Dog days and dodging decisions

One of the joys of travelling is that generally you don´t have to take decisions if you don´t want to. The last 3 weeks, mas o menos, have been thus - a period of procrastination over basic choices. In Mendoza, I took 2 weeks to decide where to go next and, having decided to come here to Bariloche, I spent another week deciding how long to stay. Constant ruminations over these life and death issues have resulted in my most idle and frustrating period of this trip. But the snow arrived a week ago, skiing is planned for next week and I have enrolled for another couple of weeks in a new, improved Spanish school.


To fill in the time since my last blog, recently I have mostly:

• been on my first long bus ride (18hrs) across the pancake-flat wilderness of the Pampa between Mendoza and Bariloche;


• seen an evening of locals exhuberantly dancing the Argentine samba in the public square opposite my hostel;


• been attacked by a Doberman while its owner stood by doing nada; (and while we are on that theme, I have also taken the hostel´s dog for a walk during which it got into a fight with a street dog - a fight that splattered blood on the pavement and windows of a restaurant);


• shared two travellers´first sight of snow (and first snowball fight);


• grown a beard;


• and said goodbye to several good friends made in Mendoza, including my lovely "mother" in the hostel there.

My home here now is another small, quiet hostel. It´s out of the way a little, a few blocks above the main streets of Bariloche. Most of the inhabitants, including myself, are young long-stayers: Kate, the ever-procrastinating Sydneysider; Jotape (JP, Juan Pablo), a Cordobeso looking for work in the tourist industry here; Camilo, the wise Columbian who has cycled here from Buenos Aires and who will be returning to Bogota by bike to introduce his new American girlfriend to his mother who he hasn´t seen in 6 years; and Chris, a Texan ex-military guy with a penchant for all things spiritual. It feels like a cross between a student house and a halfway home for intransigent youths, but it is a very happy place, and even the temporary interlopers settle in quickly to the rhythm of the place - usually Columbian cumbia at 4 in the morning.


At the end of this week I will have been at school for 6 weeks, so I think my next blog will have to be in Spanish. Sorry in advance!