fuimos a Patagonia este fin de semana

Sorry for the long delay in writing. Things got busier just before I left for Patagonia for the weekend. Rather than write about academic stuff, which I will soon, I’ll instead talk about and show pictures from Bariloche, a small touristy city in the foothills of the Andes in the Río Negra province.

SATURDAY

AIGHT so I met up with my friend Alana on Saturday morning on Santa Fe. While I was waiting for her to pack up, I saw so many Orthodox Jews going to services. I never go to services, don’t have any particularly strong religious inclinations, and usually feel a fair amount of chagrin about Hassidim. However, the sight of brown members of la colectividad just made my morning. (More on this later, I think…) It then took us about half the time we budgeted to get to Aeroparque Jorge Newberry so we spent over an hour people watching. Some of the people we happened to see when we were bumming around were none other than the LANUS FUTBOL TEAM, the dudes that upset Boca last year for a remarkable win in the Apertura and then upset Boca again last Sunday, wandering around in their team sweats. (Of course, I didn’t realize this until we had been in Bariloche for a few days. I thought they were some junior level team or something.) That, in retrospect, was pretty awesome.

The flight was too short to nap really but they did serve bang-ass snacks. We then took a bus tour of the Circuito Chico, the shorter version of the path around Lake Nahuel Haupi, overlooking peninsula Llau Llau (pr chau-chau), on this awesome bus. Check out that little dude’s hat!

From Bariloche

We drove to an aerosilla (air chair aka chairlift) for some wonderful early views.

 

From Bariloche

Then we went to San Carlos de Bariloche, the huge tourist town in Argentina’s Patagonia. There I bought Silivia a b-day choco gift at Mumushka, which is just as good as the Rupprechts suggested it would be. YUMM.

From Bariloche

After Bariloche, our journey continued. We had a guide who explained things but she didn’t have a microphone so it was either look at her to try to hear better or stare at the gorgeous views outside. Take your guess which I chose. We stopped at some spots with good views and did a short hike for a beautiful view of Llau Llau. Here is one more of the beautiful vistas:

From Bariloche

It made me very happy to see how pretty everything was. 

From Bariloche

By the time we got back it was pretty late and we were exhausted. Dinner was late, then an earlyish ending hangout sesh and dinner in the city center. High points included death by narrow roads and insane bus driving (INSANE), the hilarious crew of Israeli backpackers, the extremely drunk Argentines who directed unpleasant piropos at us while we waited for the bus that didn’t come, then the nice taxi driver who made A$77 driving the five of us all the way back to Llau Llau where we were staying. Ask me sometime and I’ll tell you how he distinguishes good chocolate from bad chocolate or about how he thinks Obama is a socialist.

 

SUNDAY

The weather in Patagonia is pretty crazy and it was supposed to be cold and rainy so rather than do a boat excursion, a hike, or go rafting, Anna and I decided that we would go back to downtown Bariloche to hang. We met up with other folks and headed down together. We, of course, went back to Mamushka and followed that visit with a taste-test tour of the many touristy chocolaterias. Excellent decision.

The saga of DIEZ:

What followed was a hilarious adventure that will forever be known as DIEZ, Spanish for the number 10. The plan was to head to the Swiss Colony where there is a fería (flea market, I guess?), supposedly much cuteness, and where we were meeting with our guide for a short night hike (to miss the rain) that evening. We took the crazily driven by the same driver 20 bus out of the city to the 18^th KM mark. Our bus driver told us something in poor English about 5/10 and it wasn’t entirely apparent if he meant the 10 bus would come in 5-10 minutes or at 5:10 so we waited. And we waited. A pretty stray dog came to hang out and we waited with him, who we decided to call Diez after the absent bus, even more. Our 20 driver “friend” passed us in one direction, and then stopped when passing us in the other. Trying to explain but then just taking pity on us / thinking we were retarded, he wrote 17:20 on Christine’s hand so as to indicate when this nonexistent bus would arrive. Then we another forty minutes.

We waited in this totally random place on the side of the narrow road for over an hour and fifteen or. Then, around 5:10, it came. But the driver, despite seeing us waving for him to stop and actually making “no thanks” motions with his hands, passed us by. YEAH. I KNOW. We were a cross between furious and hysterically laughing, given how ridiculous the whole situation had been. We decided to walk up a bit and see if we could ask anyone why this bus decided not to stop for us. A very kind girl at a nearby restaurant told us that the next bus would not be coming for another two and a half hours, too late for us to make it to the Swiss Colony to meet up with our group for the night. She helped us call a remís (group taxi) and suggested, since it was close, that we wait outside for it. After literally two minutes, A NUMBER TEN CAME followed by none other than our taxi. This time the bus stopped for us but we had to take our taxi. (I still can’t really believe this.) We were basically splitting at the seams from laughter.

I want to complain about this but actually the trials and tribulations with the buses made the trip to Bariloche so great. BsAs is a city, a pretty westernized and modern city with full services and a European flavor. I had not felt more truly in Argentina than I did while my Linea 20 bus drove impossibly quickly down a rainy narrow cliff-side road in the dark. Definitely the most memorable part of our trip to Patagonia.

/ story of diez

At Colonia Suisa, all we wanted to do was sit inside. It was super busy because there had just been a big two-day trekking race that had commenced and terminated at Colonia Suisa. We had coffees and visited the fería. The most memorable moment was when I turned to a friend to ask if she was okay – I don’t remember what prompted the question – and, in response to my question, a random dude apparently replied quite loudly “Estoy bien.” Oh Argentine men… We then waited for our late guide, about whom many of us had our doubts she was going to take our prepaid money and run. But she came and it was awesome!

We took 4x4s up a mountain which was simultaneously amazing and unbelievably scary, as we definitely very easily (and at certain moments very nearly) drove off the side of the mountain. We stopped about 2/3 of the way up the mountain, then received a nature lesson about birds, tectonic plates and the formation of the Andes, etc. in the form of a hike up to the refugio (summit house?). The sun was setting as we walked up and, as is the theme, the views were just amazing. At the refugio we ate pizza and laughed SO MUCH before one of the guides played and sang Argentine folkloriko songs before passing his guitar to some of the IFSA students. It became a night of folklorico and Elliot Smith, then, with some gringo dancing in between. Then we went outside and I saw more stars than I think I’ve ever seen. Truly amazing.

 

MONDAY

Monday almost the entire IFSA group took a six hour hike up to the refugio at Cerro Lopez. The refugio, oddly enough, was pink and it was sooo incredibly beautiful. It was the best view of the weekend of the snow-covered Andes in the distance. Oh man. The weather in Patagonia is notoriously odd and yesterday was a perfect example: it was really chilly. Afterwards we went back to Bariloche and got ice cream at what was supposedly the best heladería in Argentina. Hopefully my eating habits this weekend were offset by all of the hiking….

 

 

TODAY

Today I had my first class which meets at 8 AM in Belgrano. I left my house around 7:05 and was still late, grrr. I don’t know if I am going to be able to stick with this for a whole semester, especially knowing that I have other options. Despite the earliness and that Patagonia was really beautiful, I’m pretty happy to be back in the city. Walking from Di Tella (UTDT) to the subte this morning, I walked through some of Belgrano’s Chinatown, and my subte ride was filled with more beautiful Argentine commuting men. 

My full photo album from Bariloche is linked to this photo below!

Bariloche