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Published: August 21st 2007
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Bariloche
The famous Catedral of Bariloche My good friend Will Selde arrived on schedule Wednesday, July 25th and was greeted by yours truly, my driver, which my cousin so graciously let us borrow, and lots of traffic. We did a lot of walking and I showed him as many sites as we could walk to given the winter daylight. We quickly came up with a term that I will be using throughout these “Selde Days” which we derived from the term “Rat F**k” which we use to describe a unorganized mess of people, things, and any element working to make things more or less a pain in the ass. Rough gringo translation we came up with “Raton Sexo”, as we walked the crazy busy streets of Bs.As. Wednesday night we went out with some friends from the hostel and Will got a taste of a night out in Bs. As. We went to one bar and to a large club called “The Museum” which is a staple here in Bs. As. on Wednesdays. Will was not impressed by the fact that the club was so good you could hardly move through the “Raton Sexo” of people, but I got my dance on and some how made money.
Catedral
Will checking things out on the hill. This was due to the fact that one bartender did not know how to count change, and as I left the bar with two beers in hand I realized when I put my money away that I had given her a 100 and she gave me 104 in change. Not a bad way to start the evening in the club, as there was no way I was going to fight through the Raton to return the excess money to the bar. We ended our night with drunken walking the streets in a large group to the hostel and eating and drinking what ever we had left at the hostel, while probably making more noise than is allowable after hours.
Day two was started by recovering from having Selde around and a trip to get our bus tickets along with translating a little, so Will could look at some tack and bullwhips for presents. In the evening we ate at the long awaited Disnivel, which was excellent. A fat steak and some wine and everyone was in great spirits. Also some interesting conversation with our new friend, Eric, who was a Mormon missionary in Paraguay for two years and a
Catedral
Bros and the Andes lot more open to talk about the LDS church than most. Capped off the evening with pool in the roof bar and new encounters with Brazilians and locals, the girls here are going to be my end, but I love them.
Friday we spent on a bus, woohoo, 19 hours from Bs. As. to Bariloche is not great fun, but well worth it. Saturday we arrive in the morning, met the “Raton Sexo” of the Bariloche bus terminal head on, along with the bus into town. The driver of this bus I swear was trying to make me feel stupid about my Spanish when I had to repeat Salta for him as I am pretty sure no matter how bad my accent is he can understand Salta Street (calle en espanol). The afternoon we spent tracking down rental gear. The gear that you rent in South America is pretty sub-par, but it’s not what you have, it’s how you ride it. I ended up with a Rossingnol 161, which is a long boy, but I have been throwing it around well. I just wish the back edge was sharper and that the bindings and boots where not both somewhat
Catedral
Just the Andes broken. They work, but the boot is missing an eyelet for the shoelace and the right binding is hard to release as half of the toe release mechanism is broken, so it makes things interesting. The nice thing is that our hostel has free dinner, it may not always be great, or enough, but it is included.
Sunday was our first day on the hill. We didn’t get on the gondola until about noon, but that was ok because the hill was a little icy so it had softened up a little by the time we got up top. Catedral is the name of the resort, and everywhere the view is amazing. The Andes are truly a different type of mountain as the trees, bushes; the terrain is exotic enough to make you feel like you have sufficiently left the Rockies. That and everything is in Spanish, but the view is breathtaking all over the mountain and I will let the pictures explain the rest. The other thing is that our passes are meant to scan in little booths that are before every lift, so you have to manually insert your pass before you get on every lift (European
Catedral
The Gondola system). This sufficiently bottle necks the lines, which is annoying and adds to the fact that the lines are a free for all with very little order. Also there is a lift with a moving track like a horizontal escalator as you get on the chair, which is a “Raton Sexo” in itself. But the hill is nice, with all the wide open bowls you could want, some steep, a few trees, a little terrain park, and lots of mountain shanties for food and pit stops. I can’t forget the buses to get to the mountain, which is another experience. They cram these buses to the brim, big city buses, and the drivers I swear get all of there daily entertainment by driving just a little loco, for everyone standing crammed in the buses. I enjoy it, it’s an experience, Will doesn’t complain, too much anyway. But we always have a good laugh and a good beer at our new favorite spot, a place called the Map Room, which offers Warstiener on draft for 3 pesos during happy hour and some excellent pizza, best I have had so far. We also go to the super every night and stock up
Catedral
Me and the Bassanova Flag!! on water, food for the hill, and whatever fits our needs. These have been daily occurrences until today, as today is our off day for Internet, ski and board tuning, and a little relaxation.
Monday we had about 3-5 inches of fresh snow, depending how high you where on the mountain, as it rained in town as we didn’t see snow until on the hill. This was great and we really did some great steep runs on the Nubes (clouds) lift, and a lot of tree runs for me on del Bosque (forest) lift. As always a good-sized line for buses and all of that, but a great day on the hill. Tuesday we also tore up Nubes with the day old snow and actually got up earlier so we could head down before it got icy, which was nice as we found a good bump run, for this mountain, although we had to get around a little dirt to make it to said run. The rest of the time is routine bullshitting, beers, dinner, talking to other travelers, read, and relax something that has been great for me. Today we went to the Patagonia Museum, which was interesting
Patagonia Musuem
Albetros is a big bird, Will can attest. learning about the indigenous people of Argentina and how they also were pretty much wiped out by the white man.
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