Bife de Lomo

the trekking group
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Argentina is a great place to be a carnivore, and the best meat to eat is bife de lomo, basically tenderloin. The portion of meat is huge, a meal all by itself and for the low, low price of $10 U.S.

I made this discovery on my last day in Bariloche, but that might be a good thing, because I have had a strong craving for it ever since and eating large portions of meat for lunch probably wouldn't be great for my budget or health.

Bariloche is a great place to eat. It is definitely a tourist city and has the chocolate shops to prove it. I wasn't eating a ton of it, but did find time between spanish classes to enjoy it.

filtering water
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Now while the food and the laid back atmosphere could draw travelers to Bariloche there were other reasons that brought me there. I already mentioned Spanish classes. I enrolled for a two week course which basically helped refresh the spanish that I have learned and forgotten as well as picking up a few new skills. It was the first time I took classes that weren't one-on-one. It was a different experience and I learned I prefer to learn one-on-one. The other student in my class was a nice guy, about 50, English, but I was impatient having to share my learning time. Luckily when I continue studying in Bolivia and Ecuador the prices for lessons are lower and it will be more manageable to afford private classes.

our refugio
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I met a fun group of people at the spanish school and appreciated the activities that they had set up. We toured the cathedral, which wouldn't have been extremely interesting, except in addition to the usual stained glass images there were also images of the Mapuche Indians killing missionaries. Now in reality the Mapuche were slaughtered in much larger numbers by the Spanish than the other way around, but I guess that wasn't the perspective the church wanted to focus on when the cathedral was designed.

Study break with Adrian
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The school was also able to set up a volunteer opportunity for me, I tutored a fifteen-year-old boy in English. Adrian came from the poorer section of Bariloche, and area most travellers never see, and because of his early schooling was behind in his english compared to the students from the more affluent areas. My job was to help him pass his exam. We weren't working on fluency here, it was mostly looking for hints in the questions. Like if the question started with ¨where¨ he knew the answer had to be a place. All of the explaining was done in spanish so my basic spanish was getting a workout. The first time we met was at his home and after that we met at the public meeting hall because his sister was giggling at my language skills and he thought she was being ¨a pain in the ...¨ He was an avid learner, when I asked him if he wanted me to give him some questions to answer as homework seemed really excited.

Bariloche´s cathedral
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The highlight of my two weeks in Bariloche was the weekend trek I took with three of my classmates. The first day was pretty straight-forward, five hours, four of them in a valley the last a fairly steep uphill all on a clearly worn trail. That night we stayed in a refugio (a shack with a kitchen, tables, and a loft for sleeping). The next day we thought we had a nine hour trek in front of us. It was us and down mountains, there was no trail, only occassional red markings on rocks. The first part was difficult because of the terrain, the middle part was difficult because we scaled the wrong mountain covered with loose rock, had a great view and realized we had to go back down and up another mountain of loose rock. After that mishap we thought we were ok, but in the last hour, which should have been an easy stroll through the woods we got off the trail so badly not only did we not know where we were going but we didn't know how to get back to the trail. Being clueless, we slid down a hill to get to the river, which according to the map would lead us out of the forest and to the road where our bus would pick us up. It was a good plan, mine in fact, but eventually the river became steep and the bank disappeared and we were forced to wander up in the forest again, where luckily we found the trail. This should have eliminated our problems, but we had been told the last bus was at 8:30 and by the time we got to the road it was 9:00. We tried hitch-hiking and the first car that passed stopped, but they only had room for two people, so the first two of our group got in, I was in the group that stayed behind. We tried unsuccessfully to hitch for another 20 minutes before learning from local trekkers that another bus would be coming. It picked us up around 9:30, and the bus was a-rockin. There was a guy with an accordian playing for tips and his friend was passing around a hat to collect. The bus driver was honking his horn and flashing his lights and everyone on the bus was clapping along with the music. It was a pretty strange, riotous sight. Towards the end of the ride the hat-passer lifted his arms up and that raised his shirt up high enough for me to notice he had a fairly serious looking knife in his waist line. I wondered what this guy does when he's not collecting tips for his accordian playing friend.

By the time I got back it was 10:30. I still had to go to my hostel, grab my belongings and move into my homestay for the next week. After that was done I went to the Pilgrim, a popular local bar and resturant to meet my friend Brian, he had flown in from Chicago. I arrived at the bar at 11:45. He was still there, and just looked at his watch when I came in. He was in good spirits and I think didn't mind the wait since he considered the story of my getting lost worth the three hours he had been waiting. It was good to catch up a little on things and people we both knew and for the rest of the week we had a daily meeting after spanish classes (Brian was at a different school) to eat from the local street vendor. By the end of the week we had made our travel plans to go extremely far to the south and see the Perito Moreno Glacier and work from there.

The overall experience in Bariloche was great, it was a nice place to study, relax, and hang out with people. In a lot of ways it felt like living in the dorms in college. There were a couple hours of class a day, always people to hang out with, and none of the responsibility that comes with being an adult. Maybe I should go back.