the last of latin america
maipú - circa mendoza, argentina. we were welcomed into mr hugo’s bike shop, and the lovely lady who i presume was mrs hugo soon went about annotating our map of maipú with indications as to the best wineries to visit. by the time she’d finished, our map was somewhat unusable due to the extent of her circling this and arrowing towards that, but we thanked her anyway and set off on our tour.
i coped much better on the bike than i had anticipated, and any uncontrollable weaving that was initially telling of my amateurish cycling style was gradually cancelled out by the uncontrollable weaving that took place as a result of the steady consumption of wine. nonetheless, my inebriated veneer of cycling proficiency was apparently seen through immediately by the local police, who promptly pulled us over and asked if there was a problem with my bicycle. i explained that there was no problem with lucille, and that i was simply bad at cycling. the officers let us go on our way, turning their attention to a nearby man who was eating some grapes. it wasn’t long before the officers and the grape-eating man overtook us in their patrol car.
the wineries varied somewhat from one to the next, and it was enjoyable to witness the contrasts between old (19th century) and new, small (40,000 bottles produced a year) and large (2,000,000 bottles a year), humble (cart wheels mounted upon decrepit walls and old ladies sticking labels to wine bottles by hand) and outlandishly opulent (plush screening rooms, gentleman’s club-like tasting facilities and posh toilets that thanked us for allowing them the honour of accepting our waste).
we enjoyed the tour so much that we returned sans bike the next day to see a couple more of the wineries that we’d run out of time to visit the day before. we also visited the beer garden, which was a quirky smattering of antique (looking) cupboards and dressing tables and chairs made out of barrels, located in a small field towards the outer fringe of the wine-tour circuit.
i gathered some valuable information about wine-tasting over these two days, such as how to swill wine properly, that a wine barrel typically contains circa 300 bottles’ worth of wine (i’d guessed something more like 50 upon my enquiry) and that with the best tips in the world i can’t detect any notes of raspberry, oak, coffee or toast.
aside from the wine tour, we spent the remainder of our time in mendoza wandering through the large park, comparing ice creams at the various parlours, and exploring the many squares the city has to offer (one large and four small). our hostel here was one of the larger and noisier ones of the past few months, and the bunks had a tendency to sway squeakily with as small a movement as the arching of one’s eyebrows (and i happen to do this quite a lot). but it had a good location and we were welcomed with two free big beers on our first night, so it wasn’t all bad.
we headed south after running out of ice cream vendors in mendoza, and we were greeted by an even larger number in bariloche, of an infinitely more superior quality. staying in our hostel there was like staying at a friend’s house - albeit a friend whom you pay on a nightly basis, and who kicks you out by 10.30am and charges you for an extra night’s accommodation if you’re not out by this time. we had single, non-bunk beds this time, which was a welcome respite from the previous place.
the strangest thing about bariloche was that it was my first encounter of what i consider to be true quaintness in a spanish-speaking country. hispanic culture to me can be impressive and beautiful, yes, but chiefly for its scale and grandeur - and yet here was a part of argentina which felt decidedly more suited to a central-european location rather than its actual north-patagonian one.
bariloche is a place to endulge, with the best ice cream and empanadas in argentina (at least in my experience), excellent seafood (is it still classed as seafood if it’s from a freshwater lake?) and countless chocolate boutiques. the serving of ice cream seems more an art than a transaction, with the various flavours being slathered onto cones or into pots via rather ornate-looking spatulars, rounded off with a melodramatic, interpretive dance-style flourish of the wrist to encapsulate the quintessence of the moment.
we explored the colonia suiza, a small community of swiss immigrants in the mountains with beautiful chalets and a little market selling artisanal craft and amazing pies and strudels, and made the slow trudge up cerro campanario - one of the many hills that surrounds bariloche and overlooks the lakes - to the best lookout point in the area. the walk turned out to be incredibly steep, incredibly dusty and incredibly non-zigzagging, which made for a slow, arduous climb that wasn’t entirely what we’d been expecting. the view, however, was spectacular. we took the chairlift down and i was hit in the face by some leaves.
the next day i went kayaking on lago gutierrez. this was no kayak in the park - this was the proper thing, with rudder-controlling pedals and a ‘waterproof skirt’ (i preferred ‘tunic’) to seal you in place. we paddled for a good couple of hours up the lake to a stoney beach, where the guides - in a somewhat mary poppins-like fashion - somehow produced a table, bottles of soft drinks, some glasses and biscuits from somewhere within one of their kayaks.
the water on the lake was among the clearest i’ve seen and, naturally, i filled my bottle from the lake a number of times. save from the mountain spring in samaipata in bolivia, this was the first time i’d had the pleasure of drinking from a natural source of water.
i’ve taken it upon myself to start drinking yerba mate, which is a sort of fetid variety of green tea that is extremely popular in argentina, across all age groups. i even bought a hollowed-out pumpkin vessel, ‘primed’ it (soaked it in mate for a couple of days) and named it harold. although i can’t say i much like the putrid bitterness of the tea, i think that with a bit of sugar to sweeten the deal, i could get quite into this way of enjoying caffeinated drinks. the fact that i inadvertedly left harold behind in bariloche didn’t bode well for my newly-appointed hobby, but i’ve since bought haroldito ii, which is a slightly smaller vessel, with which i hope to continue.
the argentine accent has a notable italian flamboyance to it, which i’m guessing is due to the large community of italian immigrants. this is particularly noticeable in such words/phrases as ‘bueno’, ‘de nada’ and something, and since there is no audible excerpt with which to demonstrate this lilt, i’ve decided that it’s best described as employing an interval of a minor 6th, spread via a descending glissando.
after a brief overnight stop in the small town of san martin de los andes - a miniature version of bariloche in which we spent about 4 hours looking for a replacement mate gourd - we re-entered chile and headed straight to pucón. the journey was stunning, skirting yet more pristine and beautiful lakes, through valleys speckled with monkey puzzle trees, verging ever closer towards towering volcan villarrica beyond, which would continue to loom ominously over us well into our time in pucón.
pucón is a town not unlike bariloche, with a less impressive lake view but a much more magnificent one of aforementioned volcan villarrica in the opposite direction to the water. there is rarely a time when the great white peak is out of view wherever one is in pucón, and equally rare are the times when the volcano isn’t spouting a large cloud of smoke. the presence of an indigenous population was immediately palpable after the sparsity of indigenous communities in argentina, and it was nice to see the return of colourful rugs and garments in the marketplaces.
ignoring the smoldering threats of the volcano, sally and i joined the hundreds who take to the volcano each day in an attempt to conquer the old girl. we did pretty well, for our part, despite some of the most powerful, prolonged and unforgiving winds i have ever experience, which led our guides to warn that it was unlikely that we would make it to the top (although, we heard that they always say that because they don’t like climbing the mountain… which is a bit odd).
we continued on through the wind at what i thought was a decidedly slow pace, with ice axes in one hand and our faces shielded in the other. after an hour or two of the slow trudging, we reached the first bits of snow and ice around halfway up the mountain, and from there things became a bit more difficult.
it was around this point that i realised how fortunate sally and i have been on this trip when it comes to guides. aníbal in guatemala, andy in peru and saul in bolivia were all excellent guides who seemed as enthusiastic as we were to be doing the treks in question. this guide, however, whose name i won’t utter here (because i can’t remember it), raced off ahead of us as soon as we began, and was entirely unhelpful for the remainder of the hike. once we reached the snow, we saw the guides from the other tour companies telling their groups to put on their helmets, gloves, jackets and other waterproof gear. i had to seek out our guide who was lying against a wall, resting his eyes. i asked him if we needed to put on our gear. ‘sure’, he replied. it wasn’t until half an hour or so into the walking on the snow that our guide decided to tell us the best way to do it without falling over.
onwards we went, ever upwards, through the snow and over the ice. the arid summer heat had long left us behind, and been replaced by biting winds and a cold bum. i couldn’t help but notice how the incline was becoming steeper and steeper, and that the sheets of ice on which we were walking were now plummeting hundreds of meters towards rather unfriendly-looking rock formations. at one point we had to cross a ridge around 100 metres in length, wide enough for only one person at a time, with the wind billowing in our faces, and with those unwelcomingly sheer drops now on either side of us.
we surmounted the ridge, losing one man (he waited behind, you understand), and continued upwards, now only a few hundred meters from the fuming summit. our guide had raced off again, and was doing a particularly bad job of leaving us any sort of sturdy footprints in which to follow (which was his job). my attention was now focused only on the steepness of our climb, and the distance one would fall if one were to slip at this point. we had eventually been shown how to use our ice axes both to steady ourselves whilst walking, and to stop ourselves mid-fall if we did happen to slip over on the ice. but my imagination was running away with itself, and without prior experience or practice of falling on the ice i simply couldn’t trust a piece of metal to stop me dropping all that way at such a steep angle.
each footstep became increasingly more unsteady, and the poorly-beaten paths became more and more crowded, until finally, at 350 metres from the summit, i admitted defeat. i had stopped enjoying the ascent, and was too worried about falling and injuring myself - which, at the time, i considered to be particularly likely. despite my desire to stop, i was still surprised at myself. i noticed that, save a few others, everyone else was continuing the struggle up the hill - and that would normally go some way in assuring me that it was safe. but i was too convinced that i was going to slip, and that i wouldn’t be able to stop myself from falling once i had started. i would later find out that the hike is indeed as dangerous as i had thought, and that scores of people do fall and either injure themselves or die.
after questioning myself for some minutes, we began our descent. walking down on the snow and ice was even worse than walking up, but our second-in-command guide - a thoroughly more believable guide, at that - then explained that we could slide down on our backsides if we so wished. it was at this point that, when sitting down and trying to propel myself forward with my arms and legs, that i realised how difficult it was to slide down on the snow. and at that moment i felt a combination of feelings: relief that i wasn’t going to fall to my doom quite so easily, and great disappointment that i had given up so quickly, and that i could after all have made it to the summit.
my disappointment and regret was shortlived, however, as our guide pointed out a groove that someone else’s buttocks had carved out beautifully in the snow. this pre-carved chasm was more like a waterslide than the surprisingly well-gripping, unspoilt snow around it, and with thawed nerves i commenced my sliding.
it was slow work at first, and even in the buttock-chasm speed was lacking. after a few minutes of undignified crawling, we reached some cracks in the ice. these were alarming at first, and i whimpered like a little girl. but then they became wider, and turned into natural gorges which were perfect for bottom-sliding. these were pleasing, and i laughed like a man.
we were told at the beginning of the hike that, on average, the ascent time is 5 hours, and that the descent time is 1 hour. after a few minutes of descent, it became clear why. the gorges were about a metre wide and 3 metres high - although varying in places - which meant that there wasn’t really any way of falling out of the gorge, regardless of one’s speed. we were later given some plastic paddles to sit on which increased speed ten-fold and made acceleration to such speeds more or less immediate. we had to use our ice axes as brakes and, although effective, my speed was such that there were a couple of close calls. all in all, though, we reached the bottom of villarrica infinitely happier than when we were at the top.
the next day we visited the thermal springs in the small town of cañeripe, a couple of hours north of pucón. there are 17 different baths there in total, ranging in temperature from 76c (which is banned) to a chilly 8c, which is fed directly from a waterfall. we spent a good 4 hours there, testing the different temperatures, spending too long in some and making ourselves feel sick, and cooling off/warming up gently in others. the whole complex is set in a natural valley full of ferns, and there is a pretty, wooden track - painted red - that follows the 1-mile valley to its end, branching off to the various pools along the way. a nice feature, aside from the warm water, is the network of small wooden tunnels that channels the thermal water into each pool. the same network feeds a continuous supply of cold water into the bathroom basins, in place of a normal tap.
our last day in pucón was the first dull and dreary day in many weeks, and it therefore became another day assigned to essential/gratuitous admin work. it was so grey outside that even villarrica had its head in the clouds. we booked our bus to santiago to leave that evening and, as a direct result of that, appeared in santiago the very next day.
we’ve been staying with will and ellen for the past week now, and it has been bliss. we have our own little room that opens up onto the large terrace, which itself overlooks santiago and the distant mountains, which i’m sure themselves would be a grand sight were they not forever masked by smog.
it’s been amazing to be able to sleep in as long as we want, without being disturbed, and without having to worry about disturbing anyone else in turn, and we’ve been spoilt somewhat for food, whether homemade or bought. we’ve sampled santiago’s best empanada and ice cream offerings, which it turns out are a good match for anything that argentina can offer (save for the mcdonald’s and burger king varieties).
it’s also been fun getting to know paka, their cat, who has a shorter attention span than i do. it is only as we’re about to leave that i’ve become used to - even expectant of - being pounced on for accidentally twitching my little finger whilst reading. his signature bear-hug pounce and the fact that he doesn’t use his claws has been duly noted for my ‘best cat’ award.
on thursday i made my acting debut, alongside sally, will and ellen, in a chilean film by the name of ‘los manos como son’. we all had lines, and mine were particularly long. the director called me up to the room in which we’d be filming my part and proceeded to explain in his fast, incoherent spanish that i would need to walk into the room, explain that i had the month’s rent, and then say along the lines of:
‘you remember we spoke about having a small party tonight? i’m leaving with my friends tomorrow to go on vacation, and i wanted to check it’s ok. it will only be the people of the house, and daniella, gonzalo and felipe, whom you already know. i will take full responsibility.’
it would have been enough to try to remember all that in english, given that i was only told my lines only 5 minutes before the director was shouting ‘accion!’. i created a nice groove in the floor whilst pacing frantically up and down, trying for the life of me to remember all of these lines, in tenses that i can’t use, with words that i’ve never heard before and can barely decipher due to the director’s strong chilean accent.
the main problem, though, was trying to understand the protagonist’s (geronimo, who had a very big beard) questions in response to my dialogue. after numerous amusingly erroneous takes, the director said that we were done for now, and sent me back downstairs in the waiting area. i passed will on the stairs, who was going up to do his part.
when will returned, he explained that he’d really struggled to remember his lines because they were so long, and that the director had told him that he needed to say that he had this month’s rent, and was to ask geronimo if it was ok to hold a little leaving party… it seems as though we both failed with that bit!
on numerous occasions throughout my trip so far i’ve found myself surprised at how different this continent is from one end to another. and it is only now, after the inevitable reflection that comes with entering one’s final few days in a place, that i realise that i shouldn’t really be surprised at all. my assumption that south america should be largely the same from one point to the next is undoubtedly based on both the colonial spanish heritage that the constituent countries share, and the resulting domination of the spanish language therein.
it strikes me as odd that the sharing of a language across the majority of a continent would lead me to ignore all the other facets of that continent’s potential diversity and assume - prior to visiting - that that group of countries is therefore the same throughout. i wouldn’t go to portugal expecting it to be the same as germany, and there’s a much smaller distance between those two countries than a lot of the distances i’ve travelled throughout south america.
nonetheless, the variety i have witnessed has, at times, been astonishing. it is quite striking to me that a distance of but a few feet can mean the difference between rich and poor: between dirt trails and smooth asphalt roads (as was the case when crossing from bolivia to chile), indigenous to european (chile to argentina), a happy stomach to clinging to the toilet bowl for dear life (peru to bolivia), paying to squat over a hole in the ground compared to using a free bathroom with toilet paper, soap and towels (bolivia to argentina).
but this is not only my departure from south america, but from latin america as a whole. i am entirely reluctant to be giving up my immersion in the spanish language, not only because i have been enjoying getting to grips with it, but because i really don’t want to be forgetting that which i’ve learnt heretofore. some sort of information-retaining device would be very useful at this juncture, but for now i’ll have to rely on what small service my memory can provide.
and as i once again turn to reflect on the past 4 months in latin america, i realise that the things that have plagued me most during my time here are also the things that i shall most miss: touting (where else in the world can you be offered a tuk-tuk ride whilst travelling in the back of a truck?), the long bus journeys (during which time it is acceptable to sit still and listen to music and absorb the fleeting landscape without feeling guilty for not utilising one’s time to its full potential), and the ubiquitous dulce de leche. actually, no - i don’t miss that last one.
so now i sign off from latin america, and begin the second leg of our trip: the antipodes, and my inevitable return to new zealand - the journey to which ensures that i don’t get a 2nd of march this year. nos vemos, américa latina!
i coped much better on the bike than i had anticipated, and any uncontrollable weaving that was initially telling of my amateurish cycling style was gradually cancelled out by the uncontrollable weaving that took place as a result of the steady consumption of wine. nonetheless, my inebriated veneer of cycling proficiency was apparently seen through immediately by the local police, who promptly pulled us over and asked if there was a problem with my bicycle. i explained that there was no problem with lucille, and that i was simply bad at cycling. the officers let us go on our way, turning their attention to a nearby man who was eating some grapes. it wasn’t long before the officers and the grape-eating man overtook us in their patrol car.
the wineries varied somewhat from one to the next, and it was enjoyable to witness the contrasts between old (19th century) and new, small (40,000 bottles produced a year) and large (2,000,000 bottles a year), humble (cart wheels mounted upon decrepit walls and old ladies sticking labels to wine bottles by hand) and outlandishly opulent (plush screening rooms, gentleman’s club-like tasting facilities and posh toilets that thanked us for allowing them the honour of accepting our waste).
we enjoyed the tour so much that we returned sans bike the next day to see a couple more of the wineries that we’d run out of time to visit the day before. we also visited the beer garden, which was a quirky smattering of antique (looking) cupboards and dressing tables and chairs made out of barrels, located in a small field towards the outer fringe of the wine-tour circuit.
i gathered some valuable information about wine-tasting over these two days, such as how to swill wine properly, that a wine barrel typically contains circa 300 bottles’ worth of wine (i’d guessed something more like 50 upon my enquiry) and that with the best tips in the world i can’t detect any notes of raspberry, oak, coffee or toast.
aside from the wine tour, we spent the remainder of our time in mendoza wandering through the large park, comparing ice creams at the various parlours, and exploring the many squares the city has to offer (one large and four small). our hostel here was one of the larger and noisier ones of the past few months, and the bunks had a tendency to sway squeakily with as small a movement as the arching of one’s eyebrows (and i happen to do this quite a lot). but it had a good location and we were welcomed with two free big beers on our first night, so it wasn’t all bad.
we headed south after running out of ice cream vendors in mendoza, and we were greeted by an even larger number in bariloche, of an infinitely more superior quality. staying in our hostel there was like staying at a friend’s house - albeit a friend whom you pay on a nightly basis, and who kicks you out by 10.30am and charges you for an extra night’s accommodation if you’re not out by this time. we had single, non-bunk beds this time, which was a welcome respite from the previous place.
the strangest thing about bariloche was that it was my first encounter of what i consider to be true quaintness in a spanish-speaking country. hispanic culture to me can be impressive and beautiful, yes, but chiefly for its scale and grandeur - and yet here was a part of argentina which felt decidedly more suited to a central-european location rather than its actual north-patagonian one.
bariloche is a place to endulge, with the best ice cream and empanadas in argentina (at least in my experience), excellent seafood (is it still classed as seafood if it’s from a freshwater lake?) and countless chocolate boutiques. the serving of ice cream seems more an art than a transaction, with the various flavours being slathered onto cones or into pots via rather ornate-looking spatulars, rounded off with a melodramatic, interpretive dance-style flourish of the wrist to encapsulate the quintessence of the moment.
we explored the colonia suiza, a small community of swiss immigrants in the mountains with beautiful chalets and a little market selling artisanal craft and amazing pies and strudels, and made the slow trudge up cerro campanario - one of the many hills that surrounds bariloche and overlooks the lakes - to the best lookout point in the area. the walk turned out to be incredibly steep, incredibly dusty and incredibly non-zigzagging, which made for a slow, arduous climb that wasn’t entirely what we’d been expecting. the view, however, was spectacular. we took the chairlift down and i was hit in the face by some leaves.
the next day i went kayaking on lago gutierrez. this was no kayak in the park - this was the proper thing, with rudder-controlling pedals and a ‘waterproof skirt’ (i preferred ‘tunic’) to seal you in place. we paddled for a good couple of hours up the lake to a stoney beach, where the guides - in a somewhat mary poppins-like fashion - somehow produced a table, bottles of soft drinks, some glasses and biscuits from somewhere within one of their kayaks.
the water on the lake was among the clearest i’ve seen and, naturally, i filled my bottle from the lake a number of times. save from the mountain spring in samaipata in bolivia, this was the first time i’d had the pleasure of drinking from a natural source of water.
i’ve taken it upon myself to start drinking yerba mate, which is a sort of fetid variety of green tea that is extremely popular in argentina, across all age groups. i even bought a hollowed-out pumpkin vessel, ‘primed’ it (soaked it in mate for a couple of days) and named it harold. although i can’t say i much like the putrid bitterness of the tea, i think that with a bit of sugar to sweeten the deal, i could get quite into this way of enjoying caffeinated drinks. the fact that i inadvertedly left harold behind in bariloche didn’t bode well for my newly-appointed hobby, but i’ve since bought haroldito ii, which is a slightly smaller vessel, with which i hope to continue.
the argentine accent has a notable italian flamboyance to it, which i’m guessing is due to the large community of italian immigrants. this is particularly noticeable in such words/phrases as ‘bueno’, ‘de nada’ and something, and since there is no audible excerpt with which to demonstrate this lilt, i’ve decided that it’s best described as employing an interval of a minor 6th, spread via a descending glissando.
after a brief overnight stop in the small town of san martin de los andes - a miniature version of bariloche in which we spent about 4 hours looking for a replacement mate gourd - we re-entered chile and headed straight to pucón. the journey was stunning, skirting yet more pristine and beautiful lakes, through valleys speckled with monkey puzzle trees, verging ever closer towards towering volcan villarrica beyond, which would continue to loom ominously over us well into our time in pucón.
pucón is a town not unlike bariloche, with a less impressive lake view but a much more magnificent one of aforementioned volcan villarrica in the opposite direction to the water. there is rarely a time when the great white peak is out of view wherever one is in pucón, and equally rare are the times when the volcano isn’t spouting a large cloud of smoke. the presence of an indigenous population was immediately palpable after the sparsity of indigenous communities in argentina, and it was nice to see the return of colourful rugs and garments in the marketplaces.
ignoring the smoldering threats of the volcano, sally and i joined the hundreds who take to the volcano each day in an attempt to conquer the old girl. we did pretty well, for our part, despite some of the most powerful, prolonged and unforgiving winds i have ever experience, which led our guides to warn that it was unlikely that we would make it to the top (although, we heard that they always say that because they don’t like climbing the mountain… which is a bit odd).
we continued on through the wind at what i thought was a decidedly slow pace, with ice axes in one hand and our faces shielded in the other. after an hour or two of the slow trudging, we reached the first bits of snow and ice around halfway up the mountain, and from there things became a bit more difficult.
it was around this point that i realised how fortunate sally and i have been on this trip when it comes to guides. aníbal in guatemala, andy in peru and saul in bolivia were all excellent guides who seemed as enthusiastic as we were to be doing the treks in question. this guide, however, whose name i won’t utter here (because i can’t remember it), raced off ahead of us as soon as we began, and was entirely unhelpful for the remainder of the hike. once we reached the snow, we saw the guides from the other tour companies telling their groups to put on their helmets, gloves, jackets and other waterproof gear. i had to seek out our guide who was lying against a wall, resting his eyes. i asked him if we needed to put on our gear. ‘sure’, he replied. it wasn’t until half an hour or so into the walking on the snow that our guide decided to tell us the best way to do it without falling over.
onwards we went, ever upwards, through the snow and over the ice. the arid summer heat had long left us behind, and been replaced by biting winds and a cold bum. i couldn’t help but notice how the incline was becoming steeper and steeper, and that the sheets of ice on which we were walking were now plummeting hundreds of meters towards rather unfriendly-looking rock formations. at one point we had to cross a ridge around 100 metres in length, wide enough for only one person at a time, with the wind billowing in our faces, and with those unwelcomingly sheer drops now on either side of us.
we surmounted the ridge, losing one man (he waited behind, you understand), and continued upwards, now only a few hundred meters from the fuming summit. our guide had raced off again, and was doing a particularly bad job of leaving us any sort of sturdy footprints in which to follow (which was his job). my attention was now focused only on the steepness of our climb, and the distance one would fall if one were to slip at this point. we had eventually been shown how to use our ice axes both to steady ourselves whilst walking, and to stop ourselves mid-fall if we did happen to slip over on the ice. but my imagination was running away with itself, and without prior experience or practice of falling on the ice i simply couldn’t trust a piece of metal to stop me dropping all that way at such a steep angle.
each footstep became increasingly more unsteady, and the poorly-beaten paths became more and more crowded, until finally, at 350 metres from the summit, i admitted defeat. i had stopped enjoying the ascent, and was too worried about falling and injuring myself - which, at the time, i considered to be particularly likely. despite my desire to stop, i was still surprised at myself. i noticed that, save a few others, everyone else was continuing the struggle up the hill - and that would normally go some way in assuring me that it was safe. but i was too convinced that i was going to slip, and that i wouldn’t be able to stop myself from falling once i had started. i would later find out that the hike is indeed as dangerous as i had thought, and that scores of people do fall and either injure themselves or die.
after questioning myself for some minutes, we began our descent. walking down on the snow and ice was even worse than walking up, but our second-in-command guide - a thoroughly more believable guide, at that - then explained that we could slide down on our backsides if we so wished. it was at this point that, when sitting down and trying to propel myself forward with my arms and legs, that i realised how difficult it was to slide down on the snow. and at that moment i felt a combination of feelings: relief that i wasn’t going to fall to my doom quite so easily, and great disappointment that i had given up so quickly, and that i could after all have made it to the summit.
my disappointment and regret was shortlived, however, as our guide pointed out a groove that someone else’s buttocks had carved out beautifully in the snow. this pre-carved chasm was more like a waterslide than the surprisingly well-gripping, unspoilt snow around it, and with thawed nerves i commenced my sliding.
it was slow work at first, and even in the buttock-chasm speed was lacking. after a few minutes of undignified crawling, we reached some cracks in the ice. these were alarming at first, and i whimpered like a little girl. but then they became wider, and turned into natural gorges which were perfect for bottom-sliding. these were pleasing, and i laughed like a man.
we were told at the beginning of the hike that, on average, the ascent time is 5 hours, and that the descent time is 1 hour. after a few minutes of descent, it became clear why. the gorges were about a metre wide and 3 metres high - although varying in places - which meant that there wasn’t really any way of falling out of the gorge, regardless of one’s speed. we were later given some plastic paddles to sit on which increased speed ten-fold and made acceleration to such speeds more or less immediate. we had to use our ice axes as brakes and, although effective, my speed was such that there were a couple of close calls. all in all, though, we reached the bottom of villarrica infinitely happier than when we were at the top.
the next day we visited the thermal springs in the small town of cañeripe, a couple of hours north of pucón. there are 17 different baths there in total, ranging in temperature from 76c (which is banned) to a chilly 8c, which is fed directly from a waterfall. we spent a good 4 hours there, testing the different temperatures, spending too long in some and making ourselves feel sick, and cooling off/warming up gently in others. the whole complex is set in a natural valley full of ferns, and there is a pretty, wooden track - painted red - that follows the 1-mile valley to its end, branching off to the various pools along the way. a nice feature, aside from the warm water, is the network of small wooden tunnels that channels the thermal water into each pool. the same network feeds a continuous supply of cold water into the bathroom basins, in place of a normal tap.
our last day in pucón was the first dull and dreary day in many weeks, and it therefore became another day assigned to essential/gratuitous admin work. it was so grey outside that even villarrica had its head in the clouds. we booked our bus to santiago to leave that evening and, as a direct result of that, appeared in santiago the very next day.
we’ve been staying with will and ellen for the past week now, and it has been bliss. we have our own little room that opens up onto the large terrace, which itself overlooks santiago and the distant mountains, which i’m sure themselves would be a grand sight were they not forever masked by smog.
it’s been amazing to be able to sleep in as long as we want, without being disturbed, and without having to worry about disturbing anyone else in turn, and we’ve been spoilt somewhat for food, whether homemade or bought. we’ve sampled santiago’s best empanada and ice cream offerings, which it turns out are a good match for anything that argentina can offer (save for the mcdonald’s and burger king varieties).
it’s also been fun getting to know paka, their cat, who has a shorter attention span than i do. it is only as we’re about to leave that i’ve become used to - even expectant of - being pounced on for accidentally twitching my little finger whilst reading. his signature bear-hug pounce and the fact that he doesn’t use his claws has been duly noted for my ‘best cat’ award.
on thursday i made my acting debut, alongside sally, will and ellen, in a chilean film by the name of ‘los manos como son’. we all had lines, and mine were particularly long. the director called me up to the room in which we’d be filming my part and proceeded to explain in his fast, incoherent spanish that i would need to walk into the room, explain that i had the month’s rent, and then say along the lines of:
‘you remember we spoke about having a small party tonight? i’m leaving with my friends tomorrow to go on vacation, and i wanted to check it’s ok. it will only be the people of the house, and daniella, gonzalo and felipe, whom you already know. i will take full responsibility.’
it would have been enough to try to remember all that in english, given that i was only told my lines only 5 minutes before the director was shouting ‘accion!’. i created a nice groove in the floor whilst pacing frantically up and down, trying for the life of me to remember all of these lines, in tenses that i can’t use, with words that i’ve never heard before and can barely decipher due to the director’s strong chilean accent.
the main problem, though, was trying to understand the protagonist’s (geronimo, who had a very big beard) questions in response to my dialogue. after numerous amusingly erroneous takes, the director said that we were done for now, and sent me back downstairs in the waiting area. i passed will on the stairs, who was going up to do his part.
when will returned, he explained that he’d really struggled to remember his lines because they were so long, and that the director had told him that he needed to say that he had this month’s rent, and was to ask geronimo if it was ok to hold a little leaving party… it seems as though we both failed with that bit!
on numerous occasions throughout my trip so far i’ve found myself surprised at how different this continent is from one end to another. and it is only now, after the inevitable reflection that comes with entering one’s final few days in a place, that i realise that i shouldn’t really be surprised at all. my assumption that south america should be largely the same from one point to the next is undoubtedly based on both the colonial spanish heritage that the constituent countries share, and the resulting domination of the spanish language therein.
it strikes me as odd that the sharing of a language across the majority of a continent would lead me to ignore all the other facets of that continent’s potential diversity and assume - prior to visiting - that that group of countries is therefore the same throughout. i wouldn’t go to portugal expecting it to be the same as germany, and there’s a much smaller distance between those two countries than a lot of the distances i’ve travelled throughout south america.
nonetheless, the variety i have witnessed has, at times, been astonishing. it is quite striking to me that a distance of but a few feet can mean the difference between rich and poor: between dirt trails and smooth asphalt roads (as was the case when crossing from bolivia to chile), indigenous to european (chile to argentina), a happy stomach to clinging to the toilet bowl for dear life (peru to bolivia), paying to squat over a hole in the ground compared to using a free bathroom with toilet paper, soap and towels (bolivia to argentina).
but this is not only my departure from south america, but from latin america as a whole. i am entirely reluctant to be giving up my immersion in the spanish language, not only because i have been enjoying getting to grips with it, but because i really don’t want to be forgetting that which i’ve learnt heretofore. some sort of information-retaining device would be very useful at this juncture, but for now i’ll have to rely on what small service my memory can provide.
and as i once again turn to reflect on the past 4 months in latin america, i realise that the things that have plagued me most during my time here are also the things that i shall most miss: touting (where else in the world can you be offered a tuk-tuk ride whilst travelling in the back of a truck?), the long bus journeys (during which time it is acceptable to sit still and listen to music and absorb the fleeting landscape without feeling guilty for not utilising one’s time to its full potential), and the ubiquitous dulce de leche. actually, no - i don’t miss that last one.
so now i sign off from latin america, and begin the second leg of our trip: the antipodes, and my inevitable return to new zealand - the journey to which ensures that i don’t get a 2nd of march this year. nos vemos, américa latina!