So Mr. Birch, Do You Always Sleep With A Ski Pole Under Your Pillow?

After being in a hotel room with Richie and James for 2 weeks, I figured that our cabin, which we were told would sleep nine, at least, would be absolute luxury. However, a few weeks later, I am, you could say, somewhat 'disillusioned'. On the day we were to move out of the hotel, we were informed by the very nice (but slightly...odd) receptionist that there had been a 'problem' with the cabin. Apparently there had been something dodgy with the septic tank, and the rest of the house was paying the price for it. This was swiftly confirmed as soon as we stepped outside the front door and were practically punched in the face by a decidedly...potent... smell, causing much cursing and reaching for hazmat suits. Upon entering our new 'temporary' cabin, it became evident that things would be a touch more cosy than we had previously anticipated.

It contained two twin rooms, and there would now be 7 of us. As Mark had announced that he thought the cabin would be 'cool' (however considering he is sleeping in the cupboard under the stairs, I hardly blame the bloke). Now as much as I like the man, him being a terrible nice chap and all that...I can't help but feel incredibly irritated by him, nearly all the time. I can hold a conversation with him, and it's usually a pleasant experience, but maybe its the fact that he's clearly got the worst ADHD I've ever seen, in my entire life, that occasionally provokes this sense of annoyance. Or maybe its the way he repeats the same anecdotes time after time and still laughs hysterically to himself with the same vigour ( something that has always annoyed me). Who knows, but the general consensus of this little part here is that I did not want to have to share sleeping space with him, considering it would already be a compact four to a room (and his feet smell like something that's died inside a wall).

I have also, having spent an extended period of time with my roommates now, found out some of their less desirable attributes. For example, one of the new 'eagerly' awaited arrivals, Robbie who is 28 and from Australia, is monumentally hyperactive (and a morning person, the worst kind of person in my opinion) and also, has a habit of singing in his sleep. For example I was awoken from my peaceful slumbering (something that rarely graces me with its availability) one time to find him, dead to the world, shouting out 'Roxanne' by Sting and the Police, in a similarly high voice to the balding Geordie himself (ironically he is rapidly losing his hair himself, maybe its cathartic release for his own follicle anxieties?). Another one of my company, who I have aforementioned in previous moans is James, lovely young man, but my good god, he snores like something hardcore. My father is the worst snorer I have encountered, so I thought I may have been prepared in this sense, however, this guy is something else. Not only has he severely disrupted our collectively fragile and sparse sleeping pattern, but also Devon ( the new American girl) and Jess's, who sleep at the opposite end of the cabin (separated by several partitions!). The walls vibrate a bit, and we all have permanent headaches and intensely bad moods. So, as you may have guessed by the title of this particular entry, I have had to take more...corporal methods. Meaning that I've taken to sleeping with one of my ski poles in my bed so that if I am rudely awoken by this bastard's nasal noise pollution, I can simply roll over and give him a firm beating with it. And don't worry, it doesn't hurt the man, he's well cushioned.

We've finally had a bit of snow, which I should hope you would all understand to be a good thing whilst doing an extended stint of skiing, no ? Well, at Cerro Catedral they seem to think differently. In fact, for a ski resort it seems to be almost allergic to weather conditions of any kind. There may well be 150 kmph winds at the very top of the mountain, where only one lift reaches, but just for good measure they usually take it upon themselves to shut the whole damn mountain, all day, despite improvements in the weather. And for the less fortunate people without a season pass, there is no information telling you that this has happened aside from the usual sea of disgruntled penguin like characters waddling around getting too hot and having to buy food that they can neither afford nor actually want to eat. This means that you usually queue up for a positively heinous amount of time in order to acquire a disgustingly expensive little card from a smugly smiling employee (to let you up the mountain), only to find out that the horrid little troll has sold you something completely obsolete because one of the lay about inbred lift workers has had his hat blown off by a slight gust and decided it's dangerous enough to close the entire mountain. This generally causes a violent throng of people clustering around the ticket office brandishing their passes demanding refunds, which of course the damn stiff fiends won't even think about providing. But luckily I have a season pass, so I can just sit back, and laugh. Until I remember that I too am stuck here with no prospect of getting home before the bus driver decides to grace us with his presence, nor in possession of any money so I have to get up, put on my best frown and join in.

On another snow-related note, you would think that a hotel situated in a climate prone to snow would be prepared for harsh circumstances, however Estancia del Carmen seems to be completely inept in this respect. We were happily ensconced in the bar, having a drink after closing time, and they were trying in vain to teach me to make a vaguely drinkable coffee from the fancy machine they have, when all the power went out. This was not unexpected as they had been flickering for many hours. But I was suprised to find out that Mariano (the gormless, slack jawed owner of the hotel) was just annoyed that we had woken him up to tell him this news. His reply was something like 'well the people are asleep, they will not know if there are lights or not', despite the fact that we could hear children crying and the low rumbling of people's complaints rising steadily. Furthermore, he, on this silly basis, decided it would be a 'waste' to turn the generator on, casting us all into even darker and colder night than usual. We retreated to the chef's cabin with a crate of beer in tow 'to keep us warm', however, their cabin being somewhat decrepit at best, it was virtually impossible to even sit still without breaking something or at least causing damage to some inanimate object, or more often, yourself. At this point Frederico emerged from some dark corner of the cabin with something luminous and green in his hands and a massive grin.
'At first' he announces, 'they said I was stupid for buying this, but now, I am the clever one', promptly lifting up this object and holding it there like that scene from The Lion King and presses a button, where a massive flame emerges, revealing it to be an enormous, joke sized lighter.
'He paid like 100 fucking pesos for that stupid thing', another one mutters.
Well, I shouldn't really have expected much more from the man who is so addicted to smoking it actually wakes him up in the night, and keeps at least 4 packets under the bar, at any given time.

Oh and also, on a final note, since I've started moaning about everything in this particularly pessimistic and bitchy entry, I have learned that one of the main chairlifts up the mountain kind of...fell over, whilst people were on it...due to the high winds and mass amounts of snow. However, I'm sure they're exaggerating.

What The Dutch?

It has been a most surreal time. Firstly, and most unfortunately I, and most of the hotel, have been introduced to some absolutely terrible concoction of music, of which the genre is named 'Rockney'. This is an amalgamation of 'Rock' and 'Cockney' as you may well have guessed. This band goes by the name of 'Chas & Dave' and if you are a Tottenham fan ( I am told...) you may have seen them play at varied matches ( and if so, God rest your tortured, troubled soul). Unfortunately this music is not to my taste, and causes me (and most of the customers in the hotel restaurant) a great deal of grief whenever it violently accosts my ears (usually on a daily basis as one of the people I, unfortunately, have to live with enjoys it a great deal, the bastard).

Aside from this irrelevant and boring information (I like to share my irritations with you all, so that you may also feel my pain) I have had an interesting couple of days. Firstly, one of the staff in the hotel, Frederico 'La Bestia' Romero, has been attempting to improve his English, and just generally gets bored with being at the hotel and decided to take James and I out on a 'Journey'. We drove out of the hotel in one of the other chef's 4X4's, nicknamed the 'Monton de mierda' (a.k.a. the heap of shit) and drove off down the (admittedly rather dangerous, icy road) at a hundred miles an hour. We voyaged around the peninsula that was surrounded by the lakes Nahuel Huapi and Moreno. Our first stop was to drop off some publicity leaflets at a restaurant named El Casco (might I mention, the only hotel to be in possession of a full 5 stars for a considerable distance). As we pulled up to the hotel car park, equipped with gleaming statues and fantastic, mesmerising pieces of art, Frederico said 'hhhokay, now we enter the expensive hotel, para los gringos, los yankies y los brasiliens. It is an art hotel, I know the owner, you must pretend you are millionaires'. Now, this, for me, would particularly hard. I have, up to this point, neglected to mention that I was rudely awoken at an offensive time in the morning to go on this journey and did not have time to change out of my green and yellow striped pajama bottoms + hoodie. Not a good concoction for aiding a friend make business connections. However, this was not to scare me off, and we entered this RIDICULOUSLY swanky hotel, with million dollar views over the lake and pretended to appreciate paintings that cost more than my house, which are dotted casually around the place.

We just about managed to gain the receptionist's attention (despite my appearance likening to that something similar to a 'fucking hippie' as described by the other kitchen staff), secured some weird and very condescending looks thanks to both James' (hungover) and my (sincerely, chronically and offensively) under dressed look, passed on the leaflets and very conspicuously snooped around the bar and restaurant, successfully pissed of some rich Brazillian tourists without actually having done anything except exist, live and breathe within visible distance of their caviar and champagne. The poncy tossers. We felt exceptionally unwelcome and decided it would, perhaps, be time to move on, before we were advised to do so forcefully by one of the irritatingly obsequious (or not) staff.

The receptionist ignored both James and I on our exit as we attempted a very gracious goodbye in actually, quite good, Spanish, so I whipped out my camera and started taking very conspicuous photos and looked like a right tourist. But I didn't care. We drove on down the road for a couple of hundred meters until Frederico swerved off the road violently and into this peculiar campsite saying 'We must avoid the workers and the other campers, drive very fast and hidden to the other side of the camping, and there is a nice beach...I know this man there, but, he might not remember who I am, nevermind.' So we proceeded to power through this campsite narrowly avoiding some Brazilians who were very territorial over their one square meter of turf that they had probably paid half their life savings for (not that they are poor, it's just a complete rip off), some very angry camping staff (who are usually the worst kind of loser, stupid caps and shorts that would fit a ten year old etc...)and came to an abrupt halt on a beach where it turns out that this chap in question did remember Frederico and all difficulties were solved. It also turned out that there was a really nice view of Lago Nahuel Huapi and so Fred walked us along this pier lecturing us on how this was his dream to live here, and that now, we are walking in his office (he also told James off for throwing his cigarette butt in the lake for the same reason, which is admittedly a disgusting thing to do. I hate littering as well. I once had a car-ful of people and were going on some trip somewhere and this girl came along, not that I liked her at all, she was just in my car. Anyway, so she threw a load of crap out of the car window and me, not being the forgiving, easy going type, stopped, reversed, made her get out into the (satisfactorily) POURING rain and had her pick up every single piece. We have not talked since. Take that crime!). So they were talking about something boring and I decided it would be time to take pretentious, bad photos considering the lake had gone a deep blue in the light and was looking rather picturesque.

We then drove up to another hotel, this one named Llao Llao, some enormous castle - like building perched on the top of a hill, looming ominously out of the snow and proceeded to snoop about in it trying again to go under the 'millionaires' guise, but just ended up making the place look a bit dirty and probably turned away a few prospective, previously enthusiastic customers. Later, we were kicked out of the nearby forest by a ranger because he said if we stayed here much longer it would get dark and we would die in the wilderness. We ignored his advice and ventured onwards into the dark to find Fred's 'Hidden' lake. This lake turned out to be extremely eerie and had an unearthly echo. Now, I, not being the most courageous of chaps got a bit freaked out by its likeness to a scene in a horror film where everyone gets brutally murdered and their bodies dumped in the woods, never to be seen again. Beautiful it may have been, but I decided to lighten the mood by climbing into a hedge and making owl noises. Which didn't work and I ended up looking like a bit of a twat, so we left, but decided that if we were to kill Jorge (the receptionist which no one likes), this is where we would do it, so in all it was a constructive trip, despite Fred being an hour or so late for work.


That night we went on a tour of some Cervezerias (beer factories to your average scummy Brit)and proceeded to get ripped off in one called 'Blest', directly on the tourist route where they sold disgusting concoctions of strawberry beer for a pound of flesh, or thereabouts. However, we could scribble on the beer mats and stick them on the walls. But that was the height of the novelty. So with a communal 'bugger this' attitude we jumped on a bus and headed to the next neighbourhood, where we found ourselves wandering down some godforsaken dirt track, and then stumbled upon the local bar. Fortunately it was happy hour, we filled ourselves with cheap ale and then found two random blokes from Leeds holding up the other end of the bar (not literally you silly buggers). They joined us out, and we jumped on the next bus we could find and hoped for the best. We encountered a lot that night including a post office with a shady nightlife, some very questionable bald headed characters, one of which was taking to James saying something along the lines of 'You must be embarrassed to support Tottenham'...follwed by a reply of 'Don't make me punch you, you f*****g ****',which caused a fight and lots of attempts to make up usually resulting in a tirade of four letter words (football banter, what utter bollocks). We also met up with some other people doing ski courses and I think someone got glassed by someone else, so we left, believing there were more fish in the sea.

The mountain has been closed for the last 4 days or so due to a severe lack of snow and high winds, which effectively turned the whole mountain to ice and caused a steady flow of horrendous injuries that we observed from the safety (or so we thought until we learned that last year one of them had fallen off in the high winds causing horrendous injuries and a mysterious lack of information concerning whether people had died)of the chairlifts and cable cars. However after being stuck at the hotel for days, developing an extreme adaption of ping pong named 'polypong' which involves 3 standard tables shoved together along with a snooker table, as many people as you can give bats and balls to and all the walls, windows and usable surfaces in the room. Due to our inactivity, the bar has had a significant increase in revenue and we even started helping the kitchen staff with the most boring of jobs. However, it has been forecast to snow heavily for 2 days and who knows we might actually be able to ski on good conditions for once without severe danger of death or, at least, a violent maiming at the hands of good old Mother Nature. Oh yeah, and some other people are coming to join the course, one Australian who has already done half of the course elsewhere and some American girl (great,now we'll get thoroughly harassed by some buffoon who is incapable of saying anything that is neither loud nor crass). Great.

Just your honest salesman

This is a real shop. And yes, look closer, it's for newborn kids. Argentina seems to do this, for example, yesterday, Michael Jackson's music was blasting out as I walked past the creche area of Cerro. Dear dear.

Psycho-Magnet

Recently, something rather unpleasant happened. Well perhaps not unpleasant but definitely not useful, enjoyable or pleasing. Our little group dynamic was ruined upon entry of some people from another course, Peak Leaders, who had arrived early and were having to stay in our hotel. We were assured that it would only be a week, and fortunately it was, but dear Christ it felt like longer. At first they seemed like two unassuming, middle-aged women, but soon proved to be capable of being very troublesome indeed.

One of them was blonde (dyed, heavily), wore an excessive amount of foundation, whose thickness defied gravity and had a face that looked like she was sucking on a wasp, or at best, like she was wearing very ill fitting dentures. Not a pretty sight. However when you didn't have to look at the other one's face, the main cause of trauma was the completely psychotic nature of this other woman, who actually wasn't that bad looking. But she had crazy eyes, which freaked me out, probably visibly, but that was okay because it seemed to help me escape from her latter line of fire. I, unfortunately, have had some exposure to people of a somewhat ' unstable' or 'unconventional' disposition, perhaps to the point where I would say that it might perhaps be the karma of my sarcastic and rude observations which causes them to come into my life so frequently, which pleases me oh so much.

Basically, their arrival was timed with that of one of the Chef's handsome buddies who came from Hawaii, have the usual stereotype of a ripped beach bum and you're not far off. It was quite amusing because everyone else proceeded to get jealous of this mysterious tanned fellow with his 'attractive charm' and proceeded to call him a 'beardy hobo' and a plethora of other utterly soul crushing insults. Anyway, these two women and a girl from my course went out with him on a debauched night on the town in Bariloche, ended up getting a bit drunk, aside from the sketchy woman, who doesn't drink (surprise surprise) and coming back to one room and all falling asleep in one bed. I heard from two people that 'nothing had happened' and they'd all been drunk and fallen asleep whilst watching family guy, however, I also heard from the bunny boiler that they'd all fallen asleep, at which point she'd 'left' and she'd presumed 'other things' had happened. Probably to plan her sick schemes and think indecent thoughts, the damn psycho. I was luckily excluded from the ensuing scenario as I feared that I'd say the wrong thing and get stabbed in a dark alleyway by this sadistic monstrosity, and chose not to join them that night.

However the next morning, the psycho bitch surfaced at about 12 noon and started accusing one of the others about sleeping with this Hawaiian dude, whom she had supposedly 'pulled' after he had sunk about 12 fernet and cokes (a considerably stronger and substantially more evil mix than your average vodka and coke), and her, none, so that she could be a freaky manipulating stalker and tempt him into her bed (which didn't work because she stank of desperation). This argument was all done very publicly and turned out to be very embarrassing to watch, let alone be involved in.

Anyway, she didn't let it drop and stropped about the hotel shouting at people and demanding if there was 'some kind of problem about her within the group'. Unfortunately we had to ski with her for a few days as they asked Mark whether they'd be allowed to come into our lessons for a small fee. This caused a certain amount of awkwardness, as you might imagine, and the accused girl demanded that we ski away from them one afternoon, Mark obliged as he said 'her voice pissed him off ' and was more than pleased to cast her into oblivion for the afternoon. So he bluntly said, as we got of the chairlift, 'yeah so I'm going to take my group this afternoon, my priority is with them and not you, enjoy yourselves.' Naturally this did not go down well with the histrionic specimen and come 3.30, we felt her wrath, storming up to us and saying 'it was far too sudden', and that 'she didn't feel it was proper behaviour' and again asking whether there was something between 'her and the group'.

This continued the until the next morning, and then worsened, when she stormed into our room demanding a lift pass as hers had run out. Now forgive me if I'm being a bit harsh, but if your pass has run out, it's your own fault and noone else should care, or even attempt to help you, there is no injustice in this matter and you are the only idiot, the git amongst the pigeons...so to speak. She, however, disagreed and burst in when two of us were sleeping and the other was naked, trying to get dressed (or sodomise us, I'm not sure which) and basically attempted to blackmail a day's skiing of us. We promptly told her to fuck off, being previously asleep, hungover, aware of her psychotic tendencies and one of us Scottish (considering these factors, I'd say that was mild reaction). She then went down and moaned at Mark, who, it turns out, had already sorted her with a lift pass, and told her, but just didn't give it to her straight away, due to being busy with some other organisational issue. This caused another enormous display of emotion and shouting, which resulted in Mark shouting back at her and her finally backing off from him. Unfortunately, she then turned on me and started asking me what the issue was with her and members of the group, a million questions a second. I had no choice but to throw my hands in the air and tell her, simply, to piss off, and that it was her own issue and that I would have nothing to do with her, her arguments, problems or anything else for that matter, did not and would never care (That's what you get when you bother a Birch when they are up earlier than they are accustomed to, trying to eat their breakfast in peace). This repeated itself throughout the day, we all became very bored of her and our manners vanished rapidly.

Basically, the tone of the trip was soured by this horrid woman and the morale thoroughly dampened, our patiences tested to the limit and our tempers exhausted. We were unhappy and looking forward to her leaving, forever, and moving into our spacious, and liberating cabin as promised. Goodness were we mislead.