Let me introduce to you the one and only Bariloche Culturama

T-shirts in English are popular here among the teenage crowd. Two fashion sightings of the past few days:

"Rithm Machin!"

"Dancing Dat AND Nigth"

Now I'm going to recognize the smirk of Chines tourists who come to America and see our tattoos.

The other day I spent the afternoon reading and doing my homework at the beach. It was a day without wind, so the lake was mirror-clear. For six dollars I rented a kayak for a couple of hours, cruised along the rocky beach (I was supposed to stay in sight of the rental shack), and enjoyed looking out at the Andes on the not-so-distant opposite shore.

(Footnote: my computer's background has a constant weather tracker and it tells me that it is currently 37 and rainy in High Point.)

Yesterday I took a public bus (cheap and crowded like a third-world bus, everyone huddled in the aisle, with chest and butt awkwardly pressed against neighbors, except that everyone smelled really nice and was wearing hiking boots and carrying outdoorsy Swiss designer packs I have never heard of) to a bike rental shop 18 km outside of the city. I spent hours circling an arm of the giant Lake Nahuel Huapi - terrible uphills ("These are killing me!", my cycling companion from Buenos Aires kept saying) followed by equally terrifying downhills. But the views all around were the reward. I met other travelers along the way, and ended up finishing the day's route at a little restaurant nestled on a mountain, far off the main death-road, with my BA amigo and a couple of cool students from California.













A view from the bike at "panoramic point".

Point being, incredible mountains and fresh air adventure are available just a few km outside of my home here. This is one of the spheres of Bariloche.

The visible Bariloche has two main worlds: the fun-touristy and the way-too-touristy. Like any good vacation town, the poverty is hidden on the other side of the mountain - if the tourists see it at all, its probably from the safe distance of a stunning moutaintop view.

In the fun-touristy, I can easily rent a kayak and cruise the fjords for an afternoon, all for a steep 6 bucks. There are beaches, delicious panaderias, the best ice cream I've ever had made from berries I've never heard of, three guitar lessons a week in the styles of tango, folklore, and flamenco, and well-maintained mountain trails. I love all this stuff. I've had a great time and met some interesting travelers, and since it's summer in only this hemisphere, even the tourists speak Spanish.

And here comes the "but..." - a place made of a constant stream of tourists is a little bit polished.

The other day I found the exact middle point on the touristy scale, right there on the border betwen gentle diversion and nauseatingly vapid touristyness. I kept seeing posters all over town of a concert called "From the Andes to the Beetles" so of course, I caved in and went on a Tuesday night. The small theater was packed, mostly with folks from around Buenos Aires (it is half of the country's population). The stage was set up with guitars and churangos (Andean mandolins) and those pan-flutes made of different-sized reeds tied together. I don't know what I was expecting, but it surprised me that the musicians that took the stage were in their 60s, obviously the type of educated part-time musicians who are doctors and architects in their spare time. Most of the songs were beautiful, with McCartney melodies on the reed flute. But they even tried some psychedelic stuff, and this old lady who should've stuck with the churango tried to play what she called a "metal solo" on a distorted electric guitar during "I Am The Walrus". It was really terrible. I seriously had to close my eyes.







I tried to leave abruptly after the show but the rollicking applause from the Buenos Aryans brought the Beatles back on stage for, not one, but TWO identical renditions of the same "Hey Jude" and "Blackbird" they had already played. Like I said, they were beautiful the first time, but instead of introducing me to the Andean culture they made me practically run from the theater to find something reminding me that I was truly in South America, not some Spanish-speaking American city, maybe Miami.

I am not complaining about Bariloche, just observing. I have come to love it's charm, no matter how polished, though I do really wonder what it looks like in the off-season. I am a tourist too, I keep reminding myself.

After a couple of weeks, when I got the feeling that I was supposed to have experienced the city already, I just had to get good at venturing a little farther outside of the city, where the real Barilocheans live and play.

Quick example: this weekend I made my way to El Bolson, a Patagonian hippie hideaway famous around the country. To give you an idea of the culture of the place, there are drum circles, organic foods, a huge Saturday artisan fair with a dreadlock percentage of about 25%. I bought a lot of gifts. This is a place that declared itself a "non-nuclear zone" in the 60s, and since then the vibe of "amor y paz" has pretty much remained, albeit a more touristied version.

The first night there, after getting settled into a hostel, I walked into the town's central park to see a giant movie theater sized screen and projector set up. About 100 folks were just hanging around, watching a Bob Marley concert on the screen. Needless to say, I really liked the place.

I did a sweet day hike in the area that included a real life Indiana Jones swinging plank bridge. Even the official sign next to it seemed concerned, "No more than one person at a time or 300 pounds."


















We took the famous Route 40 through Patagonia, winding up and down, right along the Andean cordillera all the way down. It was worth it just for the drive.

Meat

Before I arrived, I had heard of the enourmous amount of beef consumed per capita in Argentina. This is very true. They also eat a lot of lamb. The best part of the meat eating is that it's usually grilled in huge quantities to be shared with friends and the whole family. Where we would have a pig-pickin', they have "asados".

In the last week I've been to two family asados. This picture shows Andres, one of Anna's sons, tending to the skewered lamb carcass at the first get-together. This is a great shot because it's got almost all the ingredients of distinctly-Argentine (or at least Patagonian) culture. On the table is a mate and thermos, along with the sheath to a facon, a traditional gaucho's knife. On the left is the lamb. The cute dog there is bagual (translation: savage), who is going to grow up to be some sort of gigantic pitt bull. Everyone here has a huge dog.
And if you look at Andres, you will see he is wearing alpargatas (traditional and very common shoes - yes, I have some), bombachas (traditional and still very common gaucho pants - yes, I bought some), and a boina (a kind of macho gaucho beret).

The second asado, on Saturday night, was a going away party for a cousin who is heading back to his University in the North of Argentina. I always love meeting all the cousins and uncles and grandchildren around. The kids ask great questions (Is it true you don't have Fiats in the US? Do you really eat sausages for breakfast like in the Simpsons?) and just one afternoon of conversations with guys like Andres is probably equivalent to 2 days in school. Great practice and great fun.

To cook this lamb we were up at 8 making the fire, and got to hang around, drink mate, and watch it cook until 2 when folks started arriving.



Here is the delicious, headless sheep. Some of the guys were pissed that the butcher had taken the neck off. Apparently that's a nice part too. The only organs left on there, if you were wondering, are the kidneys. To me they didn't taste much different from the other parts. On the grill are chorizos (normal sausages) and murcillas, which are a kind of blood sausage. I didn't realize you could just cook blood and it turned into a delicious goo.






Quickly, on the subject of meat, meet my favorite restaurant.


This guy is a magician of the grill. He sets up his stand near the city center about 12 every day, and all afternoon he has a steady stream of customers, tourists and locals alike. For a dollar (4 pesos) you can get a sausage sandwich or a hamburger, and if you're really feeling rich, you can splurge 2 bucks on a churrasco - basically a giant steak sandwich, including his secret pepper sauce. I'm here at least 3 times a week.

Andes Trekking

I left off with taking the bus to Catedral - the largest ski resort in the Southern hemisphere. We saw tourists standing in a line 30 deep at the resort entrance. There's no snow, of course, but plenty of people in the summer who want to ride the lifts for the view. We were after views of our own, but we were going to earn them. We walked past the tourists to the big sign, almost hidden in the far corner of the parking lot, that said, "A REFUGIO FREY".


But first, meet Ben, my traveling companion. Ben is a cool guy from Texas, a fly fishing guide by summer and student at A&M otherwise. (To Finnegans: he went to Highland Park! I could say "small world", but really its more like "Highland Park is huge") We have a spanish-only agreement that we usually remember to follow.

A refugio is a refuge, a little cabin-of-comforts in the wilderness. There are many refugios up in the national parks here, usually about a day's hike apart. They are simple log cabins with 20 bunk beds and a kitchen of exquisitely overprised food (to be fair, somebody had to trek 10 crates of coca-cola up the mountain). So, theoretically, one can hike from refugio to refugio for days, never having to worry about the usual camping pain of carrying tents, 15 pounds of dried food, or little hissy tinfoil camp stoves. But that's not really hiking. I prefer doing it the old fashioned way.

Thought we had 3 different maps of the area, topographic and otherwise, the plan was basically to follow the signs. We knew the path was well-marked and well-traversed, so we assumed the trail's difficulty wasn't much, just judging by the number of footprints.

Soon after starting, we saw a sign alerting us, among other things, not to make fires in the national park, not to bring pets, and that it would take us 4 hours to reach the refugio. Instead of kilometers (though later we learned it was about 9) it gave us a time goal. It must be an average, we thought, and since this trail is well traveled, and since I am an "experienced" hiker, we gave ourselves a goal of 3.5 hours.

About being an "experienced" hiker: because of the outdoor experiences I've had - Alaska, years of Boy Scouts, etc. - I should know the tricks of the trade. That's the idea. And I can pack light, I can lace up my boots blindfolded. I know a thousand different uses for a bandana. I can cook a hot meal in a flash from a bunch of dried flakes - with an impressive mastery of that capricious little tinfoil beast, the camp stove. So that's experience.

All this is to say, about halfway up this climb (hour 3 already), I'm beginning to wonder - what kind of experience keeps you from breaking you ankle in the Godforsaken Andean wilderness? How does climbing one mountain help me not fall off of the next one? Are there snakes up here?

It's a great hike, and the views kept me going. On one side, "The Horns of the Devil". On the other side, the beautiful Lago Gutierrez. At every break in the trees, it became clearer: yep, we are in the Andes. They are so much more violent and pointy than the ancient Appalachians I am used to. These are the real thing, in all their huge and snow-capped glory.

Anyway, I think what happened was , we were so excited to get up there, we started off a little fast. By halfway we were breathing a little (a lot) harder, and of course, allowing the appropriate time for the views. Every once in a while, as we wheezed up the trail, an older lady with a walking stick in sandals would pass us on the way down with a smile and an "Hola". An trail runner in his 50s (Philip) zoomed past us with barely a glance, holding only his water bottle. (Who are these people? Don't they know this is a 4 hour hike?)

We finally came to a stretch through the trees and saw the Refugio Frey on a peak ahead. You have to gasp when you first see this accoutremented cabin up here in the middle of nowhere. Civilization just won't quit. Somebody actually built this thing, way back in the 40s, without chainsaws or helicopters. And its got a kitchen - with running water!

It's cool to think about, and its nice to look at from a distance, but its not what I want from my wilderness. It was merely the area of our destination. We brought a tent.

We crossed a creek and the view was amazing and that last kilometer was one of out-of-body experience tiredness, when it's more efficient to count the non-sore spots. We finally rose above the rocks to see the picturesque cabin with its lake and mountain view, and there, at the top, is a mess of backpacks and people and chatter. There's a group of high school kids running around, or braiding eachother's hair. The group leaders laugh and discuss the day's hike. Right in front of us is a bunch of little kids giddily playing cards around a big rock. I'm talking cub scouts.

It's summer in Argentina! But I wasn't bothered - it was a great scene up there. And really, it's their mountain. I'm just visiting.

The next two days were equally beautiful, comparatively more peaceful, and we seemed to get in better shape as we continued. There are too many details to tell - lots of talks with fellow hikers, great views, and a little hitchiking at the end of the long trail, first with a couple of college students from Buenos Aires, then on a Greyhound that happened to be empty at the time. Great people. Of all my encounters with strangers since my first day at the airport, I've found that these Argentines are great, kind, welcoming people.

And now for some pictures that can really tell the story:





Refugio Frey




















Photos 1 and 2 by Ben Paschal











































P.S. Yesterday I saw the most American thing I've ever seen in my life. I was at this mall in Bariloche called "El Shopping", and this fast food joint was selling a loaded cheeseburger - but instead of buns around the meat it had two dripping-hot CHEESE PIZZAS. Brilliant.

I once was lost but now I'm found

I just spent the better part of 10 minutes looking for the "edit" button. Still figuring out the ins and outs of this "blogomatic machine" as Patrick calls it. The difficulty was that I've set my computer to Spanish mode - just one more small step toward immersion.


This is a mate (mah - tay). It is such a distinctly-Argentinian part of my daily routine that it requires a good explanation here. First of all, yerba mate is a drink. To prepare a mate, you put the yerba - a dusty, green, chopped-up leaves-and-stem mixture - into this little gourd. You add hot water and sip through the "bombilla", a metal straw with a filter on the end, so you get all the good taste of the leaves but none of the dusty-green stems all stuck in your teeth. According to the great arbiter of information, Wikipedia, the yerba has a strong taste like a mixture of "green tea, tobacco, and oak". I don't know about the tobacco, but as a green tea afficionado, I was immediately a fan.

But more than a drink, it is the national vice. It's a ubiquitous obsession, it is a social glue, it's appropriate for all ages, all social get-togethers, and all times of day (unless you're a gringo like me that can't handle all the caffeine after about lunch). Dudes walk around with mates and thermoses on a strap around their shoulder. Musicians play with a fresh mate next to their mic stand. There is even a law on the books - I'm totally serious here - prohibiting the drinking of mate while driving. Too many people were getting burned and crashing. In Bolivia, Patrick had the coca tea; in the Odyssey, those Lotus-people had their lotus-things; and here, in Argentina, we have mate. Anyway, its good stuff, and now you're all in on the most important Argentine tradition.

New subject: the Andes are AWESOME. The reason I vanished for four days (sorry about that, mom) was an intense trek into the Andes around Bariloche. It was all their fault.

From Bariloche it's easy to take a public bus to any number of trailheads in the national parks around here, usually less than a half-hour and 5 pesos (1.449 dollars) away.

I'm heading out to a birthday party of one of (my house mom) Anna's sons. I'll write about the trek when I get back - until then, here's a taste of the adventure.

El 6 de Enero

Dreads and a drum cirle. Made me feel right at home.


















A backpacker sleeps next to a waterfront view.














Our neighbors across the street, El Lago Nahuel Huapi, and the mountains surrounding Bariloche. Yep, this is the view I wake up to.

Let me give a little picture of the city:

Bariloche is a bustling little mountain town - hilly, windy, and, like most places outside of High Point, very walkable. It has the distinct outdoorsy vibe of an Asheville and feels about the size of Greensboro. Because January and February is Argentina's holiday season, right now the downtown is a beehive of tourists - mostly Argentinians and a notable contingent of Swiss.

According to my guide book, 97% of Argentinians claim European roots, mostly Italian, Swiss, and Spanish. Unlike Bolivia, where all the women seem to be dark, stout and pig-tailed, Argentina doesn't have much indigenous influence. Here pretty much everyone is white. Still, haven't really found any English-speakers so far.

The "historic" city center is a square of stone buildings, at the center of which stands some man on a horse. He's definitely a colonial figure - looks kinda like Robert E. Lee. His horse has four legs grounded, which is supposed to tell me something.

Anyway, I spent today after class exploring the city, looking for guitar shops and outdoor shops. Realizing that I'm going to do some serious hiking, I'm planning to invest in some gear. And maybe a guitar while I'm at it.

La llegada y Adventura #1

Traveling never goes exactly as planned. I don't expect it to. It would be unnatural for a series of flights to arrive on time, for each international airport to find your luggage on the first go-round, for the cross-town cab to get you to the other airport early, etc. I think of traveling as the art of rolling with punches. It requires a somewhat un-American, zen-like acceptance of whatever may or may not happen. "Venga lo que venga".

So you can understand my discomfort when all of these things fell into place perfectly on their own - all flights on time, all cabs friendly and early - with little effort on my part. Somehow my traveler's karma seemed imbalanced.

Cue landing in my final destination, San Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina. After retrieving my bag from the sole terminal of the quaint, two-runway airport, I walked into the lobby. I scanned the line of welcoming poster-bearers. I did not see my name. On the second pass, still no me, though each one of the namecard-holders stared intently, waiting for me to lock eyes. But still no me.

No problem - it's a beautiful day, early afternoon, and I see a pay phone. Plan A is to call the approximately 18-digit cell phone number of Vilma, the lady who was supposed to pick me up. The problem was, I had just changed money and didn't receive a single coin. No cambio. The lady at the counter wouldn't let me do a buck-for-four-quarters deal, either. She sort of shrugged and pointed and mumbled something, which I deftly deciphered as the universal sign for "I don't care because my job is to sit here behind a counter at an airport". Other than that she was very helpful.

Right then, before I had to think of a plan B, I see Sylvia. During the 2 hour flight from Buenos Aires to Bariloche, I made friends with a very nice, 60ish lady from Bariloche who was coming back from visiting her son in Houston. She was very patient and helpful with my Spanish. I detected absolutely no anti-tourist sentiment, a good sign for Argentina, and she seemed genuinely interested in what I was planning in Bariloche. She even gave me her phone number and told me to call if I needed anything.

As I realized I couldn't use the payphone, I saw Sylvia and her husband leaving the airport. She lent me her phone, and even talked for me when my Spanish failed to get me past the point that Vilma seemed to have no idea who I was or why I was calling from an airport. Long story short, Sylvia ironed it all out. Vilma did know who I was, and a lady named Fernanda was coming to meet me at the city center.

Sylvia's husband approached, put his arm around me, gave me a nice kiss on the cheek (it's an Argentinian thing) and insisted I share their cab. It was a tiny Fiat. There was already luggage in the backseat, so Sylvia and I crammed into the right side, brand new stranger-friends, practically in each other's laps. Pressed against the window, I had the perfect view of the incredible mountains surrounding El Lago Nahuel Huapi. I told them we don't have mountains like this on the east coast. They laughed at my amazement, "Aqui, hombres son hormiguitas". I smiled - the lesson of the day. Save for the kindness of Argentinian strangers.

Long story short again, after much thanking and hugging, they turned me over to Fernanda. Fernanda was very nice and apologetic, gave me a quick city tour and paid for one night in Periko's youth hostel for me. I had a long overdue shower, met two really cool guys from Australia on gap years, and we went to the supermarket to buy some steaks to cook for dinner. My steak was perfect, tender and juicy. Day number 1/2 over, I slept like I was in my own bed.