2011 retro

So I guess this is my round-up of the year in retrospect. And I tell you, it has been one crazy ass year. I had love and heartbreak. I met new family members and lost two people very dear to me. I had the scariest five weeks of my life. I saw all four of my closest friends who live in four different countries on three different continents. I visited my sixth of seven continents. I visited 11 different countries on five different continents and fell in love with two new cities and one new country. I visited Scandanavia (finally). I went to the end of the world. I did a full loop around the world. I travelled with one of my best friends. I watched the New York Yankees play the Minnesota Twins at Yankee Stadium. I bought a MacBook Air. I let the little things go. I caught up with old friends, reconnected with two VERY old friends and made new friends from all over the world. I watched two sets of friends get married. I made a new lifelong friend whom I adore. I lived in New Zealand. I climbed two glaciers, climbed the steepest street in the world (again), whitewater rafted, climbed a volcano, slid down a volcano on my butt, repelled down an 85m waterfall, ziplined 130m off the ground and paraglided. I hit and landed my first ever jump on a snowboard. I fulfilled a 21-year goal and snowboarded a whole run in a bikini… twice. I did the Tongariro Crossing. I worked for a total of four and a half months. I got the drunkest I’ve ever been in my life. I had my first American Thanksgiving. I touched Pierre Bouvier (again). I saw My Chemical Romance live. I found that I learnt enough Spanish in 7 weeks (just by listening and Googling) to make jokes. I saw Cirque du Soleil. I drank mate, Fernet and a New York egg cream and ate lomo a lo pobre, calzones rotos, choripan, chorillana, alfajores, an Argentinian hot dog, a New York hot dog, New York pizza, New York cheesecake, New York strip steak, a pastrami sandwich and a corn dog. I had a 79 hour end-to-end journey on 1 bus, 7 planes, 2 car rides and 1 airport shuttle. I survived a 39.5 hour bus-ferry-bus journey. I had very sad times and very happy times. I spent a lot of time with my family. I had the best year of my life… so far. 

2012 better bring it. 

27 days ago

boozing in Bariloche

Last night we (me, Kat, Jelle, JP and Vanessa) head to Antares for a
nice sit down drink then we lost Kat to a warm bed and went to Konna
then Malabar where we found the basement after way too long.

Vanessa’s throat was playing up so we went back upstairs and got to
watch two people trying to lick each others face off in the corner,
and not in the food way. Blurgh.

Just when you think I’m too old to be having late nights it’s 5am and
we’re chatting in the hostel kitchen.

Then when I finally head up to bed I opened the door to the dorm to
find the guy from the bunk above mine standing in the doorway, “Oh
shit!” I whispered. And then he shushed me! No, “I’m sorry for scaring
you”… no, he fricken shushed me! Annoying!!!

54 days ago

making more new friends

Last night I stayed up chatting to a Dutch guy (whose name I now know to be Jelle) until 2-ish and this morning I met a couple from French Canada. Jelle ended up heading to Rapanui in search of good coffee and Kat, JP and I ended up following him there leaving Vanessa at the hostel to recover from sickness.

This time I passed on the ice cream and opted for a frappuccino which
was less sweet but still tasty.

Tonight we had yet another asado. Sadly I had another disappointing
piece of meat so didn’t finish it all but we went out for drinks which
made it all the more fun.

55 days ago

reggaeton!

Most of today was spent in bed trying to feel better before our
stretching class and reggaeton class. It worked though coz I made it
to both and man am I glad I did! Reggaeton was so much fun even if I
kept mucking all the moves up, haha.

56 days ago

the lurgy

What a day to be ill. After heading out last night for a happy hour
beer – who has happy hour from midnight to 1am?! – I came back and
went to bed. And woke up ill. It feels like what I had almost exactly
a year ago in Malaysia so I’m hoping it’s a 24 hour thing. And of
course I didn’t want to miss out on Body Combat so I went along and
just took it easy. I told Charly beforehand that I wasn’t feeling well
so he didn’t go too hard on me.

57 days ago

kicking and screaming class

The best thing we could’ve done today we did. We went to a Body Combat class and decided to extend our stay here until the 9th.

The class was just as I remembered and the instructor, Charly, was
awesome. He even asked if we preferred the class in English or
Spanish. Spanish was fine with me and I kept up just fine. When I said
I was from New Zealand he did the “we’re not worthy” motion… gotta
love Les Mills classes being made in NZ!

58 days ago

I’m on a boat!

Tourist-y things always seem to have us dragging our sleepy butts out
of bed at ridiculous hours of the morning. Yesterday was a 7am alarm… it turns out that both me and Kat were playing snooze chicken with each other without even realising it. We eventually woke up and got ready to catch our bus to the port.

The lakes

Setting off from Puerto Pañuelo we boarded the catamaran through Lago
Nahuel Huapi. It was cold and windy outside but nice and toasty
inside. The boat trip was only about an hour and a half and we docked
in Puerto Blest.

Lago Frías

We had the option to take a boat trip out to Lago Frías for $80 but we
passed on that and opted to walk the 3km to get there.

Whereas Lago Nahuel Huapi was really blue, Lago Frías was really green.

We head back and got a hot chocolate from the restaurant and it was
pretty much time to get back on the boat (after taking a few photos,
of course).

Back to Bariloche

The trip back was actually warm and not windy at all. We sat outside
for the majority of the time which was nice except for the people
insisting on holding up pieces of bread and crackers for the seagulls
to eat. I’m surprised we didn’t get pooped on… ick, birds.

Empanadas

We got back to the hostel in plenty of time to help Pablo make empanadas.

We made two types: one with cheese, tomato and oregano and one with
MEAT! The meat one had minced beef, garlic, onions, tomatoes, olives,
spring onions, hard boiled egg… I think that’s it.

In between the preparation we played with Emma who is still so smiley
which always helps you feel less like a monster when you deal with
babies!

Flor came in to show us the intricate art of folding the empanadas up.
Just when I thought I was going okay with it Tom (an Aussie guy who is
here with his girlfriend) came in and completely kicked my ass. His
empanadas were SO pretty!!

After they were baked we tucked into them with some wine and got
really full and nicely happy.

Of course I brought up “You Don’t Mess With The Zohan” and asked the
Israeli guy if he’d seen it. And then we proceeded to reenact the
whole movie for Kat.

Then we went back to Konna for some drinks and found a dog under our
table. I can now tell you that if you are a little tipsy and you are
speaking to a guy who speaks Hebrew as a first language and you have
“You Don’t Mess With The Zohan” fresh in your mind you start laughing
at him and to question him about whether he’s putting the accent on or
not… he wasn’t. Oops!

58 days ago

Cerro Campanario & Circuito Chico

Today we took a break from the eating and took a bus out to Cerro
Campanario and walked the 30 minutes to the top as opposed to getting
the $50 chairlift up. Pablo had warned us it was steep… it was
steep.

I’m not usually one for pretty scenery but it was amazing once we got
to the top. Just looking out at the lakes made me wish I’d done the
parapente today.

Luring small children

We sat eating our healthy lunch of crackers and gomitas when a small
child and his dad came to take photos of the view. We felt so bad for
the dad because he positioned the kid (who was about three years old)
in front of the gorgeous view, went back to take a photo and the kid
just starts pointing at me and my bag of lollies. I held the bag out
to offer him some and felt a little bit like a predator luring small
children with a bag of sweets. He toddled over and I gave him some
lollies to which he said, “Gracias!” So cute!

The hills are alive, with the sound of… meowing

For some reason on the walk down we started singing “Trouble” (one of
the many theme tunes for this trip) then we got on to meowing out
various songs from the Sound Of Music.

Last night the Israeli guy we had drinks with caught us meowing the
Sound Of Music in our room and I tried to explain by saying, “Oh, we
were just singing songs from the Sound Of Music as cats.” He replied
with, “Yeah, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Sounded about
right.

Pro tip: don’t try and negotiate a steep, downhill, sand-covered track
while pissing yourself singing songs from the Sound Of Music as cats.
You will most likely trip and near-injure yourself.

Note: I’m 99.9% sure that Kat and I are the only people who found this amusing!

It’s an easy ride

We walked the 800m to the bike rental place and got shown the route,
signed some forms and got fitted with an orange reflector, helmet and
bike.

Kat’s been wanting to practise her Spanish more so we got the guy to
do it all in Spanish. Thanks to context I got most of what was going
on. Anything I missed I knew Kat could fill me in on later.

We set off on a ride that was meant to be easy bar a small uphill
section. It wasn’t easy.

We ended up walking uphill a lot and I’m sure my legs will be dead
tomorrow. Due to the uphill there was also a lot of downhill. After
seeing a horrifying bike accident on Nat Geo last night I rode the
back brakes the whole way down!

We decided to drop the bikes off 7km short of the end (which was an
option). Apparently the last 7km of the 27km route was uber packed
with traffic so we decided that living was a more attractive option -
heading back on the bus we saw that it was really bus and with no bike
lane we knew the drop off was a good option!

It was only an extra $15 to drop the bike off there and we got a 20%
discount at the start anyway so all in all we spent $95 on the bikes.

Food!

Back at the hostel we cooked up our veges which had sat waiting for us
and then caught up on some geeky stuff. Pablo popped his head into our
room and asked how we’d feel about helping make empanadas tomorrow and
then having an asado the day after… ah, it sounds awesome!!!
Argentina just keeps getting better and better.

60 days ago

mexican food and ice cream

After going to bed at 2-ish I stupidly woke up at 8:30am.

After just fruit for breakfast we went to a place for lunch that
boasted “Authentic Mexican food”… sure… we’ll see if that pans
out. It didn’t.
What the restaurant did provide was two awesome walls in front of
which we took some posey photos which now serve as our Facebook
profile pics.

The saving grace to our meal was the dessert: apple crumble with
cinnamon ice cream. Drool.

Rapanui – take two

At 18:30 we head out again to Rapanui and got a waffle basket each
containing three scoops of ice cream. I had lemon meringue pie, triple
tenacion and chocolate with dulce de leche and meringue.

We had planned on having our yummy veges for dinner but after three
scoops of ice cream in a waffle bowl topped with chocolate sauce and a waffle heart… you just don’t feel like eating. So we’ve been sitting
in the common areas with our noses in our laptop/iPhone in an attempt
to be social. So far the most social I’ve been is cuddling Emma, the
baby, for a few minutes. And now it’s time for bed!

61 days ago

’tis the Argentinian way

Feeling sad that I couldn’t drink the booze in Argentina we went to the supermarket and I bought a bottle of dulce de leche liqueur. Dulce de leche seemed to be all the rage here so why not try the booze form? I definitely wasn’t going to buy the bottle of huevo (egg) flavoured liqueur!

We asked Pablo if we could extend our stay for longer here and now we’re going to be here for a week. Bariloche sucks another set of travellers in.

Flan!

He also recommended a good restaurant to us: El Fondo Del Tio

We walked down to the restaurant where Kat ordered the Milanesa and I ordered the menu del dia, having no idea what “peceto” was but knowing that it came with puré (mashed potatoes).

It turns out that “peceto” is roasted eyeround beef. It came in a yummy sauce and we go a side order of fries to go with our meals. I ended up dipping my fries into the gravy and smothering it in mashed potato… I didn’t even care how much of a piggy I looked!

Pablo had also recommended the flan for dessert which we got to share. When we looked at that time it was 2:50pm (the kitchen closed at 3pm) and I had a food Tourette’s moment where I turned my head and said, “Flan!”

When we ordered I’m not sure if the waiter asked if we wanted dulce de leche OR cream on the side or whether he was telling us that it came with both… in any case we replied like two fat kids with, “Yes.”

The amount of cream and dulce de leche actually equalled the size of the flan. It was so delicious and after a “Beerfest” moment we decided to go back to the hostel and make a card for Jeff.

Siesta time

There is something so satisfyingly wrong about having a massive meal then having a two hour nap.

Our only saving grace was that on the walk to the restaurant we found a gym that does Body Combat. And classes are only $20!

Rapanui

We finally hit up the chocolate shop for just a few goodies. We settled on a white chocolate cherry piece for Kat, a nutty chocolate covered thing for me and a brownie con limón to share. 

We took our goodies to the lake and scarfed them down along with some mandarins because the chocolate was just a little too much. 

Earlier in the day I had said how I couldn’t appreciate beautiful scenery… but the landscape in front of us was amazing. The mountains looked like they were painted on. 

The Argentinian way

We wanted to go out but bars don’t get busy until after midnight. We got chatting to an Israeli guy at the hostel and went out for a few drinks. We were so tired that we were back in bed by 2. We’ll try again another day. 

61 days ago