Sun 28/02/2010 18:21
Sooooooo, this is going to be a long one. Its been a long time and quite a lot has occurred.
So, Jen and Daisy came. It was just amazing, I nearly burst into tears when I saw them. Can´t believe a year has passed since I saw them and Daisy has changed so much! She is just gorgeous and so much fun to be with and so patient with Jen and me when we launch into our gossiping sessions.
Buenos Aires was hot hot hot and we sweated buckets in between having the most fun ever. Its such a beautiful city and we spent our days walking (a little bit), going to hairy swimming pools, eating steak, trying to eat ice creams that were melting at record speed and collapsing in the shade of the Banyan tree ....sounds so romantic, but that is what we did. We saw Tango in La Boca, an Andy Warhol exhibition (with Marilyn Monroe - a real treat), white tigers in a gorgeous animal park (for Daisy´s birthday) oh and meerkats (her favourite) and the time just flew by.
It seems my inability to add up and my ability to dilly dally and faff around have reached phenomenal levels, much to Jen and Daisy´s amusement. Although I feel this is rightfully tempered by the fact I can walk very fast in the hottest and sweatiest temperatures (which, quite frankly, is all that is required when travelling). Sadly my sense of direction seems to have plummeted too and Daisy caught onto the fact that when i said "its only one more block away" I didnt really know what I was talking about ;).
So, what with Jen getting locked out of the flat in the middle of the night, a taxi driver trying to tell me it was 10 dollars, not 10 pesos for our 2 min taxi ride and a lot of sweating, laughing and eating, the 6 days vanished.
When they left, i was utterly devastated. I honestly felt bereft and didnt know what to do with myself. 6 days quite simply is not long enough. I saw them off at the airport and, on the long journey on a local bus back to the centre, got a serious grip and decided I had to plan my next couple of weeks before I flew back to Lima. I was worried that goign to Patagonia was too expensive, but, as Jen pointed out, being at this end of the world is a once in a life time scenario and you have to make the most of it. (I think part of it was fear of travelling alone). Anyway, I got a serious grip, found a cool hostel (literally, with aircon) and they were thee most helpful ever and (after much stressing about how expensive it was or wasnt (faffing, dilly dallying)...(bearing in mind I have been living in Soles, not Pounds, so everything in Argentina seemed pricey) I booked a flight into Bariloche and a flight out of Ushuaia.
Arrived in Bariloche (a bit nervous, worried I wouldn´t meet anyone, all alone etc etc). Got to the hostel a girl had recommened to me and the place was just amazing. Views over lakes like you have never seen and the town made up of sort of log cabins....people say its very much like Switzerland and I reckon it totally is. Walked into my dorm and met Nathan....ah lovely Nathan. He is just great. Got chatting, and we just got on really really well. Turned out he lived up the road from me. Anyway, so it all began. Went out for dinner that night for steak and red wine. Had the best steak ever, real melt in the mouth... Whilst we were enjoying i pointed out that our waiter was quite fit ;). Nathan was in full agreement and so we carried on our meal. Then, having had a few wines, I went off to the loo. On the way back from the loo the aforementioned waiter appeared and pulled me into the boys toilets (!). Well, when does that ever happen?! He was trying his best to pash me (my new favourite Kiwi word), but I was having none of it, but loosely agreed to go dancing with him when his shift ended.
Went back to the table and relayed the story to Nathan who found it hilarous, and after a lot more dilly dallying we decided I should go dancing. Off i went, only to find myself at the bloody beach with this waiter who clearly had NO dancing (or some kind of Argentinian dancing that I know nothing about) in mind. So (bearing in mind the New Years Resolution) I swiftly rejected his charms (and I mean charms in the loosest sense of the word) and went back to the hostel.... only to find one of the boys from my dorm sitting there looking bored and we decided to go off for a beer. Well, a few beers later, where did I find myself? Only back at the bloody beach, although this time there had been no promise of dancing. Well after much manhandling, I declared my New Years res once again (this time out loud) and went back to the hostel. I would like here to point out that these boys were under 30. I am now unsure if I am just a lucky 37 year old or if I have EASY written all over my face. Either way, I woke up in the morning very proud of myself for remaining intact...something a former Jo Reynolds would never have done ;).
Nathan and I went horseriding that day, gorgeous horses, and I sort of managed a trot and maybe a gallop, although I am hoping to this day that the poor horse still has his spine intact because I did an awful lot of bouncing. Was a lovely day though and had a huge parilla (Argentinian BBQ) with more meat and wine.
Then went white water rafting, which I just love and will be doign again for sure....and went walking up mountains to see the 7 lakes, had cheese and salami picnics, thought we´d broken the record by getting up a mountain in half the time of everyone else (including the hardcore hikers), only to find out when we got back down that we had only gone halfway up ;), and spent the rest of our time in the AMAZING choc/ice cream shops of Bariloche which are to die for.
Nathan was planning to leave and I was going to stay, but we got on so well I decided to go with him and we set off on our 30 hour bus journey to El Calafate. incredibly not a bad journey cos we were quite hungover and frankly a bus journey is the best hangover cure ever....reason being: you are lying around feeling a bit worse for wear, BUT you are actually doing something by going somewhere, therefore not wasting any time....
Plus Nathan had an itouch (they are fab) and we watched a film and south park and met a lovely Kiwi couple, Amy and Aiden, who kept us entertained.
Arrived El Calafate to find that Nathan didnt have a bed in the hosteI was in, so he went off to find another hostel and I managed to get myself in a right situation with a Dutch hypochondriac.
Was just checking in and this girl (who i recognised from the bus) was crying in reception. I asked if she was ok and she said she had sore boobs (no word of a lie). She said they were painful and she hadnt been sleeping and she was worried she had cancer. So i pointed out to her that I was no doctor but breast cancer wasnt painful. She looked so upset that I said to her if she wanted I would go to the hostpital with her. BIG MISTAKE. On the way it turns out she had already been to see two docs in Arg and had a mammogram and both docs had siad it was inflamation nothing more. We went in to see the doc, she whipped her top off and insisted he check out her boobs. She wasnt happy with how he did it so I had to ask him to do it again (her spanish wasnt great), this time all over because he had only examined her on the sides. He said nothing was wrong, it was benign inflammation. She didnt believe him and said was it cancer. He said no, and so we had a small stand off when he then prescribed her some anti inflammatory gel and sent us for an x ray. OUtside the x ray she asked if i thought he may have made her cancer worse because he prodded her very hard in the boobs when examining her....i said i doubted it. Then she was worried that having an x ray here was dangerous, I said probably not, but that we could leave and go back to the hostel if she didnt want it done. And so it went on. she had the x ray, which of course was clear, and left the hospital. By this time i wanted to kill her. She still didnt believe the doc and i said to her that if she felt that bad she sould simply get a flight and go home. She was driving herself mad and that she needed to get a serious grip cos what is the point in coming all this way and stressing like this. The girl was a bloody psychologist.....god help her patients. Anyway she insisted on buying me lunch, i really wanted to get away and find nathan and scream but i couldnt, so we went for lunch and to cut an even longer story short, she paid 20 pesos of my 60 pesos lunch....so much for charity. I avoided her for the rest of my stay.
So Nathan and I went off to the Perito Merino glacier, the world´s second only advancing glacier, which is ENORMOUS, we walked on it with crampons and drank its crystal clear water and then had a whisky and a chocolate at the end, was magical.
That night I met a HUGE south African who lived in Angola, who was very sweet and we chatted until 3am, I seem to remember he was a bit boring, but our conversation is hazy and I may well have scared him off cos when we bumped into him again he didnt seem quite as interested ;). Oh the joys of Argentinian red wine....
And then we headed to El Chalten.....Where we climbed up to see condors (saw two, or maybe the same one twice) and a turquoise lake and ate ice cream and the next day we
climbed up the Fitz Roy Massif and believe me, its MASSIVE and WINDY up there (I met a girl who had been blown over and broke her knee). Never have I experienced wind like it, with little hail stones blowing into your face just to add to it....how Scott of the Antarctic did it I will never know. Anyway, we made it up and down and managed to keep each other sane cos it was a LONG way and i was rapidly losing the will to live. And we spoilt ourselves in a microbrewery with beer and pizza for dinner (El Chalten is tiny, only 25 years old) and saw the HUGE south african who came over for a short (!) chat.....
Then Nathan and I went back to El Calafate and were preparing to go our separate ways when he declared that he thought he may have scabies and could I check his belly button.
and the rest will have to wait cos my fingers hurt from typing and I have a pedicure booked ;)
xxxx
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