Twilight in Argentina

My last days in Argentina were wonderful, the snow melting away and the first signs of spring shining through. Now that the mountain was as good as closed we left skiing behind until next season and enjoyed a few days relaxation before we were to be thrown out of the hotel. Mark had organised us to go on a horse riding trek through the ranch of Carol Jones, a hardy woman who's face was the colour of leather from years of working in the famous extremes of Patagonian weather.

We got the usual taxi into town, the journey spent, as usual, arguing amongst each other and attempting to convince the aged driver that we weren't Americans, so that he would stop being so gittish. We waited in the centro civico, to meet Carol, who hadn't yet arrived. Naturally, having gotten used to being relaxed about the actual agreed meeting times with Argentines was content to sit in the sun and look a bit thick for a while, until she turned up, however, Mark started getting fidgety and weird and was muttering insults about the Argentines under his breath whilst shuffling around the square. He soon made some excuse about having to go to get some piece of camera equipment that we'd never heard of and didn't care about and he subsequently jogged off. He were all quite relieved. Yet, typically, this was when Carol turned up in her little, aged car which was many years older than me. She climbed down out of her rusty 4x4 and walked up to us briskly, dressed like someone straight out of Texas, with a brown, wide brimmed hat, leather riding trousers and an old jacket that looked like it had seen many harsh years. You could tell by looking at her that she had not lived an easy life and her eyes were hard. Yet, she smiled away and was very friendly to us. She would have been pretty when she was young.

All 6 of us squeezed ourselves into the back of the car which was strewn with large piles of dirty hay and various horse equipment. She started up the engine, and attempted to drive off, but unfortunately someone remembered Mark and we had to wait for him. He hobbled up to us some 20 minutes later making excuses that no one listened to and then started to talk loudly in cringe-worthy Spanish to Carol who turned to him and said "Please...please, just, talk in English", and then put on Johnny Cash very loudly in case he decided to talk anymore. We powered alongside the lake and through various military checkpoints and then suddenly screeched to a halt. We then picked up Paisan, a morose young gaucho with no teeth and his dog Moracha. He didn't like talking and we soon gave up and started talking to his dog, which seemed to like me a lot and persist in climbing all over me and covering me in various matter.

We had now driven far from anywhere and were surrounded on all sides by the dusty Patagonian plains, punctuated in the distance by jagged spires of rock or a lonely group of trees. We were given our horses, all of whom seemed a bit rowdy. I was given a huge, fat one who "had a mind of his own", named Juez, which means judge. We all mounted on our horses and were soon joined by a French girl who looked like a rat, who's name now escapes me. I speak French and thought I would make an effort to talk to her, however after telling me her name and why she was here she then gave a pompous little speech about how the English were Imperialist bastards and how she hated us, and once she had finished she then promptly trotted off. Richie then called me a twat for being able to speak another language, so I shut up. Paisan, meanwhile rode alongside us on a magnificent, wild, black horse, which bucked and reared and tried to throw him off. However, he soon tamed it and we all watched little Moracha flying in and out of bushes chasing hares and barking at low flying condors.

Some time later we stopped at a little camp they had made and drank wine and ate empanadas. My horse had gotten tangled up in the rope that kept him from running off and I spent a tedious 20 minutes untying him and trying not to get maimed. He clearly didn't appreciate this and spent the return journey running into rivers and trying to throw me off. All I could do was hang on for dear life and yank on the reins with some vain hope of regaining control. However we all made it back safely, I exchanged an evil glare with my horse and left, it was time to hit the bar, as it was our last night in Bariloche.

Groggily, I awoke the next morning and realised the time, we had 2 hours before our flight left and I hadn't even packed, my possessions were strewn across the cabin and I didn't even know where my bag was. But in the end all was well and we had a celebratory final beer on the terrace, despite it being 10.30 am and were chauffeured to the airport by Guido in his ramshackle truck. We shared cigarettes and watched the condors circling above the desert-like plains that stretched for miles disrupted only by the trail of dust left behind a far off truck and carried by the ever-present wind. After one final glance at what had been home to us, we turned and took the plane that would carry us far from the powerful golden vacuum we had been living in for the last few months, to be reunited with the psychotic city of Buenos Aires once again.

The Hollow Men

Now that the skiing has become a great deal more serious and despite apathy at the beginning of the course, we are all throwing ourselves at it with a desperate vigour. This tends to mean that we have few days off and any that we do have are spent furiously honing in on the weakness in our technique (mine seem to be worryingly numerous). However, luck made a fleeting appearance this week and we snatched the opportunity to venture off into the valleys of an Argentina that shied away from the prying and polluting hands of tourism.

Having been out the previous night in a typically eventful Argentinian night on the town, I was asleep when the decision to go was made by Alex and two others. So I was awoken and hurried into the car, having my notepad and backpack hastily shoved into my uncoordinated and unresponsive hands. Precious time was saved because I had no need to dress myself, I'd conveniently fallen asleep in my clothes, and before I knew it we were blasting down the ruta cuarenta to the soundtrack of bad, Spanish electronic music. Our destination was El Bolson,the bohemian hot spot of Patagonia. I had been told it was full of 'dirty f*****g hippies' by the chefs (because I came into the restaurant one day, wearing trousers I had bought at some local festival for dirty acid fiends, they recommended I should visit this place, saying that I would find 'my kind' there. Bastards).

We had been powering along in our little bastardised 4x4 for roughly 40 minutes by the time my hunger became unbearable, so we pulled over for coffee and a sandwich at the next town we came across. Having traveled a considerable distance away from the beaten track of tourism in the local area, the next town happened to be a ramshackle collection of hastily constructed wooden shacks with roofs of corrugated iron. We circled the town and turned around in the road, suddenly noticing a gaucho who was riding his horse alongside the road. Robbie, the culturally ignorant and hyperactive australian leaned out of the window and began feverishly taking photos of him, much to his annoyance. I suggested he stopped, due to the increasingly homicidal expression on the aforementioned gaucho's face, which was twisted into a wrinkled squint (or frown, it was hard to be certain) of deep and permeating irritation. Having noticed a rather decayed sign hanging from one of the cabins, bearing the word 'restuarante' we got out and put out heads togther trying to muster up the pathetic amount of Spanish needed to order coffee and croissants.

We were welcomed in by a very affable middle aged woman, who was sweeping the porch. The place was bare, and consisted of a couple of tables and modest chairs. It was, however, kept exceptionally clean (which was reassuring!). We sat down and took in our surroundings, noticing that the whole place was festooned with balloons. I waited for the woman to come back out so that I could ask her what the cause for all the festivity was, however I was somewhat lost for words when our waiter emerged from the kitchen. The gaucho, with his leathery face, rough calloused hands and (upon seeing us) displeased expression had come out of the kitchen, still wearing his poncho and riding boots bearing the rich and overpowering smell of horse. He placed the coffee and tortas fritas (doughnuts without all the sugar) on the table, said a civil hello and then quickly asked us all where we were from. Before anyone else could answer, I quickly gave a generic answer which was along the lines of 'all over the place' so as to avoid a Falklands dispute (I know one shouldn't judge, but believe me, he seemed like the type to turf us out). This seemed to appease the old fellow and he shuffled back into the bowels of the cabin muttering darkly.

The way the restaurant worked was interesting, because as we had ordered our drinks, the woman disappeared out of the front door and after fighting her way through the flurry of excitable chickens and ferrel children, she disappeared into what I can only presume was her own home. She emerged later, with an explosion of the intrusive cockerels that he had shooed from inside her house with all the ingredients for our food and the mugs for the coffee, and then cooked them in the restaurant kitchen. I pity the poor dear if she has to go through this elaborate procedure with each order the place receives! The coffee was excellent and seemed to have an exquisitely rural taste, along with the tortas fritas, which we coated heavily in the local blackberry jam and then gorged upon hastily.

It was only now that we realised there was a young boy munching away contentedly on some gruel like substance, heavily engrossed in watching Toy Story 2 on a tv, tucked away in the corner of the place. We watched this as the dregs of our coffee were drained and our very plates licked clean. Full and refreshed we left, also finding out that the balloons were there because one of the villagers had turned a magnificent 80 years old that day and the whole community was coming together later on in the day, to give her a special celebration, which I thought was fantastic, a type of unity that you can only find in the more rural places in our increasingly impersonal and modern world. We picked our way past wooden carts and daring chickens, then heading off down the road and making our way along the beautiful winding mountain roads lined with forests, towering cliffs and streams.

As we worked our way through the Patagonian wilderness we still saw political propaganda sprayed on the occasional rock, amongst the oriental, orange tinted trees and flowing creeks which wound their way intricately amongst their roots, casting an almost oriental air of tranquility amongst the menacing atmosphere of grandeur that is ever-present with great mountain ranges. We came across a strong, fast flowing river that was accompanied by a gendarmeria, a little hut with a lethargic policemen watching the traffic pass by, lazily smoking his cigarette probably waiting to return home to his family in one of the nearby towns. We carried on, eagerly awaiting our arrival in El Bolson, conjuring elaborate descriptions of how we expected it to be as rustic lorries passed us by carrying tons of wood stolen from the local, and internationally 'protected' forests.

The buildings became less and less sporadic as we neared El Bolson, camp sites started appearing on the both sights, along with worrying amount of German businesses such as 'Schmidt Hnoss', a vivid reminder of darker times passed. This would be the first of many German encounters in Argentinian culture. It has a considerable presence here due to Argentina's part in WWII. It turns out that in order to maintain a neutral standing they sided with the Allies, as they were likely to win at the time of their choice, but at the same time gave thousands of fleeing Nazi war criminals open and unconditional passports. So, I think I am right in having a slight (and not entirely intentional) moral agenda when I meet an Argentinian of German decent. El Bolson did not exactly slap us in the face with its brilliance, by this, I mean that I could have mistaken it for any rural gaucho haven that we had passed on the long journey down here. It is a fairly small, dirty, linear town, its main street lined with dilapidated trucks, itching to be put down. We crawled down the high street in our faithful little car, peering out at the groups of gaucho youths hovering outside sad looking corner shops and dark skinned old men sat, wearing the same working overalls (on a sunday) and baseball caps, the grime of poverty shining strongly from their tanned skin.

We parked the car opposite an immaculate and elaborate modern church and started heading towards the heart of El Bolson, the park. Its unhealthy looking browny green had been the only breath to break the monotony of the town's intense greyness which stole any opportunity of vibrancy and life from the people. We stumbled upon a miserable looking market arranged along the concrete path that enclosed the far side of the park, and were filled with a slight optimism that the trip had been worthwhile. Unfortunately my suspicions were soon confirmed and I was assaulted by the familiar feeling of oppression and irritation that I had found inescapable in British hippie circles. There was the usual air of fallacy that all the people were clearly aware of and were, in their usual contrived activity, desperately trying to conceal. There were the usual hopefuls sitting, strumming their guitars, singing songs about love and happiness in the town, in the vague hope that someone would give them a few pathetic pesos, whilst other dirty dreadlocked people sat behind their stalls smoking and emanating the sadness that was visible in their dull, lifeless eyes.

I walked through the market, trying to find a single thread of happiness and positivity, watched like an alien by brown couples who sat, the young men clinging to their women, pecking and nurturing the beautiful creatures, stroking their tightly curled, jet black hair, those tragically deep, piercing, Indian eyes glaring back out of their bronzed faces like dangerous jewels. I was accosted by vendors, stubbing their spliffs and emerging from their vacuous stupors leaping out, grimacing at me with yellowing teeth showing me their wares with a striking desperation. One woman, whose stall I had drifted over to because she had a certain mystical beauty flowing from her, spoke excellent English and showed me with an amazing knowledge all the stones she had, their origins, where she had found them and how they were formed. I asked her how she spoke such good English, and she replied that she had been at a good university and studied it. I wondered how the woman had ended up in this predicament, clearly impoverished, the dirt that covered her fingers contrasting starkly with the bright shining stones she was trying so very hard to sell. Filthy young children ran around with wild hair, not dissimilar to the matted fur of the motheaten dogs that were lying about the place, seemingly as depressed with their predicament as the human occupants.

We, once again, grew hungry and conveniently a waffle van was placed in front of us. The vendor seemed, from a considerable distance, distinctly un-Argentinian and indeed, it turned out he was from deepest darkest Guildford. He'd given up working for Mark's and Spencer's, claiming he was fed up of 'making ends meet'. I must admit, I found it confusing how he could possibly be doing any better working out of a van, selling fairly substandard waffles to the impoverished and the occasional and usually lost tourist. Anyway he told me how he was 'living like a king' with such vigour that it certainly seemed as if he was trying to convince himself as much as me. I got his email address, promising to read his blog and left to to his wife, their many children and the hordes of dirty urchins hanging around the other food vans. Poor sod.

We had been told that a worthwhile sight was the 'Cabeza del Indio', an interesting rock formation a few miles away from the town, up a dirt track an into the nearby mountains. Glad for an opportunity to get away from the market and its sombre inhabitants we piled into the car and drove at a rapid pace, not out of eagerness, but to get up the fierce incline of the road, whilst narrowly avoiding dirty hippies on bicycles. We parked the car and followed the signs across some sodden land into some woods, picking our way carefully along a narrow winding path and up some rickety wooden steps. Ritchie, who had accompanied us on the trip was feeling the strain of being exposed to something genuine and was clearly stressed. Earlier on he had been so bored he'd deteriorated to throwing chips at chickens and being racist to dogs, now, he'd worsened after eating too many sugary sweets and was clearly a bit overexcited. He'd ran on ahead, whooping and yelling and then started throwing rocks down at us like some kind of crazed animal. Naturally, this was quite annoying, so, after a verbal assualt, he calmed down and we left him to quietly destroy some of the more delicate parts of the cliff face as we found the 'Cabeza del Indio'. It was a clif face that had eroded in such a fashion that it resembled a face screaming out from the side of the mountain, in a deep anguish (probably why it's an Indian face, considering how they were completely butchered by the Spanish). We spent a few minutes, sat, trying to ignore Ritchie, dangling our legs over a dangerous drop whilst taking in the marvelous view. Far below us, the Rio Azul was weaving its eternal path through the low lying farmland and the attractive little houses that littered the plain, the haphazard stories and floors dangling off at a typically precarious angle.

And so we left El Bolson, feeling as though we were pulling our boots from thick mud, its vacuousness having already wrapped its spectral, parasitic fingers around our ankles in an attempt to sap the energy that we had brought with us. We left behind the gaggles of dirty people, some like that by choice, others not as lucky, passing their nameless bottles of alcohol throughout all hours of the day, putting the world to rights in a manner as repetitive as the mumblings of a self centred depressive. I was glad to be leaving, keen to distance myself from that old delusion that these people had a real reason to be exempt from a purposeful life, that there was some kind of depth to their lethargic existence, and mostly that these people were in possession of some kind of exclusive ethereal energy that they had somehow tapped into. Some kind of atmospheric passion that would keep their spirits full as they sat, their lives being drained away, like paint down a plughole, in this sad, deflated town with its graffitied walls and decaying statues culminating in the empty lake that gave out the reek of a corrupt dream, of an ideal dead and decomposing from the inside out.

Ich Habe Einen Sternfisch Im Meine Unterhosen

The last week has been spent skiing frantically, trying to improve. In my case, this usually results in severe ham string cramps and my arms and legs ending up in positions they shouldn't be in, with my face submerged deep in snow, writhing frantically in a vain attempt to right myself, like an overturned turtle. Or rather, like some turtle with irritating pieces of metal strapped to it, that it neither finds comfortable nor possible to coordinate competently. Other than this we (Robbie the energetic Australian and I) have been honing our long distance chat up skills via chairlift. Unfortunately, despite much practice all we seem to have been able to do is shout bastardised Spanish at an offensive volume which usually merits a slightly nervous smile and (presuming they didn't hear us properly) on rare occasions a lackadaisical wave.

So it turns out that despite all this epic falling and what you might consider sexual harassment we'd been engaging in, we'd actually passed BASI 1 and I, your very own layabout degenerate fiend, am now a qualified ski instructor. How's that for a scary thought. Scum of society to someone with some qualifications and a job prospect in under a month and a half (oh yeah, I also got my A Levels, which weren't too bad in the end). However, this was done and dusted, and come the next day, typically, we were all immensely bored and I think the hotel was fed up with us hanging around making the lobby look dirty, loitering around the fireplaces, lounging about in the squishy armchairs that we had been occupying regularly since we had arrived like a bunch of hobos who have stumbled upon some luck. So the more proactive of us (a minority of which you may be surprised to know that I now 'proudly' include myself in) decided to venture out with a touring company that would ferry us around the Patagonian wilderness, pointing out interesting varieties of moss and other lichen. Oh, and a glacier and some waterfalls.

So we had luckily prepared in advance (probably because I wasn't entrusted with the organising process of the day) and had paid the small price for the trip. And also, in typical Argentinian style, we had to pay the guy who recommended we go on the trip a 30% cut of 44 pesos. Strictly on a confidential basis, as you do in a country completely dictated by the black market. Anyway, we were told to be ready at 8.15 sharp or the bus would leave without us, in the strictest of tones. So we were up, and bleary eyed at the aforementioned time, ready as could be. And continued to be for the next 45 minutes, due to the reliable system of negotiations here in Argentina. Anyway, we'd all fallen asleep on the sofas in reception waiting for these layabouts to turn up, and were awoken by a short, wiry individual with greying hair in a mullet, who, once having woken us up, thrust out his arm, charismatically announced that his English was poor and that he 'spoke like Tarzan'. Having gotten up and noticed that his eyes were freakishly far apart, making him look like some kind of biped trout, I asked his name, which he had so far forgotten to share with us. It turns out that his name was Ricardo, which was announced with a massive, excitable grin and much bouncing up and down, like a badly trained terrier.

We were hurried on the bus by Ricardo, assuring us that we could call him Ricky Martin (who he bore a similarity to, in the same respect that whenever I hear or see either of them, I become immediately irritated) and laughing to himself maniacally. I enthusiastically attempted to say a quick 'hello, how are you' to the driver in Spanish, only to receive a slow turning of the head accompanied by an incredulously blank look, with his jaw hanging loose like some kind of genetically challenged fool. I quickly moved on, embarrassed and with the rest of the passengers staring at me, fixedly, as is the norm when inspecting a new arrival to your company on a bus. Some of them even said hello and I was starting to feel at ease until I noticed the alarming number of poorly applied toupees floating above the moth eaten 1970's seats of the bus, only to be accompanied by a disillusioned skiers worst enemy. The one piece ski suit. Now in my opinion, the one piece is some dreadful invention that should have died a painful death with the rest of the 1980's, like Duran Duran and flared trousers. In fact, so hated are they that it's a game, on piste, to spit on them, and if that's not possible, then you just have to yell 'ONE PIECE' as loud as humanly possible, in a vague attempt to rid the owner of their crippling delusion of looking inoffensive. Honestly, crimes against fashion I tell you. In fact, considering their disgusting and vulgar nature on the slopes, why would you harm society even more by wearing them in public ? ON A BUS ?!! Fools, fools the lot of them. So I took some incriminating photos of them whilst they weren't looking and let them be.

It was soon after we pulled out of the driveway that we discovered Ricardo's excitability would not be contained on the road. He bounced up and down ceaselessly, rabbiting on about the mountains across the way, stopping mid sentence to ask us if we were American, which, fortunately we were not (they aren't too popular here, due to damaging their economy somewhat). I would have appreciated his non-stop commentary if he had held the microphone a decent distance away from his mouth, so that he wasn't in danger of choking on it and so that we might have understood some of the lightning speed Spanish firing out of his mouth at a thousand miles a minute. Honestly, he sounded like a horse racing commentator on amphetamines! I managed to zone out by hanging a dangerous percentage of my body out of the window in order to take some blurry and, in general, poor quality photos of our high moving surroundings. However, 20 minutes down the road we were stopped and everyone had to pay $30AR to get into the national park (where the glacier was), except us, when the arse of a ranger realised that we weren't Argentinian (thanks to Robbie yakking away, loudly, advertising our foreignness) and subsequently demanded more money off of us.

After this covert theft had been completed we powered on down the precarious dirt track with scant regard for other traffic, Ricardo leaping about like some kind of crazed animal yelling about 'this rare trees that come from Canadia' with the fellow passengers' toupees now hanging off at extreme angles. Every so often the charismatic driver would screech to a sudden, unannounced halt and we would all pour out and take pictures of nothing in particular, and then be hurried quickly back into the van when various other tour buses starting piling up behind us on the narrow one-way mountain track. Nevertheless the surrounding area was exceptionally beautiful. In fact there was one particular thing that has stuck me of late, in this particular valley we were busy polluting with our aged van, there was an abundance of dead, skeletal trees. Peculiar because it was contrasted by the most amazing blues of the glacial water and the deep greens of the surrounding shrubbery, emphasising this oddly beautiful sense of morbidity that added to the silence and atmosphere of the enormous valley. I had been told on the absolutely reliable authority of Mark that there was a disease ravaging the country's tree population, in a similar fashion to Dutch Elm disease. Which, fair to the man, seemed (on this one, rare occasion of anything that he has ever said) believable enough.



Our first proper, arranged stop was at some waterfalls, Los Alerces, which were in fact really quite amazingly beautiful. The river leading up them ran a deep, emerald green, slowly twisting into a frothing frenzy of colour and energy, culminating in an epic show of the raw power of nature. The water crashed down in a satisfying roar, sending spray up in a shimmering display of colour, the tranquility and permanence of the rainbow creating a delightful contrast against the swirling inferno of water below. We all snapped away, looking incredibly touristy and probably getting very little worthwhile photography accomplished. Once again we were ushered like unruly cattle back towards the minibus, being allowed a short toilet break and a quick look into the coffee shop. I required neither of these things so I snuck around, trying to look inconspicuous, in the surrounding (and off limits) barns. This went relatively smoothly apart from a very lazy dog sitting and watching me with an expression that pretty much said 'oh you silly bastard' and a cat appearing from a hole in a wall and hissing at me rather aggressively, which I then tried to take some photographs of, got a bit scared and left. This was not the end to my shameless tourism. As the rest of the group sat about drinking coffee and complimenting the hosts, I was outside shouting at a small, and in the opinion of some people, cute dog, trying to get it to sit still and look at the camera lens for one photograph. Which I don't think was a particularly unreasonable request.


A little later, Ricardo's jabbering was starting to piss me off, so I decided that I'd already seen the majority of the view from the abrupt stops we'd already made and promptly fell asleep. I had one of those moments where you whack your head violently against the window pane and wake up swearing under your breath only to find your crazed tour guide furiously shouting about something with a concerning amount of passion whilst wafting about a large picture of an otter. I thought it would be best to go back to sleep. I awoke as we were nearing the glacier, and at pretty much the same time as the driver had spotted a small shard of ice and promptly refused to go any further, accentuating this with furious texting and refusing to acknowledge any kind of communication. So, we walked. Uphill, on ice, in tennis shoes. Soon, the ice turned to snow and we were soon surrounded by the magnificent stillness that was the Tronador glacier (Tronador meaning thunder), only broken by the subsonic boom of the ice breaking off from far above and crashing down into the valley. As amazing as this experience was, taking my glacier virginity, so to speak I couldn't help but feel slightly let down, only because it was so far away from the viewing platform, and due to the strictly touristic format of the day.

However, I considered the day a great success, and due to the fact that I was far, far away from the other members of the cabin moping, being hungover and 'relieving' themselves furiously, I was on top of the world. In fact I was so elated that I fell asleep the entire bus journey back and so avoided the dreadful tirade of verbal assault that came with Ricardo's existence. The next day I would return to the week's of skiing, in preparation for my next (and considerably harder) exam, with 5 days of depression, severe confidence issues and the further punishment of my already aged knees. Joy of joys, I'm a ski instructor.

Unfortunately, the time has come to start taking things more seriously, the time to ignore the massive stock-piles of cheap beer and spirits, to ignore the calls of the local bars just itching to stay open until 7am and to hand over all those mischievous cigarette packets. This isn't because we've all had a sudden moral breakthrough or any substantial epiphanies (like that time in The Simpsons Movie, however, that would probably help), nor have we converted to some weird Christian cult or even become better people. It's just that our BASI (British Association of Snowsports Instructors) examiner has arrived and will be 'constantly assessing us', meaning that if we have a cheeky beer at an inappropriate time or someone feels like they want to have a liberating coffee and cigarette on the hotel balcony, they will (probably) be branded as a sporting sinner and cast into the purgatory of trying in vain to make up for their 'heinous' mistakes, doomed to brown nose until they catch some kind of disease.

His name is Alex Leaf and he is one qualified chap, the dog's bollocks of ski instruction, and I must admit, he's not at all what we were expecting. The first time I saw him I didn't even realise that he was someone I was in any way connected to, he's a small, unassuming 52 year old chap with a stiff walk and a charmingly weather-worn face (which is probably attributed to being a volunteer on a life boat, something I would give the majority of my limbs and my first born child to avoid doing). It turns out he's actually from just down the road from where I live, back in the UK, in the town of Brixham, Devon. This, incidentally and to my great amusement is where my absolute khazi of a secondary school, King Arthur's Community School in Wincanton, Somerset sent us for 4 days to get rid of us, getting us to live in some really rather dilapidated, mouldy, smoke stained cabins to expel some energy and teenage angst. But all we did was sneak out, running around the campsite until the early hours of the morning, getting cigarettes off the employees and committing some serious house invasion on the more targetable other students, picking them up and placing them in hedges, living up to the nature of the true British youth. Anyway, it's nice to have a fellow Southerner out in Argentina with me, who understands my, evidently, regional sense of humour and also enjoys talking in an exaggerated local accent when being sarcastic about something (an affectation that has earned me some extremely odd looks and awkward silences in some social circles, the humourless bastards!). He's is also the most fantastic skier I have ever had the pleasure to see and be taught by. You wouldn't expect it, but as soon as he clicks on those little, white skis, he radiates an infectious energy that is only enhanced by his wonderful, fluid and energetic skiing style. On our first day skiing with him, we and all the rest of the mountain were thoroughly put to shame as he cut fluid and perfect lines across the mountain, rising and falling with impeccable grace.

In the days that we have had the gift of his instruction so far, his influence can be seen in every single approach of our technique and attitude. In fact, I enjoy the sport even more than before, feeling an addition to the fluidity of my own skill and even beginning to feel that I too, may, one day be one of those people that others watch ski by as they sit high above on the lofty (and bloody incompetent) chairlifts observing the more able skiers as they glide down the mountain, creating the most wonderful and enviable lines as they dominate the pistes. The arrival of Alex has not been the only blessing of late. We are also being graced by the absence of cloud and high wind, replaced with the subsequent presence of the sun! This means that, finally, we are able to enjoy the full view from the top of Cerro Catedral, which is the most gigantic, breathtaking view that I or any of my fellow skiers have ever seen. However, I wont be uploading any photos of it any time soon because due to its enormity and grandeur, it is impossible to satisfactorily capture within a feeble camera lens. Which is immensely frustrating, because, believe me, I've tried!

Also, due to the amount of time we have free (a point of annoyance amongst the group, considering the brochure neglected to mention the amount of cabin fever that would be included in the course), we've all gotten a bit bored, and so three of us decided that we should just, you know, climb a mountain. We got this out of the way one afternoon and unfortunately entrusted Mark with path finding duties (well it wasn't so much of an entrusting, more of a duty that he forced upon himself, which, we would have been more than happy to swipe off his hammy, hunched shoulders) and quickly found ourselves edging across a steep slope of scree, holding on by our fingernails to something with the strength and consistency of play dough trying not to fall down a ravine onto some very sharp rocks. Which made us all very happy and contented with our decision to allow ourselves to end up in this predicament. A considerable amount of time later we had decided to stop following Mark, in favour of following a very moth-eaten dog that seemed to look like he knew what he was doing and ended up somewhere near the top (above the snowline, which means we definitely were not giving up) before we had to turn around, in order to time our descent to end before nightfall. After some very aggressive snowball fights and getting up close and personal with some condors that I tried and failed to photograph competently, we decided it was time to call it quits and that we would tackle Cerro Ventana another day. Being of a lazy and adolescent disposition, we decided that as soon as it became possible (and not completely lethal) we would just fling ourselves (equipped with ski poles, to look professional) down the mountain and to try and jump down as many dangerously high things as possible. We filmed it, fell over a lot and came down a lot quicker than your average mountaineer. Sir Edmund Hillary would have stood in a jealous rage wishing he'd done the same in his youth.

So as the week continues we continue to live in paranoia of our continued assessments for our level 1 exams, pretending to be studying very hard and to have given up all our nasty habits. Meanwhile, the local people in the poorer suburbs of Bariloche have been rioting, meaning that it's an absolute bugger to get a taxi (I know I'm such a tourist, but we must all get around you know!) because they haven't got enough food. Well that would be the second time we've been here, and last time, the police ended up killing people which resulted in a lot of burnt out cars and unusual concentration of Molotov cocktails being hurled about the place. Which is always nice for your very pathetic, very British looking foreigner to wander about in like some kind of semi-retarded sheep. Oh well, Im sure someone will be paid off and the black market will do it's job, just about feeding the poor and giving the rich people iPhones and cocaine.

And look at this link, Alex's blog. http://worldclassskiing.wordpress.com/. Lovely chap. Plus, there's a photo of the back of my head on there too.

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.