Bariloche, Che, Che, Che…

I thought that I hit the ground running in Thailand, but this has been an altogether different story! After 36 hours of travel to arrive here, I got in at about 10:30 Sunday night – which accounting for the jet lag, was actually Monday night for me, but who’s counting? Aerolinas Argentinas is the culprit for my extraneous travel time, they just seem to cancel or delay at a moments notice. Today was the first time I found myself alone and able to process my thoughts – certainly a welcome opportunity.

It’s a fairly odd experience to go from the tropics during the rainy season to the Southern hemisphere’s winter within a few days of each other. I can’t say it is Chicago February cold here, but there is certainly a deep chill in the air. The colors of summer have disappeared from my sight, instead replaced by the grays and browns of winter. Luckily there is the bluest lake I have ever seen set in front of an amazing range of snow capped peaks. There has not been much snow to date, in fact more rain than anything else, but today a pretty decent snowstorm rolled in and dropped a fresh blanket. Good things to come for sure!

The city of Bariloche is set against the lake with the mountains forming the other half of the border. Tons of Brazilians and Argentines are here on their winter/spring (?) break, so its fairly crowded most of the day. Three or four main streets form the center and there are myriad places to eat and drink as well as buy chocolate. It’s a cool town that feels like it would be even more inviting in the summer when it’s less crowded and the fishing season is open.

My host has been great. She is in her 50’s and has two daughters that live elsewhere so she takes in students from the two main Spanish schools in town for company. She is really sweet and a pretty good cook too. I’ve got a separate room and there are two girls from Holland that are here now as well. It’s a nice quiet break from all the rush outside, I’m glad I made this choice to do a home-stay as opposed to a big dorm type stay.

Class is cool and I feel like I am improving my Spanish fairly well, even after just a few days. We meet from 9 until 1 and then it has been off to the pub until dinner the past few days. Can’t keep that up, and I was feeling like I hadn’t done enough since being here, so I escaped the crowd today and went with a few people to Cerro Leones (Lion Mountain).

Cerro Leones is a really old volcano situated 8 or 9 kilometers outside of Bariloche and the views from the trail are the best I have experienced to date. A small group of us were led around by Guillermo, who was constantly called “che” by his amigos, in and out of small caverns and caves. The last cave involved us crawling through a very small passageway, too small for me and my pack at the same time and for some of the bigger people along with us. The passage led to much bigger opening with an amazingly clear lake down below.

So far that has been the best activity of this trip, but the good news is that more snow is in the forecast and that has got me extremely excited for things to come. There have been lots of reports of rocks and ice all over the mountain, so with a few more days of snow things should be just right. I really like this picture from the mouth of one of the caves, looking out into Lake Nahuel Huapi:
A quick note about the Argentinian lifestyle: it is ridiculous. Rarely would I say that some culture is wrong or crazy with some aspect of how they live, but this is just too hard for me to grasp, or maybe I am jealous of their ability to accomplish this particular element. No one is in the bars until 4 or sometimes 5 in the morning. Let me rephrase that in case it does not seem incredulous enough: people don’t even leave their homes to go out with everyone else until 4 or 5 in the morning, and they are out until 8 or even 9 am and then they go to work! Why does everyone wait so long? I have not been able to make it happen yet; I am going to need a running start for this one.

Ok, chow para ahora! (This is what I woke to this morning, tough to beat)