Wine country - done the professional way

MENDOZA, ARGENTINA - 18th March 2010

Visitors to Chez Rodrigues back in the Garden of England usually can't help but notice our fridge-freezer unit - not so much because of its no-doubt fascinating heat-exchange properties as because of the hundreds of magnets that, one by one, are removing any evidence of said fridge ever having been white. Although the oldest of them dates back to the same Canada trip mentioned back in Iguazú, in took another 7 years for another to join it - specifically, in the form of an inanely grinning Dartmoor sheep. Anyway, through some strange twist of fate, our 2004 family holiday to Denver and Colorado saw us return to Sevenoaks with a barrage of magnets from all over the state, and thus began what has subsequently become something of a family addiction. The last count of the magnets (and indeed the only one to have ever taken place) was by that young firebrand Adam Dowson* back in September 2009 and put the total at some 180... so it's fair to say the effort has been taken to heart. It is equally fair to assume - correctly - that the number above will be significantly burgeoned by the last five and a half months of my globetrotting.

Then, of course, there's my epic keyring collection - somewhat retired nowadays (on cost grounds) but still made up of over 400 keyrings representing anything and everything from all over the world, all on a single 6kg bunch. And there's my coin collection, with a monetary value probably close to £250; my 20-strong collection of Hard Rock Cafe t-shirts... the list (of general crap) goes on...

Basically, I've always liked to collect things (or, as my Mum would say, I'm a chronic hoarder), and this feature is extended in all its glory to passport stamps. I love all aspects of travelling, but one that is always guaranteed to register a thump of satisfaction is the thud of another travellers' badge of honour. And thanks to our excellent travel route that presently involves diving back into Argentina, our last bus journey added a couple of new additons to that collection... well worth the 3am wake up/get out/wait around for an hour and a half before going anywhere routine at the border (or not).

One way or another, I was totally zonked as we found ourselves taxiing around from one hostel - fully occupied - to another at 7am on a fresh Mendoza morning. The second, Hostel Lao, had said it was fully booked on Hostelworld (online booking website), but with luck for once on our side we managed to snag ourselves a couple of dorm beds that had become available overnight. I don't think either of us appreciated quite how lucky we were, until a few hours later when we found ourselves part of an 11-person crew heading over to the Maipú district on the edge of the city to tour Mendoza's famous wineries by bicycle. Several of said gang had attempted to book in Hostel Lao in advance, but because of insane demand (no doubt thanks to its 95% approval rating on Hostelworld) had been forced to spend a few nights in other places before they could move in... leaving us feeling pretty damn smg about just rocking up and getting beds!

Long delays arrested our departure, but armed with 9 of "Coco Bike Rentals'" finest frames and one 2-man tandem bike, our convoy finally took to the road at about 1.30pm and we made our first stop at an excellent artesenal beer garden - the sort of place the word "kotching" was invented for (see right - HT: Taylor Gill for the photos while mine remain stuck on memory cards). Surrounded by countryside and vineyards, we lounged on sofas and chairs and took our pick of their local brews; after excellent experiences with the stuff in Bariloche and Valpy, I went for the malty cerveza negra ("black beer"), and myself and the 2 others who opted for it were rewarded with what is without doubt one of the best beers I've ever drunk.

Our Anglo-Australo-Yankee crew ended up spending the best part of an hour kotching, but disaster struck when we eventually left - Nick (who we would later discover had spent 3 years of uni in Oxford over the road from us at Christ Church) snagged a puncture on his front tyre. With the boys from Coco rentals happy to drive over with a replacement bike at any stage, discovering the puncture earlier would have been perfect - our waiting around for the swap to take place would have perfectly co-incided with chilling with our brewskis. Instead, we had a timing nightmare - not enough time left to hang around waiting, but stuck with a slow mover when trying to gas our way over to the main business of tasting (/generally drinking) el vino.

Desperate times call for desperate measures (how many times has The Daily Rod featured those very words), and 5 minutes later we found ourselves ploughing down the main road in a motley bike crew the likes of which have (probably) never graced a road before. Much to the amusement of all the schoolkids we passed, leading the pack was the tandem bike; Luke the Aussie leading with Nick, holding his stricken bike, comically sat at the rear (see below). Following behind came yours truly, more than a shade knackered from the added weight I was propelling - sat on the mesh above my rear whell was Kim (Aussie) - Luke's girlfriend who had been turfed off hear rear tandem seat to make way for the Nick/bicycle combo. This was further followed by a train of gringo cyclists in various levels of undress, and truly must have been a sight to behold.


Various interchanges of bikes were made as we progressed - ultimately Nick and I took turns to cycle the thing in its flat-tyred state - and we eventually rocked up at Mendoza's newest winery where we were supposed to be able to get a good bit. Hot, sweaty, and above all touristy, we traipsed into a restaurant full of suits and shirts and fairly soon afterward sauntered straight back out. A good bite may have been on offer, but its price sure as hell wasn't aimed at your humble backpacker!

We'd passed Bodega Familia di Tomasso - an older, generally better looking winery on our way and were heading back there, but first took the opportunity of a quick tasting at this new place before we left with our collective tails between our legs.

Conoisseur of wine I may not be, but even I can fairly distinguish the fact that a red wine tends to be red, and that a white wine that you can't see any light through is probably not going to be the best one to drink. So what with samples of three pretty mediocre wines coupled with a tasting note explanation straight out of Graeme Le Saux's textbook of stating the bleeding obvious, all in a setting that looked like a pre-fab warehouse had been unceremoniously dumped in a countryside otherwise tastefully dotted with century-old wineries, and you had some pretty unimpressed, hungry people leaving the place at what was by now about 3.30pm.

Thankfully, Bodega di Tomasso - one of the oldest of the Maipú wineries - was excellent and the "daily special" lasagne went down a treat, all the better washed down with the house Malbec; more of which was sampled on the tour and tasting that followed our collective meal. Details of the workings of wineries are best heard about should you bother to visit one rather than here; suffice to say I was duly impressed and Anna and I purchased ourselves a nice bottle of Malbec to enjoy at a later stage.

A long ride back to Coco Rentals was extended further when we realised we had time to visit an artesenal chocolate/jam/sauce/absinthe producing place on the other side of Coco. We got to try a bit of everything, but while I can't speak for everyone, I'm fairly certain the boys paid their money purely for the absinthe at the end. It was suitably disgusting - as anything of 75% alcoholic volume is obviously going to be - but there was no questioning that it had to be done (and also helped, in terms of Dutch courage, in securing a photo of a local Argentine copper Backing the Bid).

Fast forward a few hours, and I was hungry enough to eat a horse, so joined Nick and fellow wine tour cyclists Tom (19-year-old West Country lad on a pre-uni gap year) and Taylor (American girl) who were heading off to a highly recommended steak house. Anna didn't join us as she wasn't feeling hungry enough to justify the cost, which was a shame as Don Mario served up the best bit of meat I've had in Argentina (which is seriously saying something after El Desnivel in BA). It always entertains me eating with new people - I tend to order fairly outrageously large dishes as I need them to fill the bottomless pit of a stomach I seem to possess, but given my relatively diminutive size these orders are often met with great scepticism. Tonight was no different - I went for the 600g Chateaubriand while the others went with 450g options, and when the monster fist of meat you see on your right turned up a little later, either Nick or Tom were on the verge agreeing a bet on me to finish all my plate. Shame, because it was absolutely destroyed, but with steak that good I don't really know where my limit would be.

Back in Hostel Lao, a fun evening has passed by with various drinking games and general banter with the cyclists (many of whom don't actually have beds here), wrapping up an absolutely first rate day back to Argentine territory.

* congratulations are in order on the new job!

Valpy: the colourful slum

VALPARAÍSO, REGION V, CHILE - 17th March 2010

Self-proclaimed as the cultural capital of Chile, Valparaíso is definitely one of a kind. Walking around shortly after we arrived night-before-last, it was a city of shadows - cobbled streets lined with dilapidated buildings with walls of corregated iron, each hidden away in another pocket of darkness carved out among the imposing hills that rise eternally upward from the city's Pacific shoreline.

Thanks to LPG's proclamations that "the bohemian among us love it" and "the shutter happy simply tremble at the city's picturesque possibilities", Anna was well in love with the place long before we arrived at its messy bus terminal, and was duly gushing with bohemian (apparently) delight in the mish-mash mess of graffiti-clad walls, dirty streets, and passajes (alleyways) meandering dubious paths up the steep hills - not to mention the sense of being somewhere "so poetic". I don't really buy into pre-determination of places, and my first impressions were of a city that may be fairly cool, but objectively speaking had dog shit on every path every 5 metres, had drunks stumbling around dark alleys whose cobbled stones were lined with broken glass bottles and general trash, where the walls, shutters, statues or anything else were covered in crappy graffiti tags, and where very second street corner stank of human urine. It was 9pm, but in many ways it felt like 3am on a Friday night in one of the shadier areas of Bristol.

With aimless post-arrival wandering achieved, dinner was another excellent affair - SaborColor was scouted (being one of the few places in the vicinity of the hostel that was actaully open), and served up a delectable platter for two featuring pork ribs, beef in some excellent sauce, speciality empanadas and vegetable skewers; washed down (in my case) with the excellent local "cerveja artesanal" - Volcanes Bock. Happy stomach.

The following day (yesterday) was Valpy's* opportunity to prove itself (only to me, of course - Anna was already fronting the Valpo Cheerleaders brigade), and to be fair it has done a pretty good job. For sure, there's still shit of every street, and the multitude of cables that run above every road have about as much visual appeal as said shit, but there's no denying that this place is absolutely out of the ordinary. Ostensibly a port town, it thirived in the late 10th century as the leading port along the Cape Horn/Pacific shipping route, particularly as the Californian Gold Rush gathered steam. Valpy's steam was fairly spectacularly wiped out in 1906, however, when a whopping earthquake decimated the city, and salt was rubbed into the raw wounds 8 years later when those crafty lads up in Panama opened up their eponymous canal. Valpy remains a port town though, and we passed a hell of a long time down at Muelle Prat watching the busy working of the container terminal shipyard.

The real story in Valpy, however, is its artistic heart. Its building may be falling to pieces, but tens of thousands of multi-coloured facades make quite an impression when lined up one behind the other rising up a dramatic hillside; their dilapidation, if anything, adds to it. And the walls are definitely covered in graffiti, but whereas last night's soujourn offered prize views of the sor tof crappy "tags" that pollute railways lines across Europe, today offered a whole different world - phenomenal murals stretching across entire walls, between street furniture, and all combined in one place to form the Museo al Cielo Abierto - "open air museum". You have to take a step back and think about what is actually going on - you are on an average street in a city, surrounded by houses and residential buildings, and here all around you is an art gallery of the highest calibre - on the walls! It is mental - a sense compounded by the ever-present stunning view over the city as you are, as always, atop of a whopping big hill that just goes up and up and up...! Amazing.

From one art form to another, and a further walk up the hill brought us to La Sebastiana - one of the many houses of Chilean poet extraordinaire and Nobel Laureate Pablo Neruda. I've known of the guy since I was about 10, thanks to that good old source of all knowledge The Simpsons, but in the decade or so that has followed I'd be lying if I said I'd actually read a word of his work. Anna, on the other hand, has been known to cry when reading "Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair" - Neruda's most noted work; it doesn't take a genius to conclude that she was going into La Sebastiana without quite the same objectivity as your average pleb (in this case, yours truly).

Objectively speaking though, it's gotta be said that Neruda knew how to design a house. For sure, he was clearly a rich jerk with too much money for his own good, but he spent his money on some impressively cool crap. The house - perched on a hilltop - overlooks the whole of colourful Valpy below; the living room, decked with individually chosen chairs, tables, paintings of Kings and Queens and all sorts of other junk, offers a spectacular view out to the Pacific below and, as informed by the excellent audio tour provided, was the scene of annual New Year's Eve gatherings for the best possible view of Valpy's renowned fireworks display. Better still was upstairs - the bedroom offered the same view, but in incredible panorama from the expanse of Neruda's huge bed where he and his wife (one of several) spent their time. Best of all, the top floor study room - again offering the view, but with walls adorned with photos, drawings, all kinds of random crap and - my favourite thing in the whole house - a early sixteenth century map of the Americas, featuring "the island of California", totally missing the existence of Texas, and generally adding and subtracting various landforms at will. A great piece of stash.

Dinner that night was a fairly low key affair - it probably involved meat and beer - but definitely worth mentioning was lunch at "Royal J Cruz" - a fantastic little place hidden up a little alleyway off the main street in town. The food - a traditional chorrillana - consisted of a mahoosive plate piled with fries, covered in spicy pork, fried onions and egg (conservatively described in the LPG as "mountainous"), but of real note was the place itself: every piece of it, from walls to tables to tablecloths and windows, was covered in grafittied messages, photos of patrons, scribbles, doodles - anything and everything. I've never seen anything like it, and doubt I'll ever see the like again. Perhaps a photo of it will appear on this blog one day though...

Today we went out separate ways - as always I took the opportunity to walk and walk and walk and ended up atop of the western end of the Valpy hill at the Museo del Mar Lord Cochrane. Cochrane was a British naval general who helped the Chileans oust the Spaniards back in the day, and had a big role to play in capturing Valparaíso, so is generally loved in these parts (so much so that Neruda even stuck a painting of him up in La Sebastiana). Sadly, and in total contradiction to the opening hours posting on the wall outside the entrance, the museum was closed - but all was not lost as the courtyard offered the best views of Valpy I'd yet discovered, and also randomly met an English chap called Kevin who joined me on a bit of a trek over to Iglesia Matriz - the site of four churches since 1559. The most recent of them doesn't look like much on the outside, but inside it's as impressive a place as you'd care to see - full of colour and ornately decorated chapels and altars.

Time in Valpo is short, however, and tonight it's off back to Argentina on an overnight bus to Mendoza. On reflection, Frederica, a Swiss girl staying in our hostel room, summed up the place fairly well - "a little rotten, but charming".


* Allegedly, Valparaiso's proper nickname is "Valpo" - but "Valpy" seems infinitely more appropriate for its ridiculous nature.

Blog breather

In case you're wondering if I've dropped off a cliff (which wasn't that far from happening) or generally given up on the blog, rest assured a whole swathe of South American stories (including the aforementioned dicing with cliff faces) are written and will eventually hit cyber space.

Unfortunately, these "written" stories are written in the "old school" sense of the world, and presently reside on various tattered pages of a school notebook I picked up in Mangalore. As said notebook tends not to be on my person on a regular basis, and as finding time to get on the internet is becoming progressively harder (read: impossible) as time runs out on my travels, enacting the transfer from ink-stained paper to LED-framed electronic images is proving damn difficult.

Give it just a few more days, however, and The Daily Rod will be issuing stories (albeit backdated ones) faster than David Cameron's twitter feed.

UPDATE:
- Read all about Valparaíso here, or Mendoza here.

Off on a tangent

In the interests of full disclosure, readers should be aware that what follows has very little to do with travelling.

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The fact that The Daily Mail newspaper continues to exist - and indeed remains one the UK's best two circulating publications - is a constant source of vile repulsion. I have nothing against free speech and people saying whatever they want in print, but what gets me about The Mail is that some people read the half-baked crap they publish and not only accept it at face value, but actually allow it to shape their views.

To fill in non-British readers (or indeed uninformed UK-based ones), The Daily Mail is the most negative, pessimistic, cynical and generally unenlightend daily newspaper in the UK. Flicking through its first 15 pages or so is likely to provide you with a what's what of everything that could possibly be wrong with the world - you'll struggle to find an article that is't either blaming the Government for something, young people for something else, Europe or the USA for pretty much everything and, well let's not even get started on The Daily Mail's opinions about immigrants.

It would be fairly easy (and ironic) for me to blame someone or something for the existence of the above, but that would of course represent a regress to the cynical methods of you-know-what. And, more to the point, the reality of the situation is far more complex. For sure, there'll be a few lunatics around for whom The Daily Mail is like the Daily Word of God (and probably have a lot in common with viewers of Glenn Beck or FOX News), but (hopefully) most of those millions of daily readers actually have functioning brains that can think for themselves. No, instead there is another trait going on - one that may well be found to a greater extent in the UK than anywhere else. It is the love of bad news.

For some reason that I've never quite managed to get my head around, bad news sells. And thus creates a self-perpetuating cycle of journoboys seeking, exaggerating, and indeed inventing (as in the memorable case of slimeball-extraordinaire Piers Morgan) bad news with the knowledge that the psycho'masochistic tendecnies of the inately cynical British populace will lap up their garbage. The Daily Mail is, therefore, and tragic as it may be, just giving people what they want.

So the big question is what the hell any of this has got to do with travelling or South America. In many respects, very little - as previously mentioned The Daily Rod has occasionally diverted from being a travel-based blog to a platform for my various opinions on the world. However, on this occasion there is a vague ulterior reason - prompted by a couple of messages from blog reasons, the relatively simple realisation about giving people what they want dawned on yours truly. And more specifically, it applied to this very blog.

When writing for other people to read, the main aim is to be interesting. By and large, "interesting" implies "out of the ordinary" - something that is no more true than describing interactions between human beings. When normal day-to-day interactions are a succession of perfectly happy events, they make pretty dull reading... whereas the odd bit of conflict is somewhat different...

So - and in anticipation of upcoming blogs as well as in retrospect of previous ones - rest assured that Anna and I having quantum differences in outlook and world view doesn't equate to collapsing friendships... yet!!!

Overrated earthquakes

SANTIAGO, CHILE - 15th March 2010

While Anna sits typing a series of what seem fairly epic emails in response to various well-wishers, I find myself sitting on a sofa writing (in the "traditional" pen-and-paper sense of the word) a blog entry that is unlikely to appear online for a good two weeks, what with The Daily Rod currently extolling tales from Sao Paulo's concrete jungle (EDIT: turns out 2 weeks was optimistic). Nevertheless, memories are best penned when fresh, and the metronomic pitter-patter of a keyboard being incessantly barraged by fingertips is surprisingly relaxing on the mind.

So, we are in Santiago - something that was surprisingly close to not happening at all. It would be understandable to assume that this was for some earthquake-related reason, what with the world's media jumping at every opportunity to present a situation that is fully under control as a rabid cesspit of lawless carnage and terrifying destruction. Indeed, back in Bariloche when we were planning our next steps, we had no idea just how great a non-event the earthquake was in Santiago thanks to its ridiculously earthquake-proof buildings and generally über-developed infrastructure and planning - but at no stage did earthquakes feature in the impressively animated discussions that took place in our Marcopolloinn dorm room in Bariloche 4 days ago. Instead, it was made fairly clear that the capital city of the most developed country in South America was of no interest to Anna, and further proposed that my only reason for wanting to go to there (/here) was because it was the capital. The latter was a particularly interesting form of criticism - I'm not entirely sure how other people view these things, but when a country has a primate city that is also its capital and is located slap bang in the geographic middle of the country... well it seems fairly controversial to ignore it (and that's even before accounting for its history, culture and the fact that "it's a damn cool city" (SM). But of course, that's just me...

Anyway, an hour or so of discussions eventually resolved themselves and, as shaper readers will have gathered from my last blog in Valdivia, we crossed over to Chile and have now made it here.

I'm pretty damn happy we did. Our stay is short - not even 36 hours - but that was never going to be the end of the world as I remain as adament as I was in KL, Australia and New Zealand - the whole "you can't claim to 'know' a city unless you've spent several days there" view is a hunk of bullcrap that is spewed from lazy travellers who can't be bothered to spend a whole day or two walking around and soaking up their surroundings. If you're willing to walk, I have every faith that you can get right under an average sized city's skin in a good day - my 17 hours in KL is more than enough evidence to convince me of that.

Of course, I am no longer on my own so the never-ending-walk paradigm that I'd adopted through the Asia-Pacific has had to be toned down, but we still managed a good 3 and a half hours or so yesterday checking out the Palacio de Bella Artes - half Chilean art and sculptures, half photography and modern art - and getting a fair perspective of the run of the city through the main Avenieda Estado shopping street that discects Plaza de Armas, the city's main square. Not a bad effort, and more than enough to leave a positive impression of the lie of the Santiago landscape - the blend of differing barrios (neighbourhoods), each providing a slightly different offering the the overall city package, is something that works particularly nicely here and, combined with a cool mix of buildings, parks and the usual city-style paraphenalia (the Hanging Gardens of Babylon-esque Jardin Japonese being a particular eye-catcher) gives this city a character that very much meets Señor Marshall's description of "cool".

The walking around caused some tired legs, so a few hours rest were in order before a wander around the Bellavista barrio where our hostel - La Chima - is located. In search of crêpes, we stumbled across "Patio Bellavista", a relatively new development between Pio Nono and Constitucíon (the two main streets of the barrio) that essentially brings together an array of chic eatieries, cafés and generally cool places to eat or hang out, all in a nicely designed plaza area. Perpetually hungry, I got myself a traditional French ham-and-chesse crêpe (complete with what was fantastically termed, in English, "Frenchy dressing"), while Anna bailed on crêpes and instead went for a speciality ice cream cone two scoops - one of watermelon flavour, one "fried bread" flavour...

Whereas Estado had been relatively empty when we'd traversed it earlier in the day, Pio Nono was absolutely teeming come late afternoon - Santiago's "lazy Sundays" in plain evidence. We joined the club with a round of beers, but took it relatively easy as we were being taken out to dinner by Cristian - one of my Dad's colleagues from CVCI who works here in Santiago (and was also behind the potential discounted night's stay in the sweet casino-spa-hotel in Valdivia).

Throughout our time in Santiago, we had been continuously struck by how unaffected the place seemed to be from the mahoosive earthquake that struck Chile a few weeks back. 8.8 on the (new version of the) Richter scale, it was the biggest earthquake anywhere in the world since the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004, and although the focus of the damage was city of Concepción, it was over 8 on the Richter scale in Santiago and displaced the capital a little under one foot to the west. Given that magnitude of the quake, and the insane media hype about the chaos that ensued in its aftermath, you'd expect signs of earthquake-based carnage all over the place - but it couldn't be further from reality. There was basically nothing to suggest anything had happened, and judging from the attitude of the locals, no one seemed particularly perturbed by the prospect of anything more or worse. It was damn impressive - and moreso in the knowledge that for all its development, the UK would grind to an even bigger halt that it managed this winter should an 8+ earthquake hit its fragile shores.

However, the earthquake was going to have one pronounced effect on our time in Santiago, and it came mere seconds before Cristian arrived at our hostel to pick us up. Quick as a flash, everything was plunged into darkness - computers died, lights popped out, and stepping outside it was clear that everywhere in sight was experiencing a power cut. After Cristian turned on the radio, it transpired that everywhere in sight was small fries - 80% of Chile had been plunged into darkness! Dinner plans were, understandably, somewhat uprooted by this turn of events - most restaurants generally require a splattering of electricity to undertake normal service; instead Cristian drove Anna and I to his apartment where we met his wife and his 2 young sons, the latter whom had taken to lighting every candle in the house and placing them on a giant tray. With the fridge conked out as well and no one really having any idea when power would come back, there was a strong danger of some perfectly good champagne getting ruined by going warm - so we passed a couple of hours enjoying champagne and snacks and the excellent company.

Finally, somewhere in the 10.30pm region, areas of Santiago regained power and we went in hunt of anywhere that was open and serving. Where we found was not where Cristian would have wanted to take us, but what with several rounds of drink and a stomach craving food, my bife de lomo steak went down an absolute treat (again, with some rather good pisco sour - apologies to LB). By the time we were back in La Chimba power had returned, but we were out like logs.


Today has been pretty chilled - we're off on a 2-hour bus ride to Valparaiso later so spent the morning enjoying some spectacular views of Santiago (such as that above) from the top of Cerro San Cristóbal, accessed by the century-old funicular railway. Up at the top is a particularly cool chapel - small, but with some awe-inspiring carvings (see below), and, much akin to Rio de Janeiro and Cristo Redentor, a massive statue of the Virgin Mary looking down over the city (see right - the Sun being perfectly placed as a halo). Examination of the dates revealed, to my surprise, that Santiago came up with the idea first - it has stood since the 1920s, whereas Cristo Redentor was consecrated in 1931. Somewhat beside the point though - the important thing was the majesty of the statue and, even more spectacular, the open air amphitheatre underneath it where Mass would be celebrated every weekend. Overlooking the Chilean capital, surrounding by beautiful vegetation in full bloom in the shadow of the glowing white statue of the Virgin Mary, I'm fairly sure it is the coolest setting for Holy Mass you'll ever see (UPDATE: you can now judge for yourself below!).




Anyway, there are another tonne of photos that probably look fairly decent, but what with memory card viruses, pen drives going missing and general photo disasters, who knows if they'll ever be seen by anyone (UPDATE: the photos are safe, and here they are!).

Valdivia - where nothing is as it seems

VALDIVIA, REGION X, CHILE - 13th March 2010

Chile has become the fifth of South America's 13 countries to allow me passage into their territory, but it wasn't quite as plain sailing an experience as I've come to expect - but then again you rarely expect yourself to have to munch through a foot long ham salad sandwich in 90 seconds.

Rocking up at the Chilean border control after a wonderfully scenic ride from Bariloche, passing the Andean lakes and mountains that mark give this part of the world its "Lake District" name, we discovered that mere stamping of passports was only half the story at the Chilean border - these guys are judicious, it seems, when it comes to protecting their agriculture and thus X-ray all baggage entering the country, with anything food-related having to be declared. This included, it seemed, rather large ham sandwiches that had been long-term strategic purchases - bought in Bariloche specifically to appease my never-ending need for food across the 5 hours, change of buses in Osorno, and general hoopla of getting from A to B. The option of throwing the sandwich in the bin was not one that I was willing to even vaguely entertain, so I exited the bus faceplanted inside 12 inches of bread, ham and cheese - must to the amusement of the bus driver, and much to the disapproval of the Chilean customs official. The latter extended his disapproval be refusing to allow me to put any of my hand baggage on the belt until the sandwich was fully eaten - and with the rest of the bus already on the other side standing around waiting, all eyes were on me and my damn mouth. Thankfully, the bread was beautifully soft and the ham and cheese melted in the mouth, but even with this on my side, and aided by pats on the back from our bus driver who clearly appreciated by dilemma a great deal more than the stalwart customs official, it still took some outrageously large mouthfuls to chomp the whole thing down. Whether it was intended as a compliment I'm not sure (in fact, decidedly skeptical), but according to Anna "that last mouthful was the size of a meal".

Anyway, we found our way to Valdivia after a quickfire switch onto a local bus from Osorno - a switch that was almost scuppered by whacky time zones. In theory, Chile is an hour behind Argentina - so I put my clock an hour backward when we crossed the border. However, it turns out that because of last the earthquake from a few weeks back, the Chilean government have postponed the shift away from Daylight Saving Time, meaning that Chile remains 3 hours behind GMT instead of its proper 4. Almost disasterous for us, but all's well that ends well and we were safely lodged in Airesbuenos Hostel by early evening and headed out into the small town to find some grub to eat.

It was at this stage that we started to develop suspicions - suspicions that would only increase - about whether Valdivia was one giant April Fool's Day joke on us, being delivered an antisocial 3 weeks premature. Basically everywhere seemed closed - something we initially put down to being in a country with "normal" eating times (after weeks of outrageously late dinners in Brazil and Argentina) - but when we found ourselves wandering down roads that apparently didn't exist, and right past spots where our (admittedly poorly drawn) map suggested restaurants should have been (but patently were not), the whole situation began to rouse our suspicions.

Eventually we ended up in a nice little pub and I snagged my first taste of pisco - the local spirit brew that Peru and Chile both claim to have invented. Pisco sour, as I had it, is the most commonly drunk form - and went down very nicely with our classic dinner of bife de lomo (steak) and chips.

Over the last few months, I've stayed in a whole host of hostels of various quality - good, bad and ugly and most of the in between. Tucano House in Florianópolis is always gonna take some beating - its 95% approval rating on Hostelworld speaks for itself - but Airesbuenos here in Valdivia is something very special. After returning from dinner, the two of us somewhat sheepishly sat at the computer; while seemingly everyone else in the hostel was sitting around the table drinking wine and having a nice chat, we were trying to figure out what we were going to do the next day (a discounted night in a casino-spa swanky hotel was an option thanks to business contacts of my Dad). However, it wasn't a moment before the American lady who managed the place came over with a glass of wine for each of us and got talking about where we'd come from, where we were going - the usual jazz, for sure, but enough to make us comfortably join the circle of backpackers and hostel staff and sip Chilean wine well into the early hours. The scene was unlike anything else I've known in a hostel - around the table were 4 Frenchies who spoke Spanish, an Argentine with just Spanish, Anna with Spanish and English, and myself with French and English... but to top it off we were joined by the manager of the hostel (who could do all three) - a lovely Californian who, while a tad whacky, was friendly to her core and passionate about the Permaculture environmental recycling system she wanted to create at Airesbuenos. An interesting chat ensued about The result was the most incredible string of conversations that, depending on the protagonists at any given stage, seamlessly switched between all three languages. At some stage the topic turned to my Indian heritage, and my ability to cook (and how cooking was probably what I missed most travelling), and in a flash I was down to cook up some "tandoori-style" (read: standard Rodrigues nondescript concoction) chicken for lunch for everyone in the hostel!

Fast forward the best part of a day, and we're now all set to stroll down to the bus station for an evening bus to Santiago that should see us arriving there at about 9 tomorrow morning (the earthquake-induced collapse of a bridge causing a couple of hours delay to all buses). However, in the meantime we were impressively productive - after breakfast I marinaded some chicken with a random mix of whatever I could find in the kitchen, then it was off to explore Valdivia. A fairly embarrassing stop was made at the Casino-Spa-Hotel that saw me impressively crash and burn in an attempt to get free use of the casino (on the basis of knowing someone who knew someone who was important, or something to that effect), but that was soon forgotten as we strolled through the town's riverside market where an army of massive sea lions (like the critter below) sat around waiting for free bits of fish to munch on.


An attempt to find the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo saw us head over to the other side of the river after lunch (fresh local mussels fried in garlic sauce), the bridge providing a beautiful view of the town and the market that looks very much like the photo below. On the other side, however, we once again found ourselves wondering what was the deal with this town - how could nothing be where it was supposed to be?! Failing to find the museum at first attempt did bring the inadvertent reward of leading us to a cool, randomly abandoned 3-floor boat - anchored on the riverside at the end of a desolate little dead-end street with no hint of life in it (cool photos will eventually follow), but our sense of confusion with the town reached fever pitch when we found the museum - or indeed the place where all the signs pointed to - and it still wasn't there!


Half an hour of confused and aimless wandering, and eventually someone informed us of a tiny little staircase that lead to the underground gallery which, alongside some fairly cool modern art, had an awesome photographic display by a guy who's name I've now forgotten... but rest assured it was impressive. But by this stage we were fairly zonked from walking and having our minds screwed with, so headed back to Airesbuenos and kicked back with all the residents and staff in front of a fairly decent film.

A hippy market and a mega waffle

EL BOLSÓN / SAN CARLOS DE BARILOCHE, LAKE DISTRICT, ARGENTINA - 12th March 2010

At last check, we weren't sure if we were going to be staying in Bariloche or leaving. Well as the top line of this blog suggests, we ended up staying... although arriving at that decision did take the whole morning.

However, fresh and boisterous for some sights and sounds, we returned our rental car and hopped on a 2 hour bus to El Bolson - a small Lake District town about 90km south of Bariloche, renouned as Argentina's hippy hotspot. In particular, Thursdays marked the town's artesenal market - drawn to our attention (as usual) by the LPG and given an endorsement of sorts ("erm, well it is nice... you can walk around for a while... it's nice") by the cool reception lady in the Marcopolloinn Hostel in Bariloche.

The prospect of some hippy-based banter excited us, however, and the spectacular Lake District scenery on the drive south provided an excellent backdrop for some more Dean-Anna quality time (which, among other insights of varying depth, featured my damning analysis of us males as a gender). El Bolson is as scenic as its descriptions depict - surrounded in every direction by mountains, small buildings fan away from a central area with a classic mountain village church and an artificial lake. Google Images threw up this photo to give a bit of a visual jist*:



The market was surprisingly big, arcing all the way around the artificial lake and full of stalls selling the usual mix of souvenirs, local arts and crafts, speciality foods, jams and sweets and some excellent local artesenal beer. The stuff was all pretty cool, and the stalls were indeed run by hippies, but given we were about half way though our South American travels we were always unlikely to be buying in bulk. Anna - her unique "way with words" a never-ending source of entertainment - summed up the issue nicely - "I wish I had a house - then I'd be able to buy things. I'd buy jam and a drum".

However, being bigger than expected didn't hide from the fact that it was still covered head to toe in about 20 minutes, leaving us 3 hours to kill before our bus back to Bariloche.

Ever the explorers, we went for a random walk away from the town centre and down a few residential streets a few blocks away, but ultimately ended up lying on the grass by the lake, recounting our adventures since we joined forces so that Anna could retrospectively write her diary. It was while we were here that we decided to invest in waffles.



El Bolson Waffles may or may not be a local institution - their proudly displayed website address on their logo (see above) certainly adds some credence to the suggestion. Whether or not they are is, for our purposes at least, totally beside the point - of relevance to us is the fact that they made one hell of a waffle. A good 5 inches by 5 inches in size, half was covered in chocolate, half in dulce de leche, and the whole lot then covered in raspberries with a load of whipped cream on top. Your imagination probably won't do it justice - although an excellent photo of Anna's first bite probably does!

The bus back to Bariloche got us home in time for another free dinner, and our mutual failure to wake up at 7am this morning has meant we shall not be catching the 8am trans-Andean bus to Chile - instead we are settling for the 1pm version. We'll be back, but for now it's goodbye Argentina!

* Apparently my memory card has a virus on it that, while leaving the photos intact, prevents me being able to get them onto a computer without doing a long-winded job with USB cables. So all those *amazing* photos I keep talking about are going to have to remain figments of your collective imagination for a while longer.