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.

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.