january 2 -13

we started the new year fully motivated to dig into the mysteries of the spanish language. on sunday we moved to the campground "selva negra" - schwarzwald, our "home" for the next two weeks. it was a very nice one with lots of trees, spotless sanitary facilities and a little bar and restaurant for chilly evenings. our first neighbour was a woman from munich, beate who had been hiking in the area for a couple of weeks. anyways, there we were on monday, excited and eager to learn as much as possible.

sil or silvana, our teacher, was very sympatic. in the first days we had to get used to a regular schedule again and to the process of learning. erk got a little frustrated because i was learning quicker and easier than him but in the end he couldn't complain and sil told us that she was really proud of us for having learnt a lot that quick.unfortunately the weather changed towards the end of the first week and we got huge amounds of rain and the temperature dropped about 10 C, so we had only 13-16C during the day... and the rain was annoying. we couldn't find a quiet place to do our homework because all the other people were seeking shelter in the bar as well. and our weekend was just completely flooded.

beate pursuaded us to go for a walk on the little peninsula llao llao some 30 km out of town but when we arrived another heavy rain just started so we returned frustrated (beate walked nevertheless and arrived at the camp a couple of hours later - soken wet). on sunday it cleared so we took off again just to find out that hiking is not very popular among argentins and the trails were in very poor shape. well. it stayed wet and cool for the first three days of the second week nd our mood just couldn't get any better. plus we didn't know how and where to go after the course. our travel agent had just informed us that our flight from santiago to auckland would be on the 19th of february (instead of the 29th of january). so we had another five weeks left but we didn't want to cycle in argentina anymore because it's just to big dry and vast. what to do?

we finally settled on taking the bus to mendoza taking our bikes as luggage, storing them there and moving on as "mochilleros". so we bought tickets, booked hostals and started to dream about hot and sunny weather.

one night when we were sitting in the bar again to do homework, markus from switzerland whom we met in puerto natales entered the room. he wanted to meet urs and daniel there also from switzerland. he told us they had been on the campground for a couple of days. that was a real surprise cos we also knew them from the torres del paine. we had a nice eve together exchanging stories and erk got stuck there on friday night til the weewee hours...what else?

well we had the best bife de choriza in bariloche, but all in all i think the one who avoids visiting bariloche in january will be better off because it's just crowded and packed with kids having finished high school and partying night and day. it's expensive as well and the number of cars seeking their way through the tiny - and few- roads is just amazing... an old lady told us that the city only had 6000 inhabitants in the fifties of the last century and now it has over 100.000. but they didn't build more roads... you probably can imagine that walking the three k's to and fro the camp was no fun at all. but we had to do something to balance all the sitting.well erk says that's enough about this experience and i'm running out of power...