:(

:(

Holy crap Im leaving. In 5 hours.

¿¿¿Qué hago????

Last night I stayed up, basically all night, finishing a scrap book for my family.I have this lump in my throat that is ready to spring into tears at any moment. And I am dreading this goodbye…

This is really hard. I have another whole family here…and when is it ever ok to leave your family and not know when you´ll see them again?

And not like im “losing” them…but the truth is, even though it hurts, its better to have loved with all your heart and lost…then to never have loved at all.

And, since I´m still typical me, i havent really started packing…

haha, i´ll write my final deal from SEATTLE.

And, I am happy to be home, dont worry. It just kind of sucks to not be able to be in two places at once.

Wow.

I love this place. I love trees. And lakes. And mountains…

You have no idea how AMAZING it was.

I don´t even know how to put it in words. We escaped into the wilderness, and it was almost impossible to come back. We hiked over 35 kilometers, which included definite lack of trails at parts, wading through freezing rivers, rock climbing, hiking up in snow, scrambling down loose rocks on the other side, swimming in glacier lakes, and sleeping in the most adorable little refugios ever…

I fell in love. 4 days of hiking has left me pretty deadbeat, and I just took my first shower since Thursday, but I am a very, very happy camper.

Oh, and I hitchhiked for the first time, which cut off a good 10 kilometros on the end of our trek back into Bariloche today.  No worries, we had two guys with us, and they people were the nicest little Chilean couple with the sutest accents.

Once back in Barioche, we swumg by our hostel and picked up the rest of our stuff, and Whitney and I bid farewell to Scott, our fearless leader (Whit and I would probably be dead on the mountain somewhere without him…) as he headed off to hitchhike farther south, and we got on a bus an hour north to Villa la Angostura, and teensy little town right on more lake and wonderfulness. Tomorrow we´re hiking (again)…but tonight i have to sleep. I am pooped. And…to be honest, I don´t want to come home. Is that bad? I could live here forever….

Today we spent a day, bien tranquilo, in Bariloche. We got up around 9, showered in our lovely tiny moldy hostel shower, then walked down for breakfast. And I ate cereal for the first time since I’ve been here. Finally, some argentines that believe in breakfast!! We felt like new women with a good nights sleep in a bed behind us, and we set out to the mountain club to figure out the sleeping bag situation. Apparently, the refugios that we are trekking to only provide the mattress. At the outdoor gear store, oddly like REI, we discovered that sleeping bags to rent were 25 pesos per night. And also that even though we only needed them for two nights, since we were coming back Sunday night, and Monday was a holiday, it wouldnt be open til Tuesday. Hence, we could rent for 100 pesos…OR buy them for…100 pesos. So, Whitney and I are now proud owners of new sleeping bags. Sheesh. I already had a lot of stuff to haul back to the states. oh well. We bought flashlights too, just in case the lights don’t work in the refugio, which the nice man at the store either kindly informed us, or he just wanted us to buy flashlights. 

Then we strolled around Bariloche, famous for its local chocolate, popping it in all the chocolate factories to sample, of course with the purely logical motive of finding the very best chocolate to bring back the for gifts. Oh, the self sacrifice. We made our way back to the hostel to be ready for our 130 pickup for our kayak excursion.

Kayaking was beautiful, we drove about half an hour to Lake Gutierrez, and hopped into double kayaks. It was Whitney and I in one, then there were 3 other argentine people and 1 hilarious German guy who speaks Spanish with a French accent, and lives in the forest right by the lake in an old military truck. We paddled down the lake for an hour, and then stopped at a little beach and drank mate and hung out. It was so wonderful and relaxing. We swapped Argentine jokes, and our guide informed us that Chile is actually very pretty, and it would be great to go travel there, if it weren’t for the chilenos… they are hilarious.

On the way their, Pablo, the guide, had told us, ‘if you get tired, we can attach your kayak to mine, and I’ll pull you” and a moment later he added ‘If you don’t have any pride…’ I had no intentions of wimping out, but I felt necessary to add ‘Ah but we aren’t argentine!!’ At first I thought he didnt hear me, but after a good moments pause, he turned around and said ‘There is only one answer to that!’ And Whitney and I were subjected to some well practiced oar splashing. Good memories…

Tonight we got back and went to the grocery store to shop for our hike. The current plan, to take advantage of our sleeping bags, is to extend our trek and add on another refugio. Tomorrow we’ll hike about 5 hours up to Refugio Emilo Frey, where we’ll spend the night. Saturday we’ll get up early and trek about 7 hours to Refugio Jakob, which is on a little lake in the middle of the mountains. Then we’re hiking down the mountain and across to another little mountain to Refugio Lopez.  Basically, the refugios have beds in a big room, and also a kitchen to use, or you can buy food, but its super expensive to do that, so we’re bringing up pasta and cans of tuna.

Will be quite the adventure. These pictures are from the Club Andino website, who run all the refugios. And tomorrow morning our friend Scott, also a Seattlite, should be getting in and he is coming with us. Which will make this a lot safer. He’s on his way, but hitchhiking, so we shall see when he gets here.

I’m sure I’ll have lots of stories to tell when we get back. I am SOO ready to just be in the mountains, and have tons of time to sit and read and write and just be. We’ll be back Monday, so I’ll check in then. Wish me luck!!

Refugio FreyRefugio Jakob

Penúltimo ciao a Buenos Aires…

We are all settled in to our lovely hostel in Bariloche, a little ski village nestled into the side of the Andes waaay down south. Its a lot cooler here than it´s been lately in BA (last week it hit 40 celsius…) and the air is just fresh and clean, which I believes i´ve already mentioned is quite lacking the city. Whitney and I keep looking at each other and being like “So…are you sure we´re not in Washington?” There are all these lakes and little mountains and TREES. So beautiful. We got here around 1pm (which, we discovered some time later, was actually 12, because we crossed a time zone!) and hopped in a cab to our hostel, spent some time arguing with the hostel guy who finally convinced we really shouldn´t try to cross into Chile. 99% of his reasons were because “Todo es feo” and his is just the typical Argentine incapable of appreciating the rest of Latin America, but his one point that we were trying to squeeze WAY too much into one week, finally did win us over. So this afternoon we walked around a little bit, and stopped at the Club Andino Bariloche to get info about the trekking we´re going to do this weekend. Then we stopped at one of the many chocolate factories to sample (AMAZING. chocolate is simply …no sé. increíble.) and then we took a bus down the coast of the big lake to do a little hike to stretch our legs. Although it was only a 45 minute climb to the top of this hill, it was STEEP and by the time we got to the top, we were huffing and puffing. We told ourselves, we must be at some altitude. It can´t be that we´re so out of shape right…? At the top some classic Argentine guys were awaiting us, and we could only just laugh silently as one of them whipped out his guitar and started singing away, something about “alcanzar tus labios”…oh my. The view was breathtaking, and I really don´t think my pictures are going to do it justice. We walked/ran down the path and then proceeded to miss two busses because we werent paying attention. When we finally got back to the town area, we headed back to the hostel, and met the other girl who is staying in our room. She is travelling alone, which i ABSOLUTELY cannot imagine doing, especially here. She may join us for some of our adventures, and she´s a pretty sweet girl from Philedelphia. cant spell sorry…

Our hostel is pretty sweet because it has free dinner and so we ate big bowls of pasta and chatted with an argentine and a spanaird (shoot i cant spell that either). and the lisp from spain is SO hard to understand. much easier talking to the argentine guy.

Anyway, tomorrow we´re getting up early and figuring out the sleeping bag situation–apparently we have to bring them for staying in the refugios in the mountains, but we really dont want to buy sleeping bags. someone told us you can rent them…but that, also, is kind of weird. we shall see. and then tomorrow afternoon we are going to another big lake and going kayaking. woo!

oh and did i mention i have NOTHING to study!?!? so fabulous.

oh and nieves sent me an email, and i´ve been texting with mariana to let her know how things are going love it!

and marsha, your comment cracked me up. i am fully aware of my family-ness, but thank the Lord i am not “with child”. oh i miss you. haha.

ok hasta luego!!

flying by the seat of my pants!

Hello people!

So in about an hour im boarding the bus and heading to  bariloche for a week! its 20 hours long, so we´ll get to our hostel at  11:30 tomorrow morning, after a “good night´s sleep”. I am SOOO excited for this trip, im going with whitney, who also goes to UW, and we both love hiking and just being outside, so it will be such a GOOD escape from this huge busy city. a couple of the days we´re doing some trekking in the mountains, and staying a night in a “refugio” where you pay like $6 and get a bed to sleep in for the night! and we might rent a car and cross into Chile! I´ll be sure to update

I get back next Wed, and then I have SIX days till i fly home. Holy cow. Its going  by so fast. I think this trip will be a good transition for the kids here though. Nieves and I made an email account for  her last night, so that we can practice emailing while im in bariloche and that way she´ll see how easy it is to keep in touch! This weekend i spent a lot of time with my family, and saturday night we made chocolate chip cookies!! of course, they dont sell choc chips here, so we had to chop up our chocolate, (which is how the first choc chip cookies were invented, if you didnt know).

Our cookies!!

The girls had a couple friends over, so it was quite the chaos in our tiny little kitchen!

Well, gotta run and catch my bus! See you in Bariloche!!