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Published: February 20th 2008
Ch-ch-changes. Yes, folks, the time has come. We are changing our lifestyle. No longer are we dining nightly on filet mignons and bottles of wine. This point in our trip marks a major transition for us as we are moving much farther from "vacationers" toward the "true backpacker" side of the travel spectrum, i.e. staying in shared dorm rooms, cooking in the hostel kitchen. True backpackers eat lots of spaghetti. Lots.
This change began in
Bariloche, the largest city in Argentine's Lake District, which is in the northern part of Patagonia. Patagonia is beautiful but it is expensive, compared to the rest of Argentina. Eating out every night would take a substantial toll on our budget (also, the restaurant options down there aren't as varied as they are in BsAs, so we told ourselves we wouldn't be missing out on much). Plus, we had decided to be put some of our money toward Spanish lessons.
While our Spanish had improved greatly over the past few months, we had sort of hit a wall. So we decided to take advantage of the many Spanish schools in Bariloche and enroll in a week-long class. If we were going to stay somewhere
for a week, we figured Bariloche would be a pretty good place to be. Although the city itself is not as visually pleasing as the other towns in the lake district that we had seen so far (Chile's Pucon, Argentina's San Martin and Villa La Angostura), it is still surrounded by pretty mountains and is located on the massive (100km long) Lago Nahuel Huapi, next to the beautiful national park by the same name. It also just happens to be the chocolate capital of Argentina. Excellent (said in Mr. Burn's voice, tapping fingers together).
We found our school "Spanish in Bariloche" by typing in "spanish in bariloche" on google. Really, a brilliant idea on their part. And ours, as it turns out...they were awesome. First of all, because no one else was in our level (we called ourselves intermediate but were pleasantly surprised to be moved up to the advanced level by the end of our first lesson...it ain't braggin if it's true!), our "group-priced" classes ended up being private lessons with just the two of us and our amazing teacher, Adriana. Sweet and funny, we loved talking with her (in Spanish of course) about politics, race, music, sports,
cultural differences between the U.S. and Argentina, pretty much anything.
Another great thing about the school was that they put a roof over our heads. This is high season in Patagonia and pretty much every hostel in Bariloche was full. Our first night there we stayed in the last two available dorm beds in the hostel, in separate rooms. We thought we might have to sleep on the streets with all of the stray dogs (and, side note, Bariloche possibly has more stray dogs, particularly German Shepards, than anywhere else in the world) but our Spanish school rescued us by finding us a great living situation. We had our own room in a house that we shared with Angela, a 25 year old from Neuquen (northern Patagonia) who also taught Spanish at our school.
Angela is super cool, and besides getting to practice our Spanish daily talking about everything from politics to episodes of "Lost" and "Sexo en la Ciudad," she also took us to cool spots around Bariloche we would never have gone to, like a great trail to a hidden lake in Parque Nahuel Huapi and a cervezaria that serves delicious homebrewed beer. She looked out
for us so much that she even began jokingly referring to us as her "niños" (kids). She actually became concerned with how much spaghetti we were eating and forbade us to continue eating it and prepared us a delicious dinner herself. We also got treated to another homecooked meal one night by the
dueño (owner) of our house, Sr. Gomer Mendoza, a 6th-generation Barilochian (Barilochite?). We drank lots of wine and listened to him tell stories about growing up in Bariloche--all in Spanish, of course!
We ended up being so happy with both our class and our living situation that we decided to stay in Bariloche for an additional week. We actually got decent weather the second week, a welcome change from the freezing cold we experienced our first week, every day of which I wore 4 layers of clothing and one day on which it actually SNOWED. It does not snow in the city of Bariloche hardly ever, even during the winter when it snows in the surrounding mountains, but it is unheard of for it to snow during the summer, so that was pretty crazy. Even though we loved induldging in hot chocolate and other chocolate goodies
Nature is so pretty
View from out lodge in Bolsonduring the cold weather streak, the best part about the sun coming out was that it was appropriate to start eating ice cream again...and Angela introcuded us to the best ice cream we have ever had, in a town full of ice cream shops. Jauja (pronounced "how-ha") is GLORIOUS. Reason enough alone to travel to Argentina.
We enjoyed the lakes and nature trails of Bariloche, but it was the people we met that we would miss the most. We hoped we would retain the Spanish we learned. Fortunately, in our next destination,
El Bolson, one thing we would not have to miss was our beloved Jauja, as the factory itself was right there in town. Oh, lord have mercy.
Keeping with the communal spirit of hippie-filled El Bolson (a self-declared "non-nuclear zone"), and keeping with our ch-ch-changed lifestyle, we stayed in a 12 person dorm room--cheapest rates in town! Or, about 8 km out of town to be exact, but it was actually in a really beautiful wooden cabin right smack dab in the middle of NATURE, so we were pretty happy about it. At nights we cooked for ourselves (back to spaghetti) but on Saturday we treated
YUM
Best waffle ever ourselves (though "gorged" ourselves is probably more accurate) to the organically delicious goodies at the feria artesanal. Pretty much every city in Argentina has a market where hippies sell various goods but its always more or less the same shit, but
this feria had truly the most original items...and amazing food! Vegeterian milanesas, waffles with fruit and chocolate or salami and cheese (or both, in our case), fresh raspberries and homemade beer. Mmmm. We feasted while watching hippies do what hippies do, which includes but is not limited to juggling, unicycling, giving each other dreadlocks, not bathing, having cute little kids, playing reggae music, etc. It's funny, no matter where you go, hippies are all the same.
After our short but sweet weekend in El Bolson, we hopped on an easy 12 hour over-nighter to the Atlantic coast of Argentina, which put us in
Puerto Madryn at 7 AM. Good thing, because we discovered upon arrival that our tour to Penisula Valdes left at 7:30. Jeez. The wildlife at the peninsula is really the only reason people come to Puerto Madryn and these people know it, so they jack up the prices of the tours for more than they're
worth...you're really just paying them all those pesos for the transportation. But...it was pretty cool. Even though we arrived too late in the season to see any killer whales, we saw a plethora of sea lions, a few hundred penguins, and four or five elephant seals. I was bummed because we only got to see the female elephant seals and they are not as cool looking as the males (no funny trunks). Also, there is another place in the area where you can see 500,000 penguins and I mistakenly thought that's where we were going...I was really looking forward to walking around with all those penguins. But, what can you do. Its funny that the sea lions, which are not so foreign for someone who spent many a days in childhood watching the sea lions sunbathe at Pier 39, was actually our favorite part. There were just sooo many of them, and they are really funny to watch, the males all try to fight each other and have sex with the females and all the little baby seals are really cute. Our guide said if we were lucky we might get to see one of the females actually giving birth,
but I don't think we're actually that disappointed that we missed that.
And hey, we're getting better at this change stuff. We came up with an alternative to spaghetti and made a pretty mean stir-fry rice dish at our hostel in Puerto Madryn. Who knows what we'll cook up next.
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Kara
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Christ, PEN-GINS?!?! Sarah knows how much I effing love those little flippered rascals. Awesomeness. And double kudos for your advanced placement in Spanish - way to represent Americans as cultured, bilingual artisans. Questioning stereotypes and constructing cultural bridges? All in a day's work....