climbed so high to get there. If I ever go again I will plan on staying a couple days to go on an excursion across the glaciers to the Chilean side of the mountain.

We descended rapidly, and the mountain seemed even steeper going down than it did up with the weight on my back pushing me downhill. We took a small detour up the river when we reached the valley floor to see the waterfall descending from the melting glaciers above. It was here I had my second lucky photo opportunity when I was able to catch a section of ice mid-fall, smacking against the rocks and breaking into countless pieces. After seeing the glaciers from above it was great to get the view from just below them.

We returned to Pampa Linda and headed back to Bariloche via the crazy dirt road and gorged on steak and potatoes and beer after we had cleaned up a bit. It was a tiring weekend but such a spectacular experience. I’m sure it will stand out as a highlight of my time in Argentina. The glaciers on Tronador were small compared to others and I’ve seen higher mountains, but the novelty of being able to start a summer day in a hot valley, climb through forests and scramble over rocks and sleep among groaning glaciers high up in Patagonia made it really special.

I took too many pictures to count and have plenty of material for posts this week so I promise to try to keep things fresh. Ciao for now

Snow!

Yes, I escaped winter, but not the snow. I woke up today to find the mountaintops dressed in a fresh coat of powder. With any luck there will be some left for me to play in during my hike this weekend!

Ciao

hola from the southern hemisphere!

Hola! Sorry it took me so long to post for the first time, so here goes. I’ll try to be as brief as possible but I’ve got a lot of ground to cover. Ok… flight to Buenos Aires was comfortable enough. I took a cab to Retiro, the bus station downtown, and waited for awhile for my bus to Bariloche. Retiro was a crazy place, there are about 70 terminals with busses arriving and leaving from them all the time. The platforms are crowded with people waving goodbye to friends family, which is nice but creates a somewhat chaotic atmosphere. My bus left Retiro around 7pm Saturday.

I had an awesome seat on the bus, it was a two-story bus and I was front and center on the second floor, so I had a panoramic view. I was able to capture my first argentine sunset on camera, and soon after that they served dinner on the bus, complete with wine and champagne. Because they don’t have a good rail system in Argentina and a lot of people can’t afford to fly, busses are a very popular way to travel, and they are very comfortable. My seat reclined almost the whole way, I had a footrest, and they served 3 meals.

After dinner I fell asleep with the aid of a few Tylenol pm’s, and I woke up around 6 am, well before the sun came up. I dozed off and on all morning, waiting for the landscape to change, but every time I woke up I found myself in an oddly familiar Arizona-ish landscape. When we stopped to stretch our legs I was expecting it to be very hot, but was glad to find it was about 75-80 degrees and comfortable.

My Spanish is not very good but it was enough to get me to Bariloche. I’ll write more about Bariloche later but it is a beautiful place. I arrived around 3 on Sunday, almost 2 whole days after I left DC. I was extremely tired but when I arrived at my homestay I had to try to converse with my host mom as much as I could. My brain was fried after such a long trip, but I managed to have a simple conversation with her and learn about her family and her customs. I also met the other student staying in the apartment, John. He’s from Vancouver but works for Amazon.com in Seattle and is at the tail end of a 3 month sabbatical. Neither of us speak much Spanish but our mother, Ana Maria, insists on speaking Spanish all of the time which is great but leads to some simple and drawn out conversations.

My first three days of Spanish classes have been great. I love my teacher… her name is Carina and she is very sweet. There are only two other guys in my class, which enables us to get a lot of speaking time in.

Yesterday afternoon I went on a bike ride with 3 other students. We took the bus about 30 minutes out of town, rented bikes, and went on a 30 kilometer ride. Since we rented mountain bikes I was expecting the route to be off-road, but it ended up being a loops of endless hills and views. It was beautiful but exhausting! I also got some sun… the fact that it is summer here is only slowly sinking in. There were some great views on the bike ride and some awesome downhill cruises, after the grueling ascents. We also swam in a little lake, lago escondido, to cool off.

I’ve got a lot of activities planned for the rest of the week and the weekend with other students at the school. The people I’ve met have been great… there is a good mix of ages and nationalities. A lot of them are, like me, here on part of a longer trip and will be leaving soon, so I expect to be meeting new people every week until I go to Buenos Aires. I’ve included a picture of the view from my bedroom window of Lago Nahuel Huapi, the large lake the Bariloche is situated upon, as well as some pics from my bike ride yesterday. I’ll have more soon, I just wanted to get everyone caught up and let you know that I’m alive. Hasta luego…