Tea and Wildlife in Welsh Patagonia

I’m having a lazy day in Puerto Madryn today, catching up on uploading pictures and, of course, writing here. I’m off on a night bus to Bueno Aires at 7 pm; this time I’m travelling “cama ejecutivo” so am looking forward to it. I hear it’s very good, and at any rate it’s got to be an improvement on North American buses! Have you ever travelled by night bus in Canada or the U.S.? I did, once, from Toronto to New York (12 hours and $100); I don’t recommend the experience.

I spent the past couple of days exploring the area. Tuesday, I headed off to Peninsula Valdés, which is a protected wildlife area. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry flew around the area as the postal manager from 1929 to 1931, and there’s an island off the Peninsula that inspired his description of a “snake swallowing an elephant” in The Little Prince. (I’ll have to re-read it – it’s been a while since Grade 10 French class!). Interesting note: did you know that The Little Prince was one of the books banned under Argentina’s former dictatorship?

The Peninsula is chock full of interesting wildlife. I was too early for whale season – that starts in about June – but some of the Magellanic penguins were still hanging around. I didn’t get to wander among them as I did in Antarctica, but they’re still pretty funny to watch. These penguins carve out burrows for their nests in the side of the hill, working away industriously with those little webbed feet. Sea lions and elephant seals were also hanging around; any time I’ve seen these creatures, they’re pretty much just lying on the beach snoozing, so I don’t think it’s a terribly difficult life.

Well, other than the ever-present risk of being dinner for an orca, anyway. I also saw a few of those lean, mean killing machines cruising around near the beach, one swimming close to shore as if to check out the seal and sea lion snacks on offer, and the others further out to go after any animals that might get past the first one. We didn’t get to see any orca hunting, though, as they seemed content to just watch; I felt a little bloodthirsty wishing for a sea lion pup to be captured, but it would have been an awesome display. I’d have felt bad for the cute little pup, though.

One sea lion pup almost got snagged as he followed his mother into the water; Mom made it out again safely and looked around for the pup, who was no longer right behind her. You could almost see the panic on her face as she looked around the beach; she plunged back into the water, heedless of the lurking orca menace nearby. Mom and baby both made it out safely on the second attempt, and wisely shuttled much further away from the water.

Land animals were out in force, too. I didn`t see any pumas, but I think I saw everything else that lives around there, including some sheep being chivvied along by a border collie and his authentic gaucho handler on the horse behind. Guanocos, alpaca-like creatures with reddish-brown fur, liked to hang out by the side of the highway, only moving when the van came too near and leaping effortlessly over the high fence to get away. Speedy little maras (also called the Patagonia cavy or Patagonian hare) also lurked by the roadside, taking off at high speed when we approached; they`re odd little creatures about the size of a beagle that look like a cross between a kangaroo, a deer and a rabbit, that leap like `roos on their spindly little deer-like legs. I can`t show you what they look like though, as they moved too fast for me to snap a picture; you`ll just have to google them yourself.

Our very friendly guide Hugo also introduced us – two Australians, two Brits and a lone Canadian – to the Argentinian mate (pronounced `MAH-tay`) ritual. Argentinos are addicted to this bitter herb, which is brewed something like tea into a hot drink. There`s a special mate cup from which you drink it (they`d think you were loco if you used a regular mug), and it`s usually shared.
They drink this in preference to coffee, as it`s a mild stimulant like caffeine; I think I understand now why there is usually only instant coffee on offer everywhere I`ve stayed! I`ve just been looking for the wrong drink, that`s all. Mate`s pretty good, actually, so I might see if I can find it back in T.O. – take a look at the pic to see my first taste of the stuff.

The next day brought me to Gaiman and a drink to which I`m more accustomed: proper British tea. Gaiman was settled in the late 1800`s by Welsh immigrants, who left Britain after some abortive independence movements and rising unemployment in Wales. They looked around the world for somewhere with a lot of free land, where the English couldn`t be found; consequently, they settled on Patagonia and 153 intrepid souls came over in the first boat in 1865. You can still see the site on Puerto Madryn beach where they built their first crude shelters after landing.

Puerto Madryn has lost most of its Welsh character, but Gaiman is much smaller and is clinging fiercely to its heritage. Welsh is still taught in schools in Gaiman and the rest of the lower Chubut valley, and street names often has a distinctly non-Spanish flair (`Avenida Lewis Jones`, for example!). And teahouses flourish all around; I met a couple of Vancouverites on the bus ride there and we went for an authentic Welsh tea at one of these establishments. All-you-can-eat scones, apple tarts, custard, jam, fruit cake, and a dozen other kinds of baking meant we all walked out of there groaning because we were so full; likewise, the pot of tea was never emptied as the attentive lady of the house kept it filled. I didn`t bother to have dinner that night.

There`s also a wee museum in Gaiman that displays some of the artefacts belonging to the first settlers and gives you a history of the area. The sweet little old lady in charge could have stepped right out of an illustration for a traditional British grandmother; she spoke in slow, careful Spanish to me until she realized I spoke English, then switched to that language (with a hint of a Welsh accent).

I also paid a visit to the garden-cum-art-park El Desafio (Spanish for challenge or defiance), an ever-growing installation by an eccentric local artist who creates sculptures, walkways, arches and other decorations for his property out of garbage.  For 10 pesos, he lets you wander around at will, and will occasionally come harangue you about the meaning of his art (I think – he spoke in very rapid Spanish so I missed a lot of it!). It`s a fascinating little place and quite thought-provoking even if you can`t translate all of the Spanish. And I think it`s a much better use of plastic water bottles to turn them into flowers, or Chinese lanterns, or the Taj Mahal, than to pile them up in a landfill!

The only thing I didn`t like about Gaiman was the fact that it hailed, briefly. Yes, HAIL ... you know, that hard icy stuff that falls from the sky. It isn`t winter here, yet, so if that`s any indication of what`s to come, I think I`m glad I`m leaving the area! Buenos Aires should be warm, and I might even be able to stop wearing my fleece and hiking boots – T-shirt and Tevas, here I come!

Yet Another Reason Why Cats are Better than Dogs

I already have a lot of reasons, but here’s another one. Cats won’t follow you down the street in a pack, growling and snarling and snapping at you. If a cat really wants to hurt you, it will stalk past you haughtily, nose in the air, and ignore you completely; this, it is sure, will devastate you.

There are a lot of dogs running around freely in South America, and they’re usually large (German Shepherd-sized). But walking back to the hostel from the Ecocentro in Puerto Madryn today was the first time I’d encountered them in a pack, rather than just one or two, and with them not feeling particularly friendly. I don’t speak “dog” terribly well, but even I could translate those noises!

I ducked into a snooty hotel on the way to get away from them, and it took some tricky manoeuvring to keep the dogs from following me; the hotel had automatic sliding doors which one of the dogs appeared to figure out how to work. But once I’d managed it, the very nice lady at the reception desk commiserated with me and escorted me out a side exit, well away from the frustrated pack of canines.

People will generally come through for you, I find, when you really need them. If it wasn’t for her, I’d probably still be sitting in that hotel lobby, waiting for the pack glaring balefully at me through the glass to disperse.

But aside from that little adventure on the way back downtown, the Ecocentro was very cool. It uses a variety of art, sculpture, film and conventional displays to hammer home its point about the vital importance of the oceans and the necessity to protect the marine life within it. One display says, mincing no words, that we “must not let the destiny of the sea ... be its destruction.”

Another display is a figure of a life-size whale, constructed from rubbish discarded in the ocean and washed up on the nearby beach: tires, plastic water bottles, even old sneakers. An installation in a darkened room simulates the depths of the ocean and plays haunting whale sounds all around you. On the wall of one gallery, there’s a Pablo Neruda poem, in letters half a foot high proclaiming the “Ode a un albatros viajero” (``Ode to a Wandering Albatross”).

Most of the displays had English translations, but the Neruda poem didn’t. So I sat there for a while, dictionary at hand, trying to puzzle my way through it. I got the gist, I think, but poetry loses something when you take it word by word and interrupt the rhythm of the language.

There was a room sided entirely of glass right at the top of the tower attached to the Ecocentro building. Squashy white couches faced out to the sea, and the low table in the middle was scattered with books on photography, wildlife, natural history and environmental issues. I got immersed in a book by Rachel Carson that I hadn’t read, and came back to reality with a start about an hour and a half later.

Fortunately, i was not on a schedule today, so lingering over a book was entirely fine. I got to Puerto Madryn at 7 a.m this morning, having left Bariloche at 6 p.m. the night before. I sat at the front on top of the double-decker bus, which was always my favourite seat on London night buses and will now be my requested seat on all Argentine long-haul coaches. Seats were comfortably large and plush, with plenty of room – two seats on the lefthand side of the aisle, and one on the right. I was on the right, so I had lots of room to spread out.

This bus was “cama economico”, which I’ve decided means that you get a comfortable, almost fully-reclining bed (that’s the “cama” part) but the food is terrible (that’s the “economical” part). There are other classes of Argentine buses, and the most deluxe – coche-cama or cama ejecutivo –will get you good food as well as a completely flat bed once your seat’s put down. I may get the opportunity to travel this way to Buenos Aires (my likely next stop).

As it was, I was presented with a plastic-wrapped Styrofoam tray of two tiny sickly-sweet muffins and a chocolate cookie, together with a lukewarm Styrofoam cup of tea. About quarter to 11 (nearly five hours after getting on the bus), the attendant brought around dinner, which included plain boiled chicken and spaghetti with just a hint of sauce. Some reasonably tasty quesadilla-type things were included too, though, so it wasn’t all bad. Dessert was bright red jello, so no more need be said about that.

A very loud movie went on immediately after dinner was served, and I tried to follow for a while to practise my Spanish (there were English subtitles, but the screen was at an awkward angle for me to read). To the best of my knowledge, the movie was about a guy named Javier, who was being chased by other guys with guns, for some reason that I don’t fully understand but I think had something to do with drugs. There were a couple of female characters, one who seemed to be the boss of the guys with guns and who liked to parade around on screen wearing very little. The other girl looked frightened a lot and eventually got rescued by Javier and (I think) went on to live happily ever after with him.

(Or something like that. Hey, it was an action movie, they’re all basically variations on the same theme, aren’t they?)

The landscape between Bariloche and Puerto Madryn was awesome; not in the Valley girl, like, totally awesome sense of the word, but awe-inspiring. It grew dark a couple of hours outside Bariloche, but until then it was mountains brooding under clouds and rain; after it got dark, the mountains would loom suddenly out of the blackness when struck by the highbeam headlights of the bus. As we got nearer Puerto Madryn, the landscape flattened out into broad open pampas, empty of any sign of habitation except for one tiny town about 4 a.m.

No lights in any direction, and no sign of moon or stars under the cloud cover above, so the blackness was absolute -- just the headlights of the bus pointing down the two-lane highway as the driver barrelled along. Highways in Argentina don’t have reflectors as North American roads too, so it was very difficult to tell, in the pitch black, where the centre – or even sometimes the edges – of the highway really were. Our driver seemed to be just pointing the bus down the middle and hoping for the best; fortunately traffic was very light and we rarely met any other vehicles.

At any rate, I made it to Puerto Madryn in once piece, and reasonably well-rested if a little bit hungry. Today I wandered the town, and tomorrow I’m off to the nearby Peninsula Valdés. There I will get to see sea lions and elephant seals, fur seals and (if I’m really lucky) orcas ... and perhaps even another penguin or two. A different species this time, but I’m sure just as amusing as the ones I’ve already encountered.

So lots of animal life tomorrow ... and as long as the canine variety stays well away from me, we`ll get along just fine.

A Very Specific Fear

(I meant to add some of this entry to my previous blog post, but I see now that was a little long anyway, so probably better that I forgot!)

I don’t have any phobias, really, unless you count anxiety at having to walk into a room full of complete strangers and make small talk for five hours over cocktails. Or I didn’t think I did, anyway. But I discovered that I have a fear of heights ... sometimes.

High balconies don’t faze me. I can jump up and down on the glass floor at the CN Tower without batting an eyelash. I went happily ziplining in Costa Rica, hundreds of feet in the air, without so much as a twinge of fear.

Put me on a Mayan temple, though – one of those that have very narrow, very steep stone steps from a high top platform – and I’m petrified. I discovered this about 3 years ago when I went gallivanting around Mexico, Belize and Guatemala with Shelley. Going up the Jaguar Temple at Tikal was fine; getting down again was an exercise in sheer terror. (And there are no elevators in Mayan tempIes; advanced as they were, they didn’t think of that.) I think Shelley just laughed at me inching my way down the steps with quivering knees; she’s heartless that way.

The other time that a fear of heights rears its ugly head, for me, is riding down chairlifts. I’m used to going up, having had lots of practice on ski hills over the years, so that didn’t faze me at Cerro Catedral (where I went Wednesday) or Cerro Campanario (where I went yesterday). But put me in a chairlift going DOWN the hill, with distressingly hard rock and barren earth below instead of nice soft cushy snow, and I’m terrified. It didn’t help that the chairlift at Cerro Campanario rattled so hard that I was convinced that bolts were working themselves loose, or that it kept stopping for no apparent reason and left my chair swinging wildly in the fierce wind. I gripped that chairlift bar so tightly I nearly cut off circulation in my fingers.

I decided at first to walk down Cerro Campanario instead of take the chairlift, to avoid just that situation. That was fine, even though it was windy and rainy and the path was turning to mud ... until I realized that the trail had taken a sharp turn AWAY from the direction of the road. And that I wasn’t actually sure it went to the road at all; it could’ve been going to some remote mountain refuge 14 miles away for all I knew. So I sighed heavily and hiked back up, rationalizing that it was good exercise for my legs anyway.

I survived the harrowing chairlift ride, dear reader (but then you knew that, as I wouldn’t otherwise be writing here). And fortunately neither of these situations arise frequently in my day-to-day life, so my particular phobia is not a debilitating one. If I ever get to El Mirador in Guatemala, though – with the tallest temple in the Mayan world – I’ll have to brace myself. There’s no way I’m NOT going up it, so I’ll just have to figure out the “down” part of it. Perhaps I can hire a brawny Kiwi backpacker to carry me down ... hmmm.

Anyway, now that I’ve unburdened myself, I should tell you too that I’m leaving Bariloche tomorrow, heading on to Puerto Madryn on the coast in what is nicknamed “Welsh Patagonia” because of the number of immigrant from that particular part of the world. Bydd yn ddrwg gennyf i adael Bariloche ... but I’m also happy to hit the road again! (That’s Welsh, by the way, courtesy of an online translation site. Thought I'd get in the spirit of the thing. “I’ll be sorry to leave Bariloche” ... at least that’s what it’s supposed to mean. If the website lied, and I accidentally said something rude, I apologize to any Welsh speakers who may be reading this.)

My bus is at 6 pm tomorrow, and will be my first experience of overnight bus travel in South America. I’m told they do it very well, so the 14 hours should pass quickly enough. They will even feed me, and give me a seat that reclines all the way so I can actually sleep. I’ll take a picture if I remember so I can show you.

I’m going to say goodbye to Bariloche properly tomorrow with one of the things it is best known for: chocolate. There are 3 things, mainly, that Bariloche is famous for: skiing, trekking and chocolate. I figure I’ve done enough of #2 (and would have done #1, were it the season), so I can indulge in #3 to my heart’s content. Er, stomach’s content. Whatever.

Chocolaterias abound in this town (and I love that there is a specific word for chocolate stores in Spanish), and I’m going to check out a few. I had chocolate ice cream at Rapa Nui on Friday (see picture to left), but I also want to try their hot chocolate with chilli, and go to a couple other stores that are supposed to be mouth-wateringly good. I’d offer to bring some back for you all to try, but I don’t think chocolate would survive 3 months on the road. (Plus I don’t think I’d have the willpower to get it all the way back uneaten.)

Talk to you again from Puerto Madryn! Keep your fingers crossed for me that the bus is as comfortable as they say, otherwise it`s going to be a long 14 hours.

Chairlifts Are Easier on Skis

I don’t tend to think of Argentina when I think about skiing. But there are some very large mountains right next door to Bariloche, so this is a ski centre for Argentina. I visited a ski resort yesterday – Cerro Catedral – which is (I believe) the largest in South America. There was a little bit of snow, right near the top, but it’s not ski season yet; that comes around in June. For now, the ski runs are still dusty, barren expanses of sand and rock.

Two of the lifts were running, though, so that interested tourists (like me, although nearly everyone else was Argentine) can get to the top and check out the views. (You can check it out to the left … picture snow instead of the dirt and rocks, and I think you’d be looking down a very nice, broad, cruising blue run.) Top of the mountain is about 2500 metres, so you can see for miles around.

The first lift was easy enough – a gondola called the Cable Carril – but the second was a bit of a challenge. A chairlift took me to the very top; while I’ve long since mastered the art of getting on and off chairlifts gracefully WITH skis, it’s a different story without. Getting on isn’t so bad, but getting off was entertaining (at least when I watched other people do it). The chairlift guy grabs you by the elbow and kind of swings you around out of the path of the chair; picture square-dancing, without the cheesy music.

But the views were absolutely worth it. I’d forgotten to bring a lunch, so I ate in the restaurant at the top of the mountain called Refugio Lynch (don’t ask me why the “Lynch”; he could’ve been one of the multitude of British immigrants who ended up around here in the latter part of the 19th century.) There’s a large open deck with tables and loungers, so you can hang out with a sandwich and a beer and drink in the panaroma before you. I did, for at least an hour.

Then I hiked some around the top of the mountain, to work off the jamon y queso and the cerveza, My legs had better end up in good shape after this stay in Bariloche; not only is the town itself basically one big hill (so anytime I head south, such as getting back to the hostel from downtown, I have to walk uphill or up steep stairs), but I’ve done a few of the hikes around the area. Tomorrow I’m going to Cerro Campanario, which my Spanish teacher assures me is the most beautiful of all.

Last Sunday was Cerro Otto, which is smaller than Catedral and hike-able to the top; what I hadn’t realized before I started out was that I’d have to walk 5 km first just to get to the start of the 8-km hike to the top. Then I hiked around some of the trails from the top, up and down mountainsides that made me feel like I was one of the Von Trapps in the Sound of Music, escaping on foot over the Alps. Fortunately, no Nazis made an appearance, only a few other determined hikers, like me, who appeared to think a half-marathon distance up and down the sides of mountains was a good idea.

I did a little bit of hiking in El Bolsón, too, but Saturday was a cold and rainy day so didn’t venture too far. Mostly, I spent my afternoon at the market, eating ridiculously large waffles, sampling the local artesan ice cream (their chocolate profundo flavour is heaven on earth) and the locally made beer. I did a little happy dance when I found the beer again in a store in Bariloche, and I’m sipping one right now – El Bolsón cerveza artesenal con frambuesa is seriously good, and a bargain at only 12 pesos (about $3). (You can buy cheaper -- Quilmes, another Argentine beer, goes for about $1.50 for a litre bottle -- but for me, personally, I prefer to buy less but buy what I really like when I do.) Anyway, all the snacking put an end to thoughts of hiking again, and I chilled out – as a good hippie should -- till the return bus to Bariloche.

Also near Bariloche, you can do very long hikes to mountain refugios and stay overnight for about $8 Canadian, but I likely won’t do that before I leave. For one thing, I don’t really fancy dragging my backpack along the 10-km or more that would be necessary to reach one of these, and for another, I’m probably leaving Bariloche this weekend. I’ve really liked this town, but I have my last day of Spanish school tomorrow and I’m kind of itching to move on to new places. And while I still have 3 months to go, I know it’s going to fly by and will end up being much too short!

So it’s onward soon … somewhere warmer would be very nice! Bariloche is okay when the sun is out (or when you’re hiking up the side of a mountain and working up a sweat), but as soon as it gets dark the evenings are pretty chilly. But yesterday in Mendoza, my roommate told me, it was 27C … so going north might be a good plan. A former colleague of mine is also on vacation in Argentina now, so if I can work it out I’ll meet up with her somewhere on her itinerary.

First, though, I want to head over to the coast to Puerto Madryn, to check out both the wildlife preserve and the Welsh communities in the Chobut valley. I might detour to the Cueva de Las Manos first (near Perito Moreno – the town, not the glacier), but it’s a pretty expensive detour and I’m not sure it’s worth it this trip. Plus, it’s further south so is unlikely to be warm, and I only have one fleece (which I’d rather not have to wear every single day).

Okay, must sign off soon as I have Spanish homework to do for my final class tomorrow. It’s been a fun two weeks, and I’ve learned a lot – I can even say things in the past tense now, and I’m very proud of that. I still can’t listen fast enough to keep up with Argentine speech, but I’m hoping to improve with more practice. Failing that, I’ll hold out for countries further north where they speak a little less quickly.

There are some tricky things about Spanish, although much of it seems quite straightforward. Pronounciation isn’t hard, since letters are pronounced more or less consistently (except for a few Argentine quirks with “ll”s and “y”’s) and the accents have distinctly different purposes which I understand (unlike French, where I get all confused). But they don’t use pronouns, generally; the “I” or “you” or “she” is implied by the form of the verb that you use, so I have to pay close attention to make sure I know who’s being talked about.

Worse, some of the verb forms in the past tense are spelled exactly like the present tense, but for different pronouns; for example, “hablo” (no accent) is present-tense “I speak”, but “habló” (accent on the “o”) is past-tense “he spoke”. And “está” (with accent) means "he/she is" (or “you are”, if you're being formal), but “esta” (no accent) means “this”. All well and good when it’s written down, and when it’s spoken, the accent means that the emphasis goes on the last syllable (so it should sound different that the no-accent version, where the first syllable is emphasized); however, the differences in sound are often subtle enough that I don’t pick up on them. When I’m speaking, I probably over-emphasize the accented part of the word, but I want to make sure I’m understood; sometimes I throw in the pronoun, too, just to be safe, which means I’ll sound even more like a gringa but may mean less confusion.

There are other, weirder verbs too that change forms completely from one tense to the next, but I suppose I’ll just have to memorize those as there seems to be no logic. Same for the masculine/feminine thing; I have no idea why a week (la semana) should be feminine, but a day (el dia) should be masculine. And don’t even get me started on “por” and “para” and which to use when, or the fact that there’s two verbs for “to be” (“estar” and “ser”) which are, in theory, used for different situations but in reality overlap. For example: you use “estar” to say “the room is dark” (“la habitacion está oscura”) when it's dark because the curtains are closed, but “ser” (“la habitacion es oscura”) when it’s always dark because it never gets any sun.

Oy vey. I think I have pretty good survival Spanish now, for a gringa tourist, but it’s going to be a long time before I’m fluent! Anyone want to come hit the south of Spain with me next winter, and practise our Spanish on the waiters bringing us drinks on the beach?

Una Gringa en Bariloche

I think I left off in Puerta Varas, so I'll pick up again from there. As you may have guessed, I am in Bariloche, Argentina; "gringa" is, of course, an English-speaking foreign woman. It's generally a disparaging term, apparently, but I kind of like the sound of it so don't mind referring to myself this way.

Bariloche is warmer than anywhere else I've been so far, about 20C right now. I've finally been able to leave off the fleece and start wearing the Tevas instead of hiking boots and socks. (Good thing about the fleece -- since I'm staying in one place for a while, people would start to recognize it very quickly.) It's been brilliantly sunny since I arrived on Saturday, which is a pleasant change from Chile. (Don't get me wrong, some scenery is more beautiful in the mist and the rain, but I just get tired of walking around in it.) Right is a picture of the Centro Civico, designed by an Argentine architect in a "Swiss" style; presumably this is why there are people hawking photographs with gorgeous St. Bernard dogs all around the square.

I spent late Saturday and most of Sunday wandering around the town and enjoying the sun. This was a long weekend in Argentina -- they get holidays from Thursday to Easter Sunday -- so the centre of town was full of Argentine tourists as well as foreigners. Occasionally I would get stopped by some of these tourists and asked for directions, which made me chuckle to myself (do I really look like I'm local enough to know my way around?); in one case, though, I could actually help and directed a very friendly old lady on her way to the cathedral for Easter mass. I even went to mass myself; since I went to church every Sunday of my childhood, I understood the gist of what was going on, but didn't catch most of the actual words. Spanish is a lovely, melodious language, though, so I enjoyed the sound of it.

I've changed hostels since I arrived, as I wasn't too fond of the first one. The location was great -- right in the centre of town -- but the dorms were very small and cramped, and I got stuck in an upper bunk, which I hate. Their book exchange was also under lock and key, and you could only trade in books 2 for 1 (i.e. leave 2, take away 1); this displeases me immensely as I go through books very rapidly, and if I had to donate two every time I wanted a new one, I'd already have run out of books and have to start buying again.

So I'm now at a hostel almost as close to the centre, just a little bit further walk up the hill. Bariloche is very close to the mountains -- you can see them across the lake -- and streets rise very steeply away from the lakeshore. Walking south generally means hiking up a 45-degree slope or a daunting near-vertical set of steps; this would be a great place to run, as your quads would end up in phenomenal shape! I'm hoping I can get the same benefit from walking, as I don't have any running gear with me.

There's a lovely spacious backyard at this hostel, so I am now sitting out in the sun as I type this. Ah, the benefits of a netbook and free wi-fi; I didn't anticipate this before coming to South America! I just finished my third day at Spanish school at 1 pm today, and my brain is, I think, starting to melt down from overwork. It's been a long time since it had to cope with school of any sort!

It's fun, though, and I think I will definitely end up with much more confidence in speaking and understanding Spanish. Learning in Argentina is challenging, though, since los Argentinos speak muy rapido (kind of like the speed I speak English, or les Quebecois speak French); I have trouble listening fast enough to keep up and understand them. They've also got some unusual pronounciations which are unique to this part of the Spanish-speaking world: "ll", for example, is usually pronounced as a "y" or a "ly" in the rest, but in Argentina it's more like a "zh" (as in the "s" in "measure"). So I occasionally end up thinking they've said something very different.

They also like to throw in their own unique pronoun for "you" (I think los Chilenos might do it, too, but not sure): "vos" as well as "tu" and "usted". And "vos" gets its own unique conjugations for verbs, i.e. "vos sos" instead of "tu es" to mean "you are". Couple that with the speed of speech, and I don't always understand when someone is directing a question at me; I know they mean me if they say "tu" (or "usted", if they're being polite), but "vos sos" becomes one long slur of sound that I don't get.

Apparently the speed with which people speak will slow down as I go further north in South America, so I'm hoping that I might be able to listen fast enough by Peru to understand more of what people say! The slang might still confuse me, though; Latin American Spanish is very different from the European variety (kind of like Quebec joual and Parisian French).

Yesterday afternoon after class, we watched a movie together, "El Secreto de sus Ojos", which won the Oscar for best foreign film. Muy bien, but muy complicado to follow at times; to help us practice our Spanish, the teacher showed it in Spanish with Spanish subtitles. He occasionally took pity on the confused gringos, though, and would stop the film at intervals to make sure we understood what was going on. Very good movie, by the way, should you ever wish to expand your horizons to Argentino film!

So, I'm halfway through my first week of lessons. I'm staying here next week, too, for another week of Spanish, and I might extend it to a third (depending on how the first two weeks go). I will probably have new classmates next week, though, as my current two (both Canadian girls, one from Victoria and one from Calgary) are leaving on Saturday, one to Chile and one to Iguazu Falls.

Anyway, we'll see about the third week; I love the idea of becoming much more fluent in Spanish, but there are so many places in South America that I want to see that I'm also itching to get on the road! I have a bit of time to decide, so I'll keep you posted. Hasta luego (see you later), mis amigos!

In Bavaria

No, I haven't crossed the Atlantic recently. Technically, I'm still in Chile, but if I ignore the Spanish street signs, I could swear I was in Germany. I'm in Puerto Varas, just off the boat this morning from Puerto Natales, and this town was settled by German immigrants in about 1880. So the architecture is very reminiscent of the Black Forest (the main cathedral is modelled on the Marienkirche) and opportunities to eat sauerkraut and kuchen abound.

The boat ride was fantastic; it takes you through some of Chile's most stunning scenery, through the fjords off the coast, and you even have the chance to get off midway for a morning exploration of a remote community on one of the islands in the archipelago.

Sailing up through the islands made me think of one of the Narnia books (all of which I have read approximately one thousand times, as I love them all) -- do you know the Voyage of the Dawn Treader? The characters sail to the end of the world, through remote and beautiful islands -- I felt like I was doing the same as I cruised up through southern Chile. This side of the Andes is the rainy side; over the mountains in Argentina it's almost shockingly dry, but cruising up through Chile brought a lot of mist and rain. If anything, the fog improved things: it added to that sense of remoteness, being in our own little world.

We boarded in Puerto Natales on Monday night and spend the night on board; the ship actually left on Tuesday morning. Sleeping options range from berths in a corridor with communal bathroom (which I went for, at about $336 US after a 20% discount), upwards to 4-person cabins with no window and shared bathrooms, to cabins with windows and bathrooms, to the ultra-luxury (relatively speaking) two-person cabins with private bathrooms, desk, closets and large window, as well as access to a private dining room and lounge only for the people in the posh cabins. Fares at the high end went up to $1200 US.

But I was quite happy with my little berth ... and quite frankly, it would have seemed a waste of several hundred dollars just to have a door that closed. They ate the same food (albeit some of them ate in a separate dining room with tablecloths and real china, instead of the main cafeteria), slept in the same kind of bunks (just fewer people in a room), and had the same views as I did.

Unhappy passengers on the ferry

The only downside of the bottom-of-the-scale accommodations, I discovered, is that they're at the back of the boat just up from the cargo deck. Oh, the "ferry" isn't a typical ferry -- it's primarily a cargo run that has been partly outfitted for human passengers. Some of the cargo on this trip included four trailer loads of cattle, squashed in like sardines so they couldn't turn around, with no tops on the trailers so they suffered through the wind and the rain with no protection. It seemed very cruel that they should have to travel like this for 3 1/2 days! And the "downside" I mentioned came when the wind blew a certain direction, carrying that lovely bovine smell all through the back of the ship.

There were only 50 or so human passengers, in a ship that could hold 300, so it was easy to get to know most of the folks on board. I was glad to see again that it wasn't mostly couples -- there were a few older couples, mostly from Canada and the U.S. (they were staying in the posh cabins), but for the most part, it was solo travellers just like me.

We had communal meals in the cafeteria (costs of which are included in the fare) and hung out in the top deck lounge or on the outer decks during the days. A few people spotted wildlife along the way -- dolphins and a few sea lions -- but I wasn't so lucky. I was hoping for blue whales in the Golfo Corcovado on day 3, where I'd been told about 250 whales lived, but saw nary a one. Evenings, there were movies on offer (I sat through one very dreadful Matthew McConaghey flick, but saw a very good Argentine film too), or the lounge to hang out in, with fine Chilean beer on sale for about $2 a bottle. Wine was a little more expensive.

Puerto Eden, in the middle of the Chilean archipeligo

Day 2 took us to Puerto Eden, an isolated little fishing hamlet on Wellington Island. Primary industry -- only industry, really -- is fishing for mussels and crabs, but like many other fishing communities, marine populations have been declining dramatically in recent years, and it's become harder and harder to make a living. But the 300 or so residents carry on -- some of them try to supplement their fishing income by offering crude little handmade souvenirs for sale, and the ferry company collects a 4000 Chilean peso fee (about $8) from passengers who go ashore, donating all the funds to the community.

Day 3 brought us through the Golfo de Penas (literally, Gulf of Sorrows), which is notorious for rough weather and big waves, as it's open to the Pacific. But we sailed through with hardly a ripple in the water, so I still haven't been seasick ever in my life; there were a few folks on board moaning and groaning in the Gulf despite the calm, but clearly I'm a better sailor than those.

Day 4 brought us to Puerto Montt early in the morning, and we disembarked after breakfast on board (before the cows, thank goodness, or we'd have been waiting a while). A few people scrambled to get ready in time, having enjoyed themselves a little too much at the farewell party the night before. We danced, and (oddly) played bingo; the winners got prizes of bottles of wine, but had to do a dance in the middle of the lounge to earn their prize. I was sitting there at one point with one number left for a full card; I wasn't sure whether to be disappointed or relieved when someone else won. I could've handled the first few songs (I can dance to Elvis, or Chubby Checker, or Abba) but the later numbers switched to merengue and salsa. And I have NO latin rhythm at all (must be the Celtic blood).

Puerto Varas, Chile

Since Puerto Montt is an unattractive industrial port, I opted to catch a mini-bus for about $1 for the half-hour journey north to Puerto Varas on Lake Llanquihue (try saying that five times fast -- I stil haven't figured out how to pronounce it). To the right is a view of the town; don't you agree it could just as easily be a picture from Bavaria? Peter from the UK, who'd also been on the ferry, showed up at the same hostel as me, so there appears to be a backpacker trail in South America as well (but before you get any ideas ... Peter, although a lovely gent, is 70 if he's a day, and while very sweet is undoubtedly too old for me.)

So I spent today wandering the town, after I'd taken care of necessities like buying groceries to make dinner and booking a bus ticket for Bariloche (Argentina) tomorrow morning. I was very pleased that I managed to conduct the latter transaction entirely in Spanish; even though my Spanish was about the equivalent of saying "I want go Bariloche. When bus?", I managed to make myself understood. Perhaps I'll even sound semi-educated in Spanish after a couple of weeks of lessons in Bariloche.

Okay, dinner calls. Plus I'm getting pretty cold hanging out on the porch, and there's a lovely cosy fireplace inside ... spending the evening in front of it sounds like an excellent plan.

In Patagonia (with apologies to Bruce Chatwin)

I'm typing this in Puerto Natales, Chile, where the great unexpected benefit of South American travelling continues: free wi-fi at every hostel! Saves a fortune in internet cafe fees, let me tell you, especially since (as I've discovered) it takes hours upon hours to upload a few hundred pictures. (And I'm not even finished those yet ... can't figure out what the problem is, but some pictures stubbornly refuse to upload.)

So this netbook may pay for itself by the end of the trip at the rate I'm going. Or at least that's what I'm going to tell myself.

And all my security worries before deciding to bring it along were probably for nothing -- the majority of other travellers I've encountered also seem to have a laptop or netbook along, usually nicer than mine. So the odds of mine getting stolen in a hostel are pretty small. I still sleep with it, though, just because I love it.

Anyway ... in Patagonia. I borrow the title from Bruce Chatwin's iconic book, which I'm currently reading. To hear him tell it, Patagonia (southern Chile and Argentina) is a wild and windswept land full of oddball characters, mostly on the run from the law, or just too pig-headed and independent to ever live anywhere else.

Wild and windswept I can attest to. I don`t think the wind has stopped blowing since I set foot here, and as for `wild`, I think that Patagonia -- particularly the Argentine part -- is South America`s answer to the American Wild West, all barren, craggy mountains and dusty plains, an endless expanse of land broken only by an occasional gate for an unseen and faraway estancia (ranch). And the big, big sky that has been full of light since I left Ushuaia, with nary a drop of rain.

Ushuaia itself was a nice enough little town, but I wouldn`t rush out of my way to get there unless you`re on the way to Antarctica. The days I spent there were cold, damp and rainy until late on my final afternoon, when the clouds finally rolled away and I saw for the first time the snow-capped peaks that surround the town and the harbour. So it`s a pretty place, when the sun`s out ... just don`t expect to be able to tell through the fog and the rain.

I flew from Ushuaia to El Calafate, Argentina next -- opting not to spend two full days on the bus just yet, although I`m sure I`ll be doing that later in this trip -- and have now added El Calafate to the list of places I could live. For anyone who hasn`t been keeping track, the list is currently this:

1. New Zealand: anywhere. Gorgeous country, environmental light-years ahead of North America, friendly people, adorable Kiwi men. What more could you need ?

2. Norway: also anywhere. Well, maybe not the far northern bits where the sun doesn`t shine at all in the winter, but otherwise good. Like NZ, way ahead of us lazy North Americans on the green front.

(those are my top two, in that order. the rest that follow are in no particular order)

3. Key West, Florida
4. San Cristobal, Mexico
5. Port Douglas, Australia
6. Marrakesh, Morocco
7. Barcelona, Spain
8. Havana, Cuba
9. Roatan, Honduras
10. Newfoundland

What did I like so much about El Calafate? Well, this part of Patagonia is spectacularly beautiful - vast expanses of arid land with not a tree in sight, jagged mountains, a turquoise lake fed by glacier water and that big, big sky. My hostel (called I Keu Ken) had some of the best vibes of any hostel I've been in (it didn’t hurt that the charming Federico with the dreadlocks at the front desk welcomed me with a hug and kiss on both cheeks) ... and it’s set up on a hill so it looks out over the whole town, and the lake, and the mountains, and the big sky. There's a couch parked right in front of their big common room window that looks out over it all -- perfect spot to sit and type or read, or chat and drink a cheap Argentine beer.

It’s laidback, friendly and cool, and there’s a clean, crisp wind blowing dust through the unpaved streets, adding to the feeling of being in the middle of nowhere. I also really liked the kind of backpackers that seemed to go there. None of the attempts to one-up each other with the most exotic place they’ve travelled, the most remote destination they’ve reached, the longest they’ve been on the road, or any of the other backpacker snobbery that you can sometimes encounter. (If I do run into that again, though, I’ll play my Antarctica card and win the travel stakes -- that`ll shut them all up.)

I went there primarily to see the Perito Merino glacier, which is in the Parque Nacionale Los Glaciares about 80 km outside of town. (Not to be confused with the Parque Nacional Perito Merino, or the town of Perito Merino, both of which are further north. I must find out who this Perito Merino guy was, and what he did to deserve all these namesakes.) There are many rivers of ice running down from the Patagonian Icefield, which is the 3rd largest expanse of ice in the world, after, of course, Antarctica and Greenland. But Perito Merino is by far the star.

Carol at the Perito Moreno Glacier, El Calafate

It’s unbelievably vast – something like 250 square kilometres , which is greater than the size of Buenos Aires city – and it’s one of the few glaciers in the world that isn’t retreating. Global warming hasn’t yet seemed to take a toll, as the glacier has been stable since 1920.

And it seems almost alive when you strap on crampons (as I did) and go for a trek atop that river of ice. It isn’t a smooth, flat surface of ice – it’s sharp-toothed and splintered in places, and in others, undulating swells of ice. Imagine a vast surging river, frozen for a moment in time; that’s how the glacier seemed, as if it could decide to ‘wake up’ at any moment and continue on its way. It does move, of course, just not quickly enough to be perceptible to the casual observer; the ice travels down from 3,000 metres above sea level, high in the Andes, down to the lakes near El Calafate, where chunks break off with a thunderous clap to form new icebergs. Unlike Antarctica, the icebergs don’t last long; it’s rarely below zero here, even in winter.

I took an extra day, after visiting the glacier, just to hang out in town and enjoy it. It isn’t often I find somewhere new to add to my “where I might like to live” list, so I had to soak it up while I had the chance. And I discovered something interesting while I did; you may know that my dating life has been almost non-existent in the past few years (aside from Work Guy, who shall remain nameless), and that’s mostly because I’ve had no interest. Well, I discovered in El Calafate that my interest in the opposite sex appears to be back, with a vengeance; for the first time in a long time, I looked at someone and found him quite delicious. This was the afore-mentioned Federico: age, almost definitely younger than me; hair, sun-bleached dreadlocks; eyes, turquoise-blue like the glacier lake; style, bohemian hippie/poet. And he played guitar, and sang. And spoke a delightful English in an Argentine accent (I don’t have to tell you that Spanish accents can be very sexy.)

I’m not saying I did anything about it (hey, my parents could be reading this). But I was very pleased to note yet another part of my non-work personality is coming back to life! (What’s that, you say? You thought I had a thing for guys in suits with banker haircuts? Think again, my friend. Give me a guitar-playing hippie poet any day.)

I moved on to Puerto Natales today, as I am catching the ferry from here on Monday, to travel up the Chilean coast through what are promised to be spectacular fjords. I had debated about taking next week’s instead, as the low season starts in April and prices drop by 30-40%, but I discovered that there are benefits to booking at the last-minute as the ferry company offers steep discounts to fill the remaining beds. So I set sail on Tuesday (after boarding the night before), and arrive in Puerto Montt, Chile on Friday. From there, I’m heading to Bariloche, Argentina, where I want to stop for at least a couple of weeks and study Spanish; their language school is supposed to be very good, and the town itself very beautiful and lots of fun.

So I’ll probably talk to you again after I get off the ferry. Have fun in the meantime, and don’t forget to keep in touch!

Oh ... and if you’re ever in El Calafate, give Federico a hug for me.

El Fin del Mundo

Well, I'm here! I am in a much better mood today than yesterday, despite the rain and mist that hide any view of the mountains and the sea.

Yesterday was not a good day. Well, it was, in the sense that it got me here in one piece, but really ... it wasn't. My 25 hours of travel started out promisingly enough -- I checked in, and got through U.S. customs and airport security in an astonishing 45 minutes, after Dad dropped me off at the airport. (Oh, yeah, while I think of it -- Dad, I promise to double-check the terminal next time around, but hey, we got to ride the monorail, which I'd never done before.)

The rest of it went smoothly enough, with no major hiccups along the way; it just seemed so unbearably LONG. It went something like this:

Arrive at Toronto 3 hours early for flight. Clear customs, security, etc and kill remaining 2 hours and 15 minutes reading half a novel.

Arrive in Houston, Texas, on time, and race for connecting flight as I thought I'd left it pretty tight with only 53 minutes in between. Kill remaining 40 minutes before flight boards reading more of novel.

Arrive in Buenos Aires, Argentina the next morning at 10 a.m. after 11 hours sitting upright, as I was in a row where the seats had no room to recline. Having only dozed sporadically and never actually slept (partly thanks to my seatmate who kept poking me awake to get out for the bathroom), feel half-stoned and intellectually impaired. Find my way to shuttle in this condition, somehow, and get to other airport in B.A. (where the domestic flights leave) after 1 1/2 hours. B.A. appears to be very beautiful, Paris-like city but not fully awake enough to appreciate. Kill remaining four hours till connecting flight reading all but last 3 chapters of novel.

Arrive in Trelew, Argentina for (supposedly) brief stop en route to Ushuaia. Approximately 70 minutes later, in the air again and on the way. Lower half of body starting to go numb as there is only enough leg room for someone 4'6". Or my sister Shelley.

Arrive in Ushuaia, Argentina -- the end of the world -- at 9:20 p.m. local time (two hours ahead of Toronto). Have lost all feeling in legs and feet, and have developed a migraine that may actually split my head in two. Stumble to taxi and bark out name of hostel.

Arrive at FreeStyle Hostel, Ushuaia, and am ushered immediately to room with friendly Australian dorm mates. Receive big hug from hostel worker guy to make me feel better (cute Kiwi, very nice). Dash off quickie email to family to say "hey, I'm alive" and update Facebook status. Then make bed somewhat haphazardly and go to sleep. In Toronto time, it's about 8:30 p.m.

****

So I suppose you won't be surprised that I saw nothing of the town yesterday. I slept in this morning and woke up feeling much, much better. Went out for a stroll, and discovered that I was probably the only person in town who thought it was warm: I was wearing Tevas, T shirt and capris, everyone else was bundled up in anoraks and sturdy boots. It's not that warm, actually, and the T-shirt was probably pushing it a little; but it's not below zero, there's no snow on the ground, and I felt like pretending it was summer.

It's more like late summer, or early fall, depending on how you define these things. Kind of the equivalent of Toronto in September -- but with Vancouver-style mist currently blocking the supposedly spectacular views. Am now chilling in the hostel, where I think I'm staying for the evening. I've finished the last 3 chapters of my book, but as I came prepared with several others (that's why my backpack is so heavy at the moment!), I have another to curl up with tonight (diving into Bruce Chatwin's "In Patagonia"), and my previous book is on its way back to Buenos Aires (and thence on to Australia) with one of the friendly Aussie dorm mates.

Tomorrow I move to the Hotel Ushuaia, where I join my group for the Antarctica cruise. The boat (ship?) actually pulls out on the 13th. I'm now fully prepared, as I found a place to rent unattractive but very serviceable wellies today, and you can expect lots of pictures when I get back on the 22nd. Till then, I'll probably be out of touch.

Keep in touch and let me know how you're doing too -- I don't want to feel completely forgotten, down here at the Fin del Mundo ...