Monika and Remo

The couple I met in Talca who spent the first part of their honeymoon trying not to pee in a steaming hot vehicle on their way to Bolivia. We hung out in Chile together, went on walks, drove part of the country, sat in hot springs, climbed a volcano and ate a LOT. I’ll see you again real soon.

Bolo

Bolo was my tour guide in Pucón who took me canopying and canyoning. During the canyoning he took me into water so cold that I yelled, “No mames, guey!” at him. He replied by laughing at me. Fricken awesome.

Pablo, Flor and Emma

There are no words for how cool this family is. Pablo and Flor are the most amazing couple who run Hostel Achalay in Bariloche, Argentina. When I was stuck for what to do after my flights got cancelled in Chile I called up Pablo who not only pointed me in the right direction for land transportation but put me and Kat up for the night even though there was no room left in the hostel (and then didn’t even charge us). Add baby Emma to the mix who I actually got to see grow during the duration of my trip and you have my favourite family ever. I’m so glad I got to spend Christmas 2011 with them. I’ll be back to Bariloche really soon. Only next time it will be in winter!

Amit

My absolute favourite Israeli I met on this trip (and I met a LOT). We bonded in Bariloche over You Don’t Mess With The Zohan, discussions about the first CD we ever bought and he even attempted to turn me into a human empanada after a night out boozing. Disco disco, good good. I’ll pop out and buy that snowboard for you now.

Charly and the gym girl

Even more people that I met in Bariloche… When I joined the gym for a week I met my favourite Les Mills instructor yet. Charly was enthusiastic and friendly and even spoke English. He was also the person who ingrained the word “izquierda” into my brain – a word I could not, for the life of me, remember. I never did get gym girl’s name or photo but I will always remember her as the girl with really cute gym hair and make up.

Amir and Wilkie

I met Amir over toast at our hostel in Ushuaia. We had the generic hello-nice-to-meet-you chats then ended up sitting at the same table. Then we ran into each other again later on that day and spent the rest of the day together. I just happened to meet Amir and Wilkie the day before they set off for Antarctica. Sometimes you meet people who you instantly click with – that was these guys. Wilkie was throwing popcorn at me for insulting him within minutes of me meeting him. We had “in jokes” within hours. I loved them so much that I was SO close to dropping $4000USD on an 11-day trip to Antarctica just so I could go with them. I settled for second best and changed my plans completely to meet them in Buenos Aires for new year’s eve. New year’s eve was amazing and me and Wilkie (and a girl he met at the airport in Ushuaia) ended up dancing until sun-up in the streets of Buenos Aires. I owe you guys some squiggly Gmail drawings!

Christiane

My German roomie in Ushuaia. We walked, we talked, we ate, we hung out, we took photos, we looked at Mario with his shirt off and smothered him with kisses. What else can I say?

Mario

Mario… how could I not love this guy?! He was mine and Christiane’s roomie in Ushuaia. In Buenos Aires he had been put in a dorm room with seven other guys and in Ushuaia he was stuck with just three girls. He said it was his reward. He made fun of me for sounding like someone was shooting lasers when I spoke Cantonese/Mandarin and made fun of every cool story I had to tell… “So I met this Spanish couple… from Spain… and they spoke Spanish…”. Basically we made fun of each other for a few days at the end of the world. Good times.

Martin/Jason/Tincho

I don’t know how he did it but by saying absolutely nothing this guy made me go rafting (even though I outright refused) and on a pub crawl! We met in Bariloche the day that he did his parapente and hung out for the next few days then met up again in Buenos Aires. We walked up Cerro Otto together where we talked about Steve Jobs, flashpacking and the selfish nature of volunteering. We got drunk on our last night in Bariloche and he got the new name “Jason” thanks to his Jason Mraz hat. The best thing about Martin? He wears Atticus clothing too.

Mariana

Mariana was my last roomie in Bariloche. She was the girl who, after seven weeks, finally got me to speak Spanish. On my last night in Bariloche we danced in the hostel, took photos, made fun of Santi and Amit and roamed the streets in search of some kind of night life. Besos, chica.

Agustin

Agustin was the first person I met in Buenos Aires. We chat for ages and bonded over our love of Mexico and Mexican food. But what makes me love this man more is that he agreed to act as the boyfriend of a cruise ship bartender to freak the heck out of Wilkie. The act included making a scene in a busy square in Buenos Aires on new year’s eve and shouting out, “Que puta!!!” Big ups to this man!

Mai

My Canadian roomie who took a shit-ton of photos of me looking confused in front of landmarks all over Buenos Aires. She also does the best Vietnamese nail salon lady voice in the world and makes a mean egg roll!

Josh

The guy who thought I stole his power adapter. But not just that. This guy was my intermittent best friend in Buenos Aires. He fed me sausage butties, pizza and steak – when I say “fed” I mean “let me steal”. We talked smack and laughed at inappropriate jokes. I got him to actually leave his sanctuary that was the hostel. We watched The Inbetweeners together, went on a first date with another girl together, drank vodka together, ate Italian/French food together and talked to Mormons together. I’ll see you in Canada, me mate.

I would have been happy to have just met one cool person on this trip but I got fricken lucky and met all of these people. You guys are all effing awesome and you made my trip!!!

2012 better bring it. 

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!!!

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.

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!

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!

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.

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!