blanquitagringita:

We walked to the Sunday afternoon craft fair, eager to walk around and check out the local crafts after spending the first several hours of the day stuck with nothing to do (most stores, restaurants and services are closed on Sunday, and those that are open do so around 2 p.m. in Buenos Aires and 5 p.m. in Mendoza).

As we wandered, our small group dissolved. After Sarah and I purchased churros - thin doughnuts usually about six inches long with a cinammony-sugar taste, sometimes filled with dulce de leche or chocolate - I crouch down in front of a blanket to talk to two guys with dreds. It was my first time doing this in South America, and I was quickly rewarded. In less than two minutes, I went from asking (in crappy Spanish) if they had anything to put in the pipes they were selling to being the proud owner of about an eighth of weed for 50 pesos. Oh, and they threw in the pipe to go with it - got to sell those artesianal goods, too.

This actually turned out to be one of the easiest street buying experiences I have had in Argentina. No one has totally screwed me, but when I tried out this method a few weeks later in Buenos Aires, I got totally fucked with.

The jewelry and pipe seller told me that he could get weed in a half hour or so, and after an unncessarily long conersation, took half the money to go pick it up. I guess I´m lucky he even came back, but when he did, he wanted an extra 50 pesos because he could only get ´really good´shit. After another insanely conversation in which the seller pretended like the cops were around looking to bust people for buying pot (it´s decriminalized here), I found myself with a 150 peso eighth instead of the 100 pesos five grams I was supposed to get.

It was really good shit, though.

I´ve written quite a bit about couchsurfing, yet have not mentioned hostel life at all. And, like almost all young travelers in South America, I have spent many a night - and quite a few days - in hostels. I´m currently in a Loki Hostel, a mini-chain of four hostels in Perú and Bolivia known for being some of the craziest party hostels.

They serve food all day and cook dinner at night (not included) and generally have hopping bars, so guests often forget to leave. Most hostels are not like this, although diversity is sort of the name of the game in hostels - especially since having four hostels makes Loki the largest hostel chain I´ve heard about in South America. Most hostels operate independently and are run by their owner. There are always dorm-style rooms with bunk beds for anywhere from four to 15 people and usually a few private rooms. Almost all have kitchens for guests, a bar, a separate common area with a television and a communal computer. Outside space, like a rooftop patio or backyard, is common.

Free WiFi is the norm, and more people than ever seem to be traveling with laptops since those cheap, light weight, little netbooks appeared this year. Every week I seem to be seeing more people with them, while only three months ago they were novel.

All hostels employ local people, but many have a few gringo employees, especially as bar workers. Of the 20 or so different hostels I´ve stayed at in South America, only one places has had only Spanish-speaking employees. English is without a doubt the language of hostel-culture in South America. The majority of guests come from Australia (a country that must be empty because all of its citizens are out traveling), Germany, the UK, Ireland, Canada, the US, Scandanavia and New Zealand; as you may have noticed, the citizens of these countries either speak English as their first language or so fluently it might as well be their first language. Most people don´t speak more than 50 words of Spanish, though many people are using part of their time in South America to take courses.

Speaking English is generally a problem for people from Italy, Spain, France and Brazil, who bank on their native language being similar enough (or the same) to Spanish to get around.

Many people are traveling alone, which adds to a culture of constantly meeting new people. The vast majority of people are friendly and social, always looking for someone to hang out with. Other people travel in pairs of friends, almost always of the same sex, and there are generally a few couples hanging around. Every once in a blue moon, a pair of siblings or a group of more than three people traveling together can be found.

Most people are traveling for three or four months in South America, though many travel for nine months or a year on ¨around the world trips.¨At any given time, you can find someone in a hostel that has been traveling for several years almost non-stop.

hmm… consider this entry a work in progress

louise-mankelow:

There is so much laughter at the house, as we try to understand one another and  I love the fact that they tell it how it is.  The fat girl at the gym, “Gordita” – little fatty.  Hilarious.  In fact, anything that is remotely endearing attracts “ita” (meaning little) at the end.  At the comedor, I am Blancita for obvious reasons.  My favourite so far is Sandra requesting a “Cocita light.” [Diet coke.]

On Sunday it was the “dia de la Mardre,” mother’s day and it is a super big deal here.  Naturally, were to have a big BBQ lunch.  I accompanied Claudia to the butcher to buy the lomo. However, after much waiting amidst large meat hooks with various parts of various animals attached for some time, there was no lomo left.  No problem, the butcher had a whole cow on stand-by. Claudia even got to choose which part of the cow she wanted, and I got to watch my lunch being carved straight off the (thankfully) headless cow.

Last week a large shopping mall opened in Jujuy, the first of it type in the province, (which is one of the poorest in Argentina). It is on my way home, so I popped in to have a look. Naturally it was packed full of school kids, but the best thing ever: watching people use the escalator! The first one in Jujuy.  I saw this middle-aged lady almost fall off completely, an another lady was taking a photo of the escalator.

vendors of random crap in Argentina, Chile and Uruguay

tango dancing in Buenos Aires

dulce de leche (Argentina) a.k.a. manjar (Chile)

Being near other tourists a lot has turned out to mean that I spend a lot of time translating between English and Spanish for other people. I´ve done it during a multi-person conversation in Spanish, where I had to recap every few minutes for a beginning Spanish sppeaker in Cordoba, Argentina; one day a taxi driver I exchanged pleasantries with asked me to ask two non-Spanish-speaking passangers where they needed to go in Bariloche, Argentina; I helped someone send money via Western Union at the bus station in Valparaiso, Chile; I regularly translate in stores, cabs and restaurants for friends.

And it´s not just for non-Spanish speakers. I´ve had shop keepers ask me how to say things like returnable and empty bottles, and a tour guide at a winery in Salta, Argentina asked me to write down and sound out instructions for tastings so she could memorize them in English.

All this experience came in handy this week when I went with a Danish friend to get a tattoo. She speaks almost no spanish so I spent about two horus translating back and forth at two different tattoo parlors about the design she wanted, where she wanted it, how much it cost, how to take care of it, etc. And I also learned that it´s difficult to convince Chilean tattoo artists to draw tattoos they don´t like - a bus in this case.

Start Point (a) is Bariloche, Argentina; end point (b) is Osorno, Chile.

We drive for hours through the snow-covered Andes that provide the natural border between Argentina and Chile for almost the entire length of the two countries. This southern passage is beautiful, just as I remember the trip being in the central part of the countries when I was crossing between Mendoza and Santiago on a previous trip.

On this passage, however, there’s a 45-minute drive through a rain forest between the leaving-Argentina border check and the entering-Chile border check. The former solely consisted of getting off the bus and showing our passports and a very short form to an Argentine officer inside a small, empty building. The latter mimicked this, with the addition of scanning everyone’s bags for fresh fruits, vegetables, milk and meat; big signs everywhere warn you to protect Chile by keeping these items out. And I always thought drug and weapon smuggling was the concern of border controls…

Chilean border police scan for produce and animal products.

I wish I had tales of wonder to regale you with about Bariloche, but other than the local goodies, I experienced very little. It rained heavily or snowed every day I was there, with weather forecasts to do the same for at least another week.

This has got to be the most logical and delicious way to make hot chocolate - and there’s not a better place to enjoy it than the self-proclaimed chocolate capital of Argentina. A submarino comes out as a glass of steaming hot milk with a side of one or two small, rich chocolate bars (sometimes they’re already in the bottom of the glass). Stir for a quick minute and it’s ready. ¡Qué rico!

There doesn’t seem to be any reason for this, but the main streets of Bariloche are filled with upscale, artisanal chocolate shops. One after the next sells bonbons, thin chocolate pieces with cookies or mint layers, alfajores and rich, creamy gelato (helado). At the Museo de Chocolate, the only reason that they are able to give for this chocolate explosion is the weather - I guess people were just bored and thought they´d get really good at making chocolate during the cold winter here…

After months of almost nothing but Quilmes and the occasional ‘local’ beer that tastes nearly identical to Quilmes - watery, refreshing but with little flavor, I find myself in what must be the microbrewery capital of Argentina: Bariloche, in the province of El Bolson. At least I know that those Oktoberfest beers weren’t just a show.

El Bolson, Manush, random beers made in house by the restaurant or bar. In a country known for its wine, perhaps I shouldn’t even have tried the beer - and I’ve met tourists on beer hiati, unwilling to stomach the thin pale ale (cerveza rubia). But here the beer even deserves the meat.

Southern Right Whales, so named because they were the right whales to hunt - mainly because they come very close to shore. This trait also makes them an easy spot while whale watching, especially in the miniscule town of Puerto Pirámides on Península Valdes, where they’ve never been hunted.

People have been running whale watching trips out of this port (there’s basically nothing else there, and the port is more like a sand bar) for about 30 years, and the guides are quick to mention that their harmony with the whales has encouraged the animals to trust them over time - i.e. come right up next to the boats.

About 500 whales come back to this area every spring/early summer to mate (with multiple partners), give birth (after almost a year of pregnancy) and raise their young.