Xmas

Dan: I’m starting to think that maybe we should celebrate Christmas in the summer, too. It’s nice to have some days off when the weather is nice. Thanks to us, they still have to listen to songs about winter and snow, but there are new possibilities of outdoor celebration.

We grilled chorizos, hot dogs, steak, chicken and ate at around 11:00. I was just refilling my plate when someone asked if it was getting close to midnight. Someone disappeared from the room. Soon, we heard the ringing of a bell. (gasp) “Is that el viejito pascuaro? (Old holiday guy) A couple of the grown ups took the girls Rayan, 4, Fernanda, 2, to walk around the block to look for the old fella. While they were walking around, there was frantic rushing to fill the area under the tree with wrapped gifts. We the bell a few times. I threw out a few Ho Ho Hos for good measure. They returned with wide eyes, seeing the bounty before them. We took turns opening stuff. Santa even brought me a book and a hat! Soon everyone was saying that we should probably go to bed early (it was about 2 am) because of the next day’s Christmas picnic plan.

We (9 in a jeep) drove from one campground to another until we found one that wasn’t full, at the confluence of the Correntoso and Simpson rivers. We made a huge fire to cook the lamb (an entire lamb was delivered to the house two days beforehand). Meanwhile, we kept on eating and eating. Some Xmas behaviour is international. It was a windy day but cloudless. The cold river beckoned. We played with the girls in the Simpson river for awhile. What? Am I really swimming outdoors on Dec 25? We ate more, drank mate, beer and something called borgoña, a mix of red wine, sugar and strawberries. Sergio found the other river so he and I, Cata, 25, Valentina, 11, went to check it out. It turns out that this river came directly from those glaciers above us and was quite refreshing. It only took a couple of minutes for that experiment to end.

Food: Pan de Pascuas. Christmas bread. Kind of a fruitcake I guess. Luckily no one in this family likes those candied fruits, so it had mostly nuts and spices. They tell me it is an English cake with German flavours, and it did taste something like a leibkucken -- so much so that this morning I cracked out my winterzeit tea reserves to share and polish off pan de pascuas.

Calurosa Navidad

I'm at 45 degrees 34 minutes latitude south. About equivalent to Verndale, MN in the north I suppose. It's Dec 24th and I'm wearing shorts and sandals. it gets pretty cold at night, but all the days have been sunny since I got here.

We are like 6 adults, 3 kids and a baby in Sergio´s uncle Jaime's house. It gets a little crowded at times, but no one seems to mind having an extra gringo around. In fact, I'm the one who is having to change from solo mission to suddenly having crying or giggling kids, and constantly joking adults around. I don't get the humor many times, every family has inside jokes, and often I don´t get what they are even saying. There is so much chile-specific spanish usage that i need some time to agarrar la onda (catch on), as well as get to know the family and the system here. For example, meals are different here. Light breakfast, big lunch, then a light something called "onces (elevenses)" in the evening.

Sergio and many of his people here have been working at the local art fair. Watercolor paintings, hats, painted statues. After today, things should get back to normalish and I´ll see what that means. As it is, the schedule has been pretty unusual, as more crafts are produced to meet demand for the next day. I too have been put to work putting primer coating on religious statuettes. I'm trying to catch up on sleep from the bus hell, but still staying up til 3am.

Everyone in the house has been singing this song so I thought I’d pass it on to you. It’s about Christmas in a warm climate. It’s from an amazing Chilean kids show called 31 Minutos.

Monkey Christmas

This tree is next to the plaza here in Coyhaique, Chile. The Araucaria tree I believe is known as the Monkey Puzzle Tree in English. Silly. If you brought a monkey down here he would be puzzled by a lot of things besides the tree.

transition time

Dan: We had a nice going away BBQ on FRiday night. The folks at the hostel were really cool about letting us do our thing. Not knowing how much carne feeds how many people, or how many people would come, we ended up with enough leftover raw eat and chorizos to have a second, less formal asado the next night too. It was tough saying adios to so many people, but we were able to get most of our business done ( we were able to sell a guitar and a cell phone to an ecuadoran band staying at the hostel) and catch our bus to Santiago, Chile where we met up with our buddy Aaron. We all stayed at a mega hostel Casa Roja in Barrio Brasil that has a swimming pool and bar. This place is a well-run operation, but staying there makes one forget he is in South America at all. English is certainly the lingua franca; Aussies, Kiwis, Irish, British. Last night we met a couple from Mpls, one of whom works at the Wedge coop on Lyndale. We had mutual acquaintances. They are just starting out a similar project to what Lou and I have been doing, so we had a lot to talk about.

So we hung out by the pool, did a little bit or tourism (finally checked out cerro Santa Lucia) but genrally just tried to enjoy our last few days together before sending Lou back to the US of A yesterday. She's probably still in the air right now. Now I have to try to make the transition from being a team player to a solo artist. I went to the bus terminal last night to look for tickets and I was a complete mess. For almost a year we have done almost everything together. especially while traveling, minute decisions are always negotiated until we figure out the best path. So last night I was trying to decide between destinations, dozens of times and prices from half a dozen bus companies and didn´t know what to do. I bounced back and forth between bus company desks for an hour before I sat down and had a beer and realized what my problem was. I was just going to have to pick one on my own, without the organizational skills of my spouse.

Bueno, there are, of course, emotional aspects of the transition but this ain't one of those mushy blogs. To give you an idea of my distraction, I accidentally put salt into my mate this morning instead of sugar.

Today my main missions were to do this blog and change my cell phone from Argentine to Chilean, then sit by the pool and read. Tomorrow I'm headed back towards Patagonia, this time on the Chilean side. I going to meet Sergio in Coyhaique (I'm not sure if that's really how it is spelled) , hopefully by Xmas, where we are going to stay at his uncle's place and see what happens from there.

addendum: It´s 6:00 and I still haven´t completed my missions for the day. I´ve been killing time (lunch, a movie, coffee, bothering travel agents) waiting for the return of my phone. The lady at the kiosk is very apologetic that her boss is already 2 or 3 hours late with my "liberated" phone, but I can´t help but feel that maybe Chile and Argentina aren´t so different after all. It takes forever to get something done. Worst of all, the sun is getting low so the poolside relaxation will have to wait for another day.

Back from Barilo

Dan: We got to Bariloche and found a hostel. The town itself, being picturesquely situated on a huge lake, surrounded by snow capped mountains, was really windy and cold. Our second day there we spent resting, and reading as it rained outside. We didn’t find too much to do in the town itself. We’re too old to stay up late enough to go out, we’re too budget-minded to eat out. We window shopped a little and ate ice cream. Bariloche is the undisputed chocolate capital of Argentina. There are huge chocolate shops so people can fill their suitcases before going home.

This place is the number one domestic tourist destination, in the winter for skiing, in the summer for scenery and an escape from the heat. Right now though, it seems that Bariloche, and much of Patagonia for that matter, are overrun by Israelis. Young, college-aged kids from Israel are everywhere. Our hostel was filled 70% with Hebrew speakers. Most of them didn’t speak much Spanish but their English was really good. The peak season for tourism in the area begins pretty soon and goes until March.

After our relaxing time in El Bolson, Bariloche wasn’t really our scene (although we did find Chinese food!). We rented a car and left town. This was my first time driving in another country, and the first time behind the wheel in nine months. I’m not very good at manual transmission on hills, and this town was all hills. I had to have Lou get us out of town before I felt comfortable driving.

We looked at the map and decided to try to “Path of 7 Lakes.” Yeah, I know you Minnesotans are thinking what we thought, “Oooh, they have SEVEN lakes!? Wow.” That is a big deal around here, but they are quite different from any of the 1000s back home, in that they are surrounded by mountains, and the water is blue, blue, blue. We didn’t have enough kms on the car to do the whole circuit, but that was ok because we found a place to camp on Lago Espejo Chico, lake number 2 or three. It was there that we learned another lesson about temperature change and camping in the mountains. We found a nice place for the tent, “ooowee, its warm, let’s put it in the shade.” We made a fire from fallen timber and ate, watched the lake and the birds. It was dusk for hours so the birds were very active. By the time it got dark, we had a few layers on. In the tent, as the night went on, we ended up putting more and more layers on. We really thought we had brought enough clothing and sleeping bags and blankets and hats and gloves and jackets, but we were wrong. There wasn’t even any wind on the mirror lake, but we shivered through the night. But other than the temp, the place was nice. We did a little hiking, but were too tired to do anything ambitious.

We drove back toward Bariloche, stopped for some hiking in the woods and arrived at Villa la Angostura, a smaller ski town on the other side of the lake from Bariloche. We found the most comfortable place to stay, Italian Hostel. They looked brand new and their kitchen was loaded with everything we could need to cook. We opted to use the brick pizza oven. We haven’t had an oven of any sort for 7 months, so we made everyone in the place jealous with our pizza indulgence. We’ve had some pretty good luck with hostels this trip. My new theory is that we should avoid hostels that are mentioned in guide books. I feel that once they have a steady stream of tourists coming in from Lonely Planet recommendations, they don’t have to try any more. This trip we usually went to the local tourist office and asked what the newest places were and have had good results.

We returned the car in Bariloche, killed a few hours sitting on the lawn of the Cathedral and eating ice cream and caught the bus back to Mendoza. We hope to spend the next few days catching up on the blog, making plans for the nest week, resting, doing laundry, buying crap, and saying goodbye to folks. We are trying to organize a farewell party here at the Spazio hostel. We’ve been to so many asados, tomorrow we’re going to try to have our own, for BBQ karma.

El Bolson

Dan: We planned on coming here to El Bolson for a couple days but we’ve ended up staying here five nights. This place is so damn beautiful, I don’t know how any other place could be better. It’s a little town in a low mountain valley. Some time the 70s, hippies wanting to escape Buenos Aires life found this place and started moving here. Today it is still beautiful, I suppose as a result of the forward thinking and conservationist attitudes of the transplants who don´t want a McDonalds or high-rise buildings. They also have supposedly the biggest artisan craft market in the country. Right now the spring flowers are in bloom. Anywhere we go there are wild roses, daisies and lupines. Lupines. Have you ever seen these things? A whole field of waist or chest high purple, pink, blue and white flowers. Impressive against a snowy mountain backdrop. We’ve been hiking a lot, a little further each day. Today we were out wandering the hills and following a blue river for about 6 hours.

Also back in the town’s history, El Bolson accounted for 60% of the hops growing of Argentina. 20 years ago someone decided to start brewing some artisanal beer. Cerveceria El Bolson was born. Now there are at least half a dozen microbreweries in this little town. I must say the beer here is by far better than any other I´ve had in this country. And I´ve tried quite a few. You see, my brother, the graphic design professor, has an artistic interest in studying the iconography of beer labels. He has done quite a bit of “research” in Europe. He charged me with the very difficult task of drinking as many varieties of South American beer as possible and bringing the labels back to him. It has been a pleasure this week to have an excuse to spend those extra few pesos end enjoy some truly crafty brewing.

We’ve been staying in a nice little hobbit home across a hanging pedestrian bridge. It has been nice to relax there and speak Spanish with Ester, the proprietress, who moved here 20 years ago. Yesterday she took us on a hike to a waterfall. It feels like a vacation, being able to fall asleep in a hammock in the afternoon.

Tomorrow we plan to head up to Bariloche, Argentina´s playground of the rich and famous. We hope to find a way to explore the areas near the city.

Puerto Madryn and El Calafate

Dan and Lou: So we went on an excursion around peninsula Valdés. We had a mini bus full of tourists. we stopped at a few places around the peninsula and looked at fat, sleepy elephant seals and a nesting spot for Magellen Penguins. Because a German kid got to the bus late from the seals, we only had 5 minutes to check out the penguins so as not to miss our whale watching time. But anyway, we had some great interpretation by our guide as we drove around.

The whale watching was probably the most touristic feeling thing we have done, but it was really spectacular all the same! We were on a boat with probably 40 other people (about 95% foreigners which is a big contrast to other tourist activities we´ve participated in in the past). Dan commented that the net worth of the camera & video equipment on board was probably more than our yearly incomes! The whales are southern right whales, and we had great luck, or perhaps it is that they are that predictable. We saw several and had one swim only a few feet parallel to the boat; a mother and calf swam just as close later on. She was so close I felt the whale blow mist when she cleared her blow-hole. Their large size and curiosity were the most impressive things.

The next day we relaxed in the morning and boarded a bus for an overnight south to Rio Gallegos and a connector bus to Calafate. Rio Gallegos is the furthest south town in the continental Argentina (as far as we know). It was not so cold, but with an almost constant wind! We pitched our tent and spent a lot of time that night looking for a restaurant that didn´t seem outragously expensive to us.

Our main purpose of heading so far south was the Perito Moreno glacier. We arrived at the glacier in the afternoon and had 3 1/2 hours to marvel at it before the bus returned to Calafate. It was great to see the difference in intensity of colors during that time. At times it was a green-blue and at others it had touches of a deep neon blue. For safety reasons, we were limited to a view from the neighboring hill, but we were able to look at the calving sides and all the way up the glacial valley. From a look at the map, this glacer is actually part of a whole system of glaciers in the area. The part that we could see was 4-5 km. across (about 2 miles) and went back as far as we could see. We saw very few chunks fall off, but heard many booms from within the glacier. It was an impressive cannon-firing sound that we heard--even when what seemed like rather small chunks fell.

Not caring to spend any more dough there, we found things to do until about 1 am that second day, grabbed our bags & waited at the bus station until our 4 am bus out of town. After about 31 hours we arrived in El Bolson. We are staying at an "albergue" and taking it easy. It is pretty much a rustic type cabin with a couple of dorm rooms, kitchen, and electricity. We are looking forward to later tonight when the owner throws fire under the water heater & we can take showers!