¿Compensation?

---

So we´ve left Bariloche for a weekend trip to El, Bolson - just a couple of hours south. Still amazed at how wonderful the busses are here- the ride here is pleasant with continued amazing mountain views.

Unfortunately it´s Easter weekend meaning everyone and their dog is coming to El Bolson and so hostels are all booked up. Luckily we had booked a couple of dorm beds at the local youth hostel but decide to walk around and try and check for any last minute openings before settling down to hosteldom. An hour and 6 "no rooms" later we resign to our place at the youth hostel.

El Bolson we were told was full of "pot smokin hippies." I don´t know about that but you can see why it´s charming. It´s got a laid back feeling and seems to retain it´s charm despite all the swarming tourists. It´s a perfect blue sky day and after lunch we compasquat on a shady spot in the grass. All around there is the market - people selling homemade jams, jewellery, stationary, musical instruments, alpaca sweaters, caps and gloves, and offcourse empañadas.

We lunch at a too pricey place with so-so food for me, Nathan likes his jamon y queso (ham and cheese) ravioli and then decide to make a grocery run to get some provisions for the next few days. We ´ve been having trouble finding the seasonings we are looking for and then Nathan stumbles on something great - boullion cubes, both veg and beef!! One cube goes a loong way and with some thin spaghetti we are all set for some homemade ramen.

Random thoughts: There are soo many dogs here. Mostly they seem well fed and cared for. Some even have collars but all are unleashed and seem to wander around town looking at the wares for sale like the rest of us. Sometimes you see 3,4,or 5 of them napping around one person. And in Bariloche we saw a whole family of German Shephards (literally, a mom, dad and 3 little ones!) walking down the sidewalk. They´d stop to sniff a bush here, lift a leg there, sometimes peek into a store and then move on. I´ve never seen anything like it. As a dog lover you can imagine how happy I was.

On another wierd note - we were sitting on a bench enjoying the free wifi from a nearby restaurant when a pair of Argentinian ladies approached us with their camera. I thought they wanted us to take a pic of them but turns out they just wanted us to load it with film. Ok, not too strange - maybe it´s a new camera, i thought. But then they started conversing (I am using this term in the loosest of terms, it was more like sign language, with a little pantomiming and Spanglish thrown in) with us. When they heard I was Indian, they got really excited and one sat down next to me to take a pic with us. They were soo giggly and thanked us several times. Two minutes later they came back and the other wanted a pic with me! Now it was getting strange. After the pic they asked if I wanted any compensation. We thought we´d misunderstood and asked them to clarify but they just kept repeating "¿compensation?" We couldn´t think of what to say except no but still are not sure what was going on there.

So we haven´t given up our movie habit and despite the crappiness of the youth hostel, it did have the plus of having a movie rental right across the street. Nathan agrees to a "chick flick" (I suspect the mountain air has something to do with this) - but we both end up liking it.

The highlight of day 2: WAFFLES!! We arrived at the Saturday market right after lunch so you´d think we wouldn´t want to eat anything else but right away I saw the waffle stand surrounded by more than a dozen people. I figured it must be worth the wait and got in line. There was a system in place, you had to get in one line to get a number and then wait till the number was called to get your order done. We decided to get one con queso and one dulce (sweet). Nathan liked his with cheese but mine was deliciouso - with strawberries, whipping cream and CHOCOLATE!!!! Oh, it was sooo good, my mouth is watering just typing this. It´s kinda scary to admit this, but as good as that waffle was it still didn´t quite meet the mark of the waffles at the St. Francis hospital cafeteria (extrabutter, strawberries and whipped cream- artery clogging goodness).

So that´s it for El Bolson - back to Bariloche in the am.

---