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?

Backpacking Then and Now

I just realized this afternoon that I've been on the road for exactly a month. That means this is my longest backpacking trip since Europe in 1994 ... oh, I've had great holidays since of nearly a month (New Zealand, Australia and Central America) but because I've only recently made it to five weeks' vacation allowance (one of the perks of working 18 hours a day as management), I never had enough time off to be gone for a month, unless I used every single vacation day in one shot.

So it's my second longest trip ever, as of today, as I realized. Then I started thinking about the differences between backpacking way back when in Europe (1994! Can't believe it was more than 15 years ago), and backpacking now ... here's the 10 things I think have changed the most.

1. AGE:

Well, this one is obvious. I was a young chick of 25 when Julie and I backpacked around Europe, and I'm over 40 now (but only slightly). The average age of backpackers has remained about the same, so that means now I could be "mom" for some of them. Hell, I have a friend my own age with a 20-year-old son; there are boys staying in my current hostel who aren't any older than that.


2. HAIR:

This goes along with age. I didn't have to worry about this in 1994, but if I go for the entire trip without dying my hair again, I'm going to have about 6 inches of greying roots. I think I'll be dying it on the road, as high-maintenance as that might sound. (I am not high-maintenance otherwise -- no makeup or hair products in my travel bag!)


3. PACKING - WHAT I BROUGHT:

NOW, I have as few clothes as I thought I could cope with, plus a small but reasonably well-stocked first aid kit, hiking boots, Tevas and a pair of flip-flops. Oh, and of course a couple of novels and some journals, plus the netbook I am currently typing away on. All packed in a high-tech, extremely well-designed backpack that cost me something like $300 and is a marvel of ergonomics.

THEN: for some reason which I now don't understand, I packed a green silk robe, white denim shorts, red Converse sneakers and nothing resembling anything so practical as a first aid kit. I think I even bought a pair of high-heeled sandals in the south of France (which fell apart about two weeks later). Actually, I loved those red Converse sneakers, and I'd bring them again if I still had them. But the rest was a bit silly. All packed in a canvas backpack from an Army surplus store (cost about $15), which was extremely uncomfortable when fully loaded (canvas straps cut into my shoulders).


4. STAYING IN TOUCH:

THEN: collect calls home every week or so to let Mom and Dad know we were still alive. Postcards every so often, and handwritten letters to a couple of friends and my then-boyfriend. No internet or Skype anywhere. Anyone beyond a chosen few who wanted to hear about the trip had to wait till I got home again.

NOW: mostly don't even have to go to an internet cafe, even though they're everywhere (even in tiny towns), as I have a netbook and usually have access to free Wi-Fi where I'm staying. I have a blog which you, dear reader, can access whenever you want to see what I'm up to. So much easier! How did I cope before the electronic age? How is it that I was alive, and an adult at that, before the internet took over the world?

And while I am not one of them, many backpackers now carry cell phones, iPhones, Blackberries, or other electronic devices that mean they are never actually out of touch for a minute. Plus iPods to block out any chance of hearing any sound on the bus or in a dorm room. I think I remember one person in 1994 who travelled with a Sony Walkman*, but that was about it.

*NOTE: for anyone under the age of 30: feel free to email me and I'll explain what a 'Walkman' is.


5. PLANE TICKETS:

THEN: paper copy (remember those red carbons? I miss them actually) of plane ticket home, carried around anxiously in my money belt since if I lost it, I'd have to buy an entirely new ticket. No way to change it without expensive international call and very stiff surcharge.

NOW: don't think I even bothered to print a copy of my e-ticket. I just showed up at the airport, showed them my passport and they knew the rest. The details are stored somewhere in my email so I know where and when to show up to fly home eventually. If I want to change it, I can do it online.


6. HOSTELS: the basic concept hasn't changed, although they've added a few more amenities like Wi-Fi. But how you organize where to stay has changed.

THEN: wander from hostel to hostel when you arrive somewhere, until you find a place with a bed. Or else take a guess at which one might be good and deal with frustrating and often non-functioning international phone systems to try to make a reservation ahead of time, which may or may not be waiting for you when you eventually arrive. If not, you can't actually prove you ever made it, and if there are no beds left, that's just your tough luck.

NOW: book online if you like. Read lots of reviews ahead of time, look at pictures of the hostels and maps of the areas, check out what's nearby, print out directions from the train or bus station, pay a deposit ... and when you get there, they already know your name and where you came from, and have a bed waiting for you.


7. MONEY: probably the biggest and best change!

THEN: carried travellers' cheques around in money belt for months, so had to keep track of numbers as they were cashed so I knew which were left in case they were stolen and had to be replaced. Bank card didn't work anywhere outside Canada, so when I ran out of travellers' cheques I took a cash advance from my mastercard (which Mom paid off for me at home so I didn't get charged interest). No way of checking bank account or credit card balances so had to just hope all was in order till I got home.

NOW: travellers' cheques didn't even occur to me before I left. I left home with a couple of hundred dollars in U.S. cash, three credit cards and two bank cards. I take out local cash as/when I need it from regular ATMs, even in the middle of nowhere. Can transfer money and pay bills online so will never be charged interest on credit card.


8. TRAVELLING COMPANIONS:

THEN: travelled with my sister Julie. We are quite alike in many ways so probably drove each other crazy at times. In other ways, we are not that alike at all: she is much more of a planner and a list-maker, for example, while I like to show up spontaneously somewhere and assume everything will work out. Come to think of it, I probably DID drive her nuts. I think she may have ended up doing most of the organizing, but cannot recall.

NOW: Me. Just me. And whatever random people I meet along the way. This is both good and bad: good, because I get to indulge myself entirely and go wherever the spirit takes me without having to consult another living soul; and bad, because it is ALWAYS me to has to buy the bus tickets, book the hostel, buy the food and cook dinner, make the decisions, and so on. Just the price you pay for independence, I suppose.


9. HOW I DRESS:

THEN: this also now seems silly, but at the time I liked to run around wearing a short little white cropped top when it was very hot. Probably with the totally impractical little white denim shorts. Then I wondered why Italian men were so attentive. (I used to have a midriff worth showing off in crop tops ... am working on getting that back again, it just seems to be a little harder now that I am, er, slightly more than 25.)

NOW: one of the backpacker girls in the last hostel described her dressing style as 'masculine christian missionary'. Mine might be described as the same, mostly; it is considerably more modest, anyway, than little white crop tops! I do have one halter-style tank top, if I ever feel like showing a little cleavage. And I know better now than to bring either white or denim along; white becomes grey after a week and never gets clean again, and denim takes days to dry.


10. RELATIONSHIPS:

THEN: had English boyfriend with whom I was madly in love, who was supposed to be waiting for me in London. (See also #11.) Accordingly, not allowed (according to my own rules) to pick up interesting foreigners of the backpacker sort or otherwise.

NOW: no romantic attachments of any kind. Many lovely men in my life, but mostly gay (they do make the best boyfriends, I have to say, aside from the obvious drawback). Completely free to interact with any attractive Kiwi lads or smouldering Argentinos with whom I may be so inclined. Or anyone else, for that matter.


11. RETURNING HOME:

THEN: No job, no apartment, no life plan. Think I spent 4 months or so on Mom and Dad's couch trying to decide whether or not to go back to England; had just broken up with then-boyfriend (he did some things while I was away that displeased me immensely) and didn't want to get back together with him. (Did, inevitably, when I went back to England, but that is a whole other story.)

NOW: In theory, at least, am going back to a challenging, well-remunerated, and fairly senior job in the provincial government. (Whether or not I will actually go back is a matter of some debate.) Have apartment (currently inhabited by sister) furnished with real furniture (not entirely from IKEA or hand-me-downs) and other grown-up stuff.


Okay, I thought I had 10 things, but it appears that I had more to say! It would be very interesting, actually, to go back now and do the same European trip, just to see how different it all was, and what things were still the same. I won't, of course, since there are too many other places I've never been, but I hope all those naive little 25-year-olds who head out this summer on the European bacpacker trail enjoy themselves as much as I did!**

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!

Heaven or hell? Would I love this trip ... or hate every minute?

Looking for your thoughts, all you intrepid travellers out there ... would love to hear your comments, as I'm trying to make up my mind about some things.

I am stuffed to the gills from too much Easter dinner and am online researching some options for second-half-of-the-year trips (yes, thinking ahead for a change). As you may already know, I have long been a wanna-be hippie (I'm sorry I was born twenty-odd years too late) and have been reading about travels on the old "hippie trail" from Istanbul to Kathmandu or Goa through Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Obviously, Afghanistan is out of the question at the moment. But I'm very interested in doing as much of the rest as I can. But here's the problem ... I really don't want to attempt it as completely independent travel. So I've been looking into options for tours in that part of the world.

There's some that will take me from Point A (Istanbul) to Point B (Kathmandu) but don't really follow the classic hippie trail. Going a more northerly route along the old Silk Road -- Tashkent, Samarkand, Ashgabat -- would be equally fascinating, but it's not actually what I'm trying to do. I would love to see all the other 'Stans one day, but that's another trip, I think, and not what I'm after at the moment.

There's a couple of companies that offer long-haul overland trips that include the hippie trail route, more or less, but include a lot more than that too -- London, UK overland to Sydney, Australia, for example, for anywhere from 4 to 8 months. Again, probably a very cool trip in its own right, but I don't want to be locked into someone else's itinerary for that length of time (and God forbid if there were people on the trip that I couldn't stand, I'd be stuck with them!).

There's one company, though, with a trip that might work. It's called OzBus, and they have a month-and-a-half trip from London to Kathmandu. Timing's not exactly perfect, but they have one leaving in early September that would get me to Nepal by mid-October. Website is here: http://www.oz-bus.com/london-kathmandu-sydney/london-kathmandu.aspx. They have a full London-to-Sydney option, too, but I'd rather have the time in SE Asia on my own to wander at will.

Worried, though, that not even starting SE Asia till mid-October would leave it very late to fit in all the things I want to do by the end of the year -- including western Oz, possibly NZ and a South Pacific island (have not yet decided which one). Unless I can convince my boss to let me come back another couple of months later, I might end up having to skip stuff or just whizzing through and not staying anywhere long. And the actual London-to-Kathmandu trip would be moving pretty fast, to cover that distance in 46 days.

But I have other ideas of how I could spend the summer -- trekking the Arctic (hey, why not hit both polar regions in one year?), say, or meandering around Newfoundland, Scotland and northern Ireland in search of my roots. Or, hey, a month in Africa somewhere (also like the idea of visiting all 7 continents in one year). So later timing (starting the trek to Kathmandu in September) might actually help. And realistically, unless I'm proposing to take next year off work, too, I can't meander along the Hippie Trail at a pace much slower than OzBus would move, and still get back home by the end of December.

Then there's the drunken-Aussie factor; oh, hush, I'm not saying all Australians are drunks, but what if the bus ended up being full of 21-year-old Aussies who just wanted to get loaded every night and didn't give a fig for the sights along the way? A month and a half of being the only one sober enough to get up in the morning might feel like a very, very long time.

But then, the original travellers on the Hippie Trail in the 60's and 70's probably did their fair share of substance-abusing (although drugs of choice were probably those other than alcohol), so it might actually be more authentic that way.

So anyway ... what do you think? Good idea or bad?

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.