New year, new possibilities.

We needed to get up early to catch our flight to Buenos Aires and it was hard, very hard for Adrian and me to get up after only 5 and 4 hours of sleep respectively. I had also had a number of glasses of champagne and red wine yesterday. Say no more.

Our next leg on the voyage was going to be another 2-day one. Originally we had planned to stay in Argentina for two more days and then do a famous mountain cruise over to Chile. Yes, you read correctly. With all the large lakes in the area it is possible to cross over from Bariloche to Puerto Montt in Chile over the Andes mostly using boats combined with short bus rides between the lakes. However, we were not going to be able to do this.

Juat before leaving on the voyage I got an email from the owner of the small hostel we are staying in on Easter Island. He could tell me that the flight we were going to take from Easter Island to Tahiti was going to be cancelled since they were going to start doing repairs on the airport in Easter Island and limit the number of flights. This also meant that flights from Easter Island to Tahiti would be down to one a week. I needed to reorganize everything and in the process had to get us from Bariloche to Santiago in Chile on January 1. The only solution was another stop at the airport in Buenos Aires. We could have crossed the Andes by car in 4 hours and then flown up to Santiago, but the problem with that route was that no rental agencies would let us rent a car in Argentina and leave it in Chile without paying a leg and a grandmother.

As we got our luggage ready to go we did a last search for Adrians glasses. We moved beds, lifted mattresses, checked outdoors, in the car, everywhere. No glasses. Not good. In the end we had no choice but to leave .

We did our good-byes:

On the way to the airport we got our last beautiful views of the Andes:

At the airport the guy at Alamo was, of course, not the guy I spoke with yesterday and he had not heard anything about the tire deal. He pointed out that one of them buying us a tire today was not possible since everything was closed on January 1 by law. He was a very nice guy and in the end we agreed that he would purchase a tire on Monday and then email to agree how much they could take from the damage deposit they had secured off my credit card. We just had to hope they would not try to rip us off. We had no choice.

As we got into line for check-in at 11:05am I checked the departure screens. It said that our flight left at 11:40, not 12:20 as scheduled. I found a LAN representative and asked if the flight really left at 11:40, not 12;20. The person told me that this was the case, but that everything would be all right and that I didn´t have to worry a bit. Just wait in the check-in line, sir. We were starting to see through this standard Argentinian “just relax and chill out” response and were not reassured. Luckily check-in went fast, for once. Once through security the screen suddenly said 12:20. What the…? Were they deliberately trying to remove people with weak hearts from the gene pool?

Another A320, yawn:

Even though we had two LAN flights today we had chosen to send our luggage only to Buenos Aires first, since we would have ample time to get the luggage and check it back in. It would be very impractical, to put it mildly, to lose our luggage now. In 4 days we would be in French Polynesia, further away from Bariloche than New York. As we say in Norway: “Brent barn lukter ikke godt.”

Once we were inside the plane, waiting for everyone else to get on board, my phone rang. It was Jorge. They had found Adrian´s glasses! The glasses were on top of the desktop computer under the desk in the room we had been sleeping in. Adrian had indeed left them in the room, as he thought. On top of the computer was probably the only place in the entire house we had not looked. It was too late to get them to us. I agreed with Jorge that I would find a way for him to send them to us and then contact him. Sigh, another package story coming up?

We had bought some wine for our hosts in their neighbor´s (Fernando and Lili) wine shop yesterday. Each of the kids got a chocolate lolly from them as a gift. Iseline had saved her´s for today. She was very happy she had done so:

Beautiful clouds:

On arrival in Buenos Aires the baggage claim was a total chaos with too many people:

We waited and waited and waited. The screen simply said:

Nothing about Bariloche. We feared the worst:

There was no counter, no one from an airline or the airport in the room, just a herd of frustrated passengers. After an hour (!) our luggage arrived. Walking through the terminal we discovered an entire restaurant area. Last time we were here we didn´t find it and had to eat at the Mc Donalds. How we managed to miss it was beyond us. This time we could have a decent lunch:

The airport was crowded and we were very happy we had our 5 hour margin. Here is the line for check-in. It continues to the right and through the main hallway:

Another LAN flight. Another A320:

We arrived in Santiago at the airport hotel around 11 pm. Helene and the kids went to bed while I started working on updating the blog. At last we had internet again. The line was not perfect and seemed to transfer data in lumps. At 04:30 in the morning I had managed to transfer 9 days of blog. I would only get 2 hours of sleep, but had a 6 hour flight waiting for me to catch up on my sleeping.

Tomorrow we leave South America and head for Easter Island.

Eirik

—–

In the morning we went back to the garage to pick up the new tire. The guy smiled and told us he unfortunately had bad news. The tire could only be ordered 2 at a time, so we could buy 2 or nothing. In addition the price was hefty.

We called Alamo to ask if we could pay them after all. The guy told us he could buy the tire for us personally in Bariloche tomorrow for a small supplement. We could then pay him a total sum which was less than half the price of two tires. No-brainer. We got our metal-thing-people-more-interested-in-cars-then-me-would-know-the-name-of back and returned:

For some reason I have never really been interested in cars or understood some people´s fascination with them. A car is a convenient machine that should bring me from A to B with the least possible hassle. It should be maintenance-free and use as little gasoline as possible. Maybe this is all a counter-reaction to growing up with a father who liked cars very much?

I remember a story my friend Jørn Harald told me from when he was in the army. He did his service after university and was put in a barrack together with 18-year olds from the countryside. They bored him with lots of talk about cars. At one point he was fed up and said something like: “Listen, your simple combustion engine cars are completely boring. I am interested in things like the space shuttle. It is the most complex machine built by man in terms of number of parts, just after the most complicated petroleum drilling platforms.” I couldn´t have said it better myself. They didn´t bother him with cars after that.

Jorge and Carmen were having a New Year´s party at their place. Yesterday we thought they wanted to join us for an excursion up to the skiing slopes which are very close. However  it soon became obvious that there were so many things to prepare for the party they needed to spend the day on organizing everything.  They probably meant for us to do the excursion on our own in the first place. You can come a long way with a rudimentary vocabulary and lots of gestures, but sometimes the language barrier can be really frustrating.

We suggested to help them, but there were too many cooks and difficult to guess what needed to be done. In the end we decided that it was probably best to get out of the way and let the family prepare. At least we managed to help by buying some bread for them in town.

We drove up to the skiing slopes to have a look. On the way we got some great views:

Close to the top we stopped, walked for 2 minutes, and admired a waterfall

The slopes here are not many, but looked cool. Adrian said he wanted to come back in winter to ski.

We drove back to town to have lunch at Quesoteca, the fast food place with the great wifi connection. The weather was fantastic and we finally got to take some decent pictures of downtown Villa La Angostura.

Everything is made from wood in the same style, right down to the phone booths:

When we got back we relaized Adrian´s glasses were missing. He uses either glasses or contact lenses and hadn´t used his glasses for 3 days. He was sure he had put them somewhere in the sleeping room. We went through the room several times and, with the help of our hosts, the entire house. They were nowhere to be found. Ouch! Adrian and I started searching through all our photos of the last days to find out when he had been wearing them. It was clear that he had misplaced them somewhere between the dinner Carmen and Juan Carlos hosted and the next morning.

Carmen tried to call Carmen, but she was not home. She would be at the party, so we could ask then.

The guests started arriving at 9:30 pm. Carmen and Juan Carlos had not found any glasses, but they would look closer when they got back home.

The last guests arrived closer to 11 pm when we started our New Year´s dinner. Here´s the adult table:

Iseline found a friend and took her under her wings for the evening:

Closer to midnight the radio was turned on loud and everyone got up.

As the radio guy started counting down the seconds we all joined him in a loud countdown.

Happy New Year! Everyone toasted with everyone and gave everyone at least a hug:

There was chocolate! Villa La Angostura is known for its many high quality chocolate makers. I had made sure we took responsibility and stocked up a kilo of hand-made chocolate for the party.

Quality assurance:

iPod-time:

It was a great relaxed party. Some people listened to their own music, and after a while some fell asleep

Jorge was listening to contemporary popular music from the poor, as he put it. He shared an earbud and we listened together. The music was cool. A sort of beefed up reggae. Some of it reminded me of music by Manu Chao. I wish I could understand the lyrics better as there was much energy and frustration in the voices.

More and more people fell asleep, then woke up again and took part in the party.

Helene, Viktor and Iseline went to bed around 1:30. I wanted to stay up just a bit longer. When I started telling Adrian we needed to go to bed around 2:00, he begged me for just a few more minutes. He had found some friends and they were now preparing an expedition into the dark night with flashlights, They had a really good time and he doesn´t have many occasions to have fun with other kids during the voyage. I didn´t have the heart to force him to bed.

We both stayed up until the bitter end, around 3:15. I put Adrian to bed first and then started cleaning up together with Carmen and Jorge. For once my weak Spanish was an advantage. Whenever one of them tried to stop me from helping, telling me to go to bed, I just stared at them and said “no entiendo” before I continued.

I finally collapsed sometime between 4:00 and 4:30.

Eirik

—–

P.S. This is blog post number 100!

In the morning we drove over to a garage nearby to get a new tire. Helene had called the rental agency yesterday and they told us they preferred for us to get a new tire before we handed the car back. This would create less hassle for them and be less expensive for us. The people at the garage told us that the tire we needed was rare and had to be ordered from Bariloche. The good news was that they would be able to get one over during the day and mount it for us. We could pick it up in the evening or tomorrow.

During the morning I had a number of email-exchanges  (using my phone and the ridiculously expensive 3G connection) with the guy at Bring Express (Norwegian Postal Service) responsible for sending my glasses to Brasil with too little margin to get them out of customs and without telling the sender about the small detail that you have to supply the receivers passport number when sending to Brazil. The glasses had still not cleared customs in Brazil. He was amazingly arrogant. He continued to claim that any delays in customs was the responsibility of the customer and that if we were stupid enough to send them too late then he couldn´t help it. It´s part of the story that they had told the optician there was plenty of margin and that they shouldn´t worry.

In addition one of his colleagues told me in the morning they would gladly send the glasses to me in French Polynesia as soon as they had cleared customs in Brazil. I contacted Dauro and Laura, and they told UPS in Brazil about this. They responded that this was not possible.

I contacted Bring Express again and they responded that this was of course not possible. No apologies or attempt to explain their error. They could, however, have the glasses sent back to Norway and then to French Polynesia. This would of course take an unspecified very large amount of time. I had told them I needed the glasses badly, the ones I am using give me headaches. What are they smoking?

Bring Express had by now used 3 months to not get me my glasses using their fastest international express service.

If you need to send something don´t use Bring Express. They are a bunch of arrogant amateurs left over from the postal monopoly days with no sense of service! Ah, it felt good to type that.

Jorge came home early from work wearing his party glasses. No work until next year!

In his hand he is holding the modem that might be the source of the internet problem. The provider claims to have double-checked the line, and everything seemed to be in order. It´s holiday now anyway and any replacement will not be available until after we leave.

Jorge and Carmen had proposed a picnic in the open. We packed our stuff and were soon at another beautiful location:

Trout barbecue preparations:

In the meantime the kids had a ball:

Yara:

July:

I´m king of the world!

We were not alone:

Once again the rain came drifting and when our food was ready it started pouring down. Given the climate here the locals have the same attitude to rain as Norwegians do: “Quit complaining and put on your rain gear.”

The trout was worthy of a gourmet restaurant:

After dinner the kids wanted to get some warmth in the car. I had brought my audio cable and we hooked my iPhone up to the car stereo. Party!

We stayed all evening and tried unsuccessfully to catch some fish:

When we finally decided to head home around 9pm our car wouldn´t start. The battery was flat. Note to self: Don´t let the kids play loud music for too long when the motor is not running. Everyone pushed (except yours truly, the photographer) and we managed to get the motor started:

On the way home Viktor and I discussed a lot of stuff. He is very curious, like his siblings, and the kids (mostly the boys) often discuss history, languages, chemistry, physics, astronomy etc. with us. Often they challenge my knowledge and push me to the brim of what I know. After that I use the copy of Wikipedia I have on my phone.

This time Viktor wanted to know more about the rainbow. At one point he said that the rainbow must have a finite number of colors. I countered and said that in fact it has an infinite number of colors. I went on to remind him that light is a continuous spectrum and that colors are ideas invented by humans. In fact every culture divides the rainbow in to a different set of colors. In Vietnamese a green leaf and the blue sky have the same color (“xanh”). In Turkish light blue and dark blue are two different colors (“lacivert” and “mavi”).

He said he still thought the rainbow had a finite number of colors. I went on to explain that it is parallel to a line which has an infinite number of points. His response was that that coudn´t be the case for a physical line. Once you go down to the subatomic level you cannot divide it into more than its quarks. My response was that you could move a quark a fraction of it´s size and then you would have a new point on the line shorter away then the next quark. (I knew I was on thin ice, since a particle really is a wave function, besides quarks aren´t free). He agreed that for a line this was correct.

Then, triumphantly, he said: But, dad, the rainbow is light. It consists of a finite number of photons, each with their frequency. So in any specific rainbow there must be a finite number of colors. I immediately understood that he was right, and that I was wrong. An ideal rainbow has an infinite number of colors, a physical one does not (actually, as I realized later on,  there is also a finite number of theortecial colors because photon frequency is a quantum property).

I told him “Yes, Viktor, you are right and I am wrong.” Helene turned to the side immediately and commented that this was an important event in family history. i agreed and said it would probably not be the last time Viktor outsmarts me on a science subject. Viktor was very proud and happy.

Later we got a good scare when we saw that parts of the main road had been hit by a landslide. We got out and Carmen spoke to the road workers. They could tell us that the road had been closed since 4pm! 15 minutes after we arrived they were finished clearing and the only reasonable road back opened again. Lucky break!

Another great day in the open. Tomorrow is the last day of the year and a big party in Argentina!

Eirik

—–

In the morning I wanted to do an extra backup of our photos. I got out the 1TB disk where I keep a copy of all the data from our home computer and which I also use to do secondary backups. I don´t have enough space on the MacBook for all photos, so after a while they only exist on two external disks.

The disk didn´t mount! What the… I had bought the disk in an Apple store in Washingtn DC and now it was already broken.

Two broken disks in 3 weeks was a bit too much. I checked the only remaining working external disk I have left and to my horror discovered that there was a hole in my elaborate double backup scheme. The photos from October 9 to October 21 had only been on the now broken disk. I swore to myself that I will never again brag on the blog that I am normally very good with backups.

All photos from the Pinnacles National Momument, the national parks in Utah and Arizona and up to and including the entire stay in New York had probably gone to the great WOM (write-only memory) in the sky.

There was only one thing I could try. If, by a miracle, only the electronics were broken I could salvage the data using the emergency cable adater I bought in Salta. The casing had no screws, so I had to bend it open and ruin it. On the inside was another Samsung SATA disk.

I connected it all:

Only remaining working disk to the left. The other broken one up to the right.

The disk mounted using the adapter! I created some space on the MacBook by moving some kid´s movies to the external disk and quickly copied all the photos both to the MacBook and to the other external hard-disk. I could now tell Helene that we hadn´t lost the photos after all.

It seems fishy that two disk interfaces should break so shortly after each other. I really hope it isn´t the MacBook which is frying them.

It´s amasing how small the interfaces are these days. Here are the contents when the disk and the plastic have been removed, This is a full-blown SATA to USB interface:

Once I had managed to clear my soul of the emotional impact of a near-data-loss experience we went into town to buy a fishing license. Jorge and Carmen wanted to bring us to a lake not too far away. A 24 hour license cost 100 pesos, or USD 25. If I had been an Argentinian or living in a country with a common border with Argentina it would have been much cheaper.

Our excpetionally talented driver, Helene, once again brought us safely to our destination:

And what a destination it was. We walked over a meadow

and were met by this view:

We went swimming (the water held 17 C (63 F))

and sunbathing

There was a fallen tree on the beach:

Jorge had brought his new inflatable dinghy. Unfortunately we didn´t have a champagne bottle to baptize her. Jorge and I went fishing:

It was good to have time alone with Jorge. We got the opportunity to discuss many issues. My Spanish has steadily improved during our stay here and I felt I was getting at least closer to how it was 15 years ago. We discussed things that happened when we were in Argentina 15 years ago and also had some laughs over the time he was in Oslo and I brought him fishing and camping in the woods. The tent was small and the ground a bit slanted.

Fishing trips are in general great arenas for male bonding. I once took my French brother-in-law fishing in Norway. We didn´t catch any fish but he taught me the basics of French swearing, something Helene and my French courses had never done. What a relief to be able to swear correctly. It is an essential part of a language if you want to really be on the inside. It is also very difficult to master and gives you important clues about the culture of a country. Yet most language courses leave you in the dark or tell you about useless expressions like “zut” (roughly equivalent to “oh my”).

Traditional Norwegian swearing is mostly related to religion and the devil, although modern Norwegian swearing also has been inspired by English swearing. English swearing is mostly based on genitals and activities related to these. The French, on the other hand, seem obsessed with the anus and its functions. There are all sorts of expressions related to excrements and who puts their droppings on whom.

On a slightly unrelated note the cow also has a very special place in French culture. Any joke containing a cow is instantly more funny then one which does not. Once I discovered this I recycled all my old cow jokes and tested them with success in a French environment. There is actually a reference to this cultural trait in the Monty Python movie “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” where the French in the castle launch cows at the British knights.

Ooops, sorry.

After two hours and a very nice trout, we were heading back again when dark clouds and a wall of rain started drifting towards us. Helene took this photo from the beach:

A strong wind developed and huge waves came our way. I was at the oars and had a very hard time making us advance at all in the strong counter-wind. The cold rain was hammering us and I was glad I was rowing, which kept me warm. By the time we were back all the others were in the cars. Jorge and I were soaked to the bone.

There was a slight lull after a while and we could show everyone the fish Jorge caught:

1.7 kilo (almost 4 pounds) lake trout. Not bad.

The rain soon came back in full force. I wanted to help Jorge deflate the dinghy but soon had to give up since I was too cold. I hurried into the car to get some warmth. I had forgotten the most basic rule for staying alive: Don´t get wet. If you do get wet, take off the wet clothes and put on dry ones and add a waterproof layer on top. We hadn´t event thought about bringing rain gear today, the weather seemed so nice this morning.

We wanted to follow the road a bit further, but soon had to stop. There was a line of cars. We got out and could see that a large part of the road had been pushed into the lake by running water.

We were very happy we were not on the other side. Jorge told us we would have had to make a 100km (60 miles) detour on rough gravel roads to get back to their home.

On our way back the sunset was spectacular and set the sky (and a lake) on fire:

Eirik

—–

We ventured out on our own to do a day trip to Jorge and Carmen´s previous home town: San Martin de los Andes. To get there we followed a gravel road for 80 kilometers (50 miles). Bumpety-bump-bump, cough, cough, but lots of great views.

There was a waterfall on the way:

As we approached we could see San Martin which lies at the end of a long lake:

The GPS was constantly overoptimistic, thinking we could do 80 km/h on the gravel road. By the time we arrived it was already time for lunch.

Being at the waterfront in San Martin felt a lot like being in Dale in Telemark in Norway. Same location at the end of a large narrow lake in the mountains and beautiful wooden buildings. We found a very nice looking restaurant..

Ordering food at a restaurant in Argentina can be a big challenge. Sometimes when you order “pork” you get a single slice of meat. You are supposed to understand that you need to order potatoes, peas or other vegetables separately. Other times, like in this restaurant, you get 3 large slices of pork, each large enough for a hungry lumberjack, with plenty of sauce, potatoes and a salad thrown in on the side. The strange thing is that prices and normal tourist logic also often fail. This restaurant was schmack on the waterfront of a well-known tourist target and prices were low. The only way to really find out is to communicate with the waiter.

In other words, we had more than enough food (Iseline boycotted the photo):

After lunch we crossed the street and the kids could go swimming.

We drove a bit around town before heading back

There were more great views on the way back. This area is so beautiful I´m having a hard time trying to not swamp you with too many photos:

After having done 80 km (50 miles) of tough gravel road in one direction we had done 65 (40 miles) in the other when the road suddenly started to feel more bumpy than what should be possible. Helene pulled over and we found out that one of the tires had exploded. With no cell phone coverage we were glad the spare wheel was in good shape. I guess you cannot call this a flat tire, this is more like a non-tire:

The jack was so hard to turn we had to take turns turning it:

We saw there was an electric cable going into the brake which was broken. However the hydraulics worked and the brakes worked as they should. We took the risk and drove back.

We explained what had happende and Jorge brought me and the car over to one of his neighbours which he explained was a car mechanic. He lived with his family in what looked like a small farm. We said hello to everyone who was sitting outside before we went over to the barn. OK, I guess you have to use time on getting-acquainted-rituals, but showing me the barn seemed a bit excessive. Except, it wasn´t  really a barn. Once the barn door was opened a garage and large storage area was revealed. Wow, I would never have guessed from the looks of the place from the outside. Here were shelf after shelf of parts in carboard boxes. All sorted and marked with a thick black pen. I wanted to take a picture but in some situations it just doesn´t feel right. I explained to the guy what the cable looked like, he asked for the type of car. Seconds later he showed me a spare brake with the same kind of cable. He explained that this was connected to an infrared sensor inside the brake which was there to signal if there was dirt inside the braking mechanism. Who would have guessed? There was no danger and we didn´t have to get it fixed immediately. Very good to know.

In the evening we had all been invited for dinner at Carmen and Juan Carlos´s place, the parents Lili, the neighbor. They live just outside the center of Villa La Angostura in a fantastic house in a beautiful and very well kept garden, which you can barely see in the dark:

Carmen and Juan Carlos lived in Buenos Aires until a few years ago. They wanted to escape the crime-ridden capital and moved to be in the same town as their daughter. They told us that they just didn´t feel safe in Buenos Aires and that it was a pain with metal bars in front of windows, high fences and locks everywhere.

We were served finger-licking-good empanadas of different flavors:

It seems to be the standard in Argentina that you stay at someone´s place until at least one of the children fall asleep.

Eirik

—–

It was Monday, we had all our luggage and we were once agin fully equipped. What a great feeling! The goal of the day was the Arrayanes Forest National Park. July had decided to join us and we drove down to the port of Villa La Angostura to catch the catamaran (on the right):

There were a few nice boats down there:

The sailing boat reminded us of the pictures we had seen from our friend Sarah´s wedding in Villa La Angostura. I immediately sent her a text message and asked where it was exactly they got married. She responded immediately, probably  from Washington DC. It turned out she got married about half a mile from where we are staying. A place that is visible from the catamaran:

She also told us that we had to take a walk in the cinnamon colored forest. We did not immediately understand what she was referring to.

The catamaran ride is a slow ride with detours and explanations by a Spanish-speaking guide. It took us about an hour to reach our destination:

Viktor got his daily war painting:

July:

There are lots of very nice houses on the shore of the lake:

On arrival:

Isn´t this a cool photo?:

we relaxed a bit on the beach

and Iseline and Adrian went swimming:

They did not complain about the temperature of the water and I was both surprised and impressed when I again used my watch to measure the temperature of the water:

12.4 C (55 F) in the water in summer would be cold even for Norway. When I was a kid 12 C was the limit for when we would jump in the water to go swimming. 12 C is about where we guys are no longer able to find our equipment in the bushes when we go to the restroom. If you do enter such a state, by free will or by falling into cold water, the trick is to lure it out with a sugar cube and then quickly grab it with a pair of very small tweezers.

Afterwards we had lunch nearby with a nice view of the lake. We now undestood what Sarah had meant with “cinnamon colored forest”

There was a boardwalk path (which was a real one and not an amusement park, like in Santa Cruz ) through the forest. It was very beautiful:

Last chance to go to the restroom before we started our trek back to Villa La Angostura. Iseline carried the backpacks while waiting for mom:

I have recently purchased an app for my iPhone which has so far blown my socks away. What it does is simple to explain, yet very impressive for a computer scientist like me. The application constantly shows you what is captured by the iPhone´s camera, In real-time it does OCR (TLA for Optical Character Recognition), translates any text it finds from Spanish to English and then replaces the text it has found with the translated text in the image itself. It´s just like a babelfish, but for the eye instead of the ear.

I tried it out in the restroom. Here you can see how it works:

It does a word-by-word translation, and it seldom gets them all correct, but that´s normally all you need for signs, restaurant menus etc. Isn´t that great? The future IS here, it is just unevenly distributed.

The sign it has translated here should be well known to any South American tourist. Most sewage pipe systems in South America are very narrow. This means that toilet paper will clog them. I have also been told that there are grinders installed many places that cut your droppings into small pieces so they can pass.

Not throwing toilet paper in the toilet is a major cultural barrier to cross. All my life I have been tossing it into the white bowl without thinking twice. It is very, very difficult to stop this behavior every single time you have finished using a piece of toilet paper. The result is that I´m sorry to say that we have clogged several commodes on this trip with the accompanying embarrassment of telling the owners about our inappropriate behavior. Shameful and humiliating.

We entered the enchanted forest:

We were not there yet. 13 km is a little over 8 miles.

If I understood the guide on the catamaran correctly, the people from Disney were here in this forest many years ago to make sketches for the forest in Snow White.

The first 2 km were difficult. Iseline had decided she did not want to hike today and motivating her was a challenge. There was no way back now, the catamaran had returned and we had to walk back to Villa La Angostura. For every kilometer there was a marker showing us how far we were from town:

It was just before the 11 km mark that I got the idea. We had brought some chocolate for everyone and I quickly calculated how I should distribute this by now very valuable currency. I told the kids there would be a piece of chocolate for everyone at 9, 6, 3 and 0 km. Not only was there now chocolate to be looked forward to, there was a game to be played. Who could reach the chocolate points first?

Iseline changed attitude completely. She livened up, went from grumpy to happy and started running! She more or less ran the last 11 km, no kidding. I had a hard time following her and the two of us were soon well ahead of the others. We waited at each chocolate point and as soon as her ration was consumed she started running again.

Just before the 5 km mark we discovered that she had left some of her clothes at the 6 km mark. I turned around immediately and told her to wait while I fetched them for her. She said “no dad, I´ll get them, I´m very fast you know” and off she went. Here she is, returning to me after a 2 km (over a mile) run:

A seasoned wanderer:

We got some great views of the lake towards the end:

It took us pretty exactly 4 hours to do the 13 km (8 miles) hike, chocolate pauses included. The first two km took about an hour and Iseline had done a total of 15 km.

On the map to the right you can see the peninsula with the Arrayanes forest.

Our trek:

The altitude curve of the hike:

Ah, back at the starting point.

In the evening we wanted to invite our friends to the restaurant in the hotel where Sarah got married. We drove over there only to find out that today the restaurant was reserved for the guests of the hotel. Oh well, at least we got to see the outside:

We found a restaurant in town instead and had a great meal:

However we soon found out this wasn´t the best night to bring the kids to a restaurant. We arrived at about 10pm and the kids were very tired after the hike.

There was no problem getting them to bed afterwards.

Eirik

—–

At last the weather gods seemed to have ruled that we had paid back enough to compensate for the great weather we had experienced earlier during the voyage. In the morning the sky was virtually cloud-free and we could sense that it was going to be a very hot day.

Jorge and Carmen suggested that we should drive down to a part of the Nahuel Huapi national park south of Bariloche at the foot of an ancient volcano called Tronador. Nahuel Huapi is a large national park (Argentina´s first, atually) covering over 7000 square kilometers (2700 square miles). Both the city of Bariloche and Villa La Angostura are inside the national park. The Tronador volcano is in both Chile and Argentina and hosts no less than 8 glaciers. Getting there meant a drive of over 2 hours.

The kids had not remembered to recharge their iPods, so it was time for me, for the first time during the voyage, to get out my batmobile car charging station. I have a socket doubler and two double iPhone/iPod chargers, giving me four 2.5W charging points on a single 12V outlet. I also have two single point iPad 10W chargers when I need those. In addition I have external batteries with USB outputs of their own. Here I am charging 2 batteries, each in turn charging an iPod. In addition I am directly charging an IPod and an iPhone. All from one 12V socket. Cool, eh?

Have you ever though about the fact that the only standardized globally available power socket is actually originally a car cigarette lighter?

Driving the same way we came from the airport we could now see the road between Villa La Angostura and Bariloche in daylight. Wow! The views were many and breathtaking. What a beautiful place this is:

Bariloche in the background:

The last hour or so was on a gravel road.  We drove through a forest which evidently must have been destroyed by forest fire some time ago. The remaining white tree corpses created an artificial looking white forest, right out of a fantasy movie. The dust from Jorge and Carmen´s car was in the air all the time. On arrival the rental car was full of stone powder.

I take back all the bad things I said about the dirt road to Anitapolis in Brasil. That road was simply full of holes. This road, in addition, was riddled with rocks often the size of the fist of a grown man. We were both shaken and stirred.

It was worth it though, on arrival we had reached lake Hess

and the river flowing out of it. We first stopped on the bridge crossing the river to breathe in the great view and tranquility of this place:

then we hiked along the river to see a waterfall. Ready to go:

We were very impressed by the state of the path along the river. It was like walking on a wooden floor all the way. Shoes were definitely better treated than tires in this national park:

Being partially fed by glacier water the river had a magnificent green/blue color. Here is the top of the waterfall:

As seen from the other side:

There was also a side waterfall:

We had our lunch at a viewing platform with a nice view of the waterfalls and the valley:

Nice lunch view:

Gazing out and taking in the view was soothing for the soul. What a beautiful place.

We returned to the car and drove a short while before we hiked to another lake. I found some Calafate bushes, a local wild berry bush:

15 years ago I collected some berries from a calafate bush down in Rio Gallegos in Argentina. I brought the seeds back home. At the time my main hobby was office gardening. I have to admit I spent a lot of time in the office back then, and since I also love plants, this was the perfect hobby for me. I preferred starting with a seed and then nurture and see the plant through it´s birth and growth into maturity. I had many different kinds of plants, mostly edible, in my office during the last half of the nineties. After 2000 I started traveling so much in my work that office gardening was no longer practically feasible. I loved it when I could get seeds myself from fruits or vegetables. I successfully grew a very large bell pepper plant, with beautiful bell peppers, from a store bought pepper and also had two kiwi plants (with seeds from regular bought kiwis) which covererd a large window with their big leaves.

It was a big momenet when I returned from South America with seeds from the calafate bush and tried to germinate them. They turned out to be very difficult to germinate and I tried in vain for several weeks. After a weekend I came in to work and to my pleasure and pride I could see that two of the seeds I had planted had finally germinated. I was ecstatic and treated them like my newborn babies over the next days. I thought they looked very much like radish seedlings, but also knew from experience that seedlings of very different plants can look very much alike. It was only after the seedlings started developing a red stem that I suspected something fishy was going on. My beloved work colleagues had put radish seeds in my box with calafate seeds! I was devastated and still have a hard time talking about it.

On a different occasion one of them was responsible for my plants while I was away for a few days. When I came back the new seedlings of several different types of plants were completely submerged in too much water and no longer visible. I was sure he had drowned them and almost had a heart attack. He had taken the pain of rebuilding the seedling box all the way down to moving my little signs made with post-its and unbended paper clips. When he saw my reaction he quickly produced the original pot with all seedlings intact.

I actually managed to make two calafate seeds germinate later on. The way the seedlings developed was fascinating. The bush only grows in harsh mountain conditions and it showed. It would first make one tiny leaf, white without chlorophyl. Then the leaf would fill with green before the plant carefully created another single leaf. Clearly an evolutionary strategy for an environment where it pays off to invest as little as possible at a time, in case a storm or cold spell comes and wipes out some of your leaves. Unfortunately I later managed to kill the seedlings myself by leaving the relatively young plants, before having moved them to a larger pot, exposed to the sun without water over a weekend. I grieved them for a very long time and never managed to get any of the remaining seeds to germinate.

Ooops, sorry.

We stopped by the park ranger´s cabin for a chat

Ranger to the right:

Several trees, acting like one:

We now got a great view of the Tronador and its glaciers:

At 3491 meters (11453 feet) the Tronador is more than 1000 meters (3300 feet) higher than any of the other mountains in this part of the Andes.

The kids went for a swim in the quite chilly water:

while the adults drank some mate:

On our way back we paused in a field of flowers:

Loves me, loves me not…

We had company:

Iseline ran around and at one point shouted, as only a kid can: “I just love flowers!”

Everyone was tired in the end:

A warning if you ever plan to go to this part of the national park. The only road in and out is one-way until 6pm, meaning that you cannot get out again until after 6pm. We were unaware of this and tried to go home earlier and were stopped at a police check-point and asked to go back. In fact, signs marked “police check-point” can be seen very often here, but mostly there is no one present.

On our way home we stopped to buy and eat some home baked bread with pieces of fat with small lumps of meat inside. Real peasant food, and very welcomed after a great day in the open:

We stopped at yet another beautiful lake

where Isleline made a hole in the water:

and we saw this cool spider holding its egg sack (sorry Gwen, couldn´t resist):

There were nice views on the way back also:

Jorge suggested in the moring that we shoud drop by the airport during the day to ask if there was news about our luggage. My initial reaction was that there was no point, luggage claim did not answer the phone anyway. He countered by saying that there were flights on Sundays too. He was right. On the way home we stopped at the airport. I had as much hope as a frog watcher in the gobi desert when we went over to the LAN office. Nope, no news about out luggage. We went upstairs to the Aerolina Argentinas office, just so we could tell the other ones that we had tried everything.

Once Jorge explained why we were there I had turned off my Spanish and just waited for the conversation to finish. Jorge looked at me and said: “I think they are here” I checked the audio memory of the last 15 seconds in my brain and realize the woman had asked us if we were looking for 5 backpacks. She went into the back room and, holy mackerel, came back with all our luggage. I just couldn´t believe it. GOL had even wrapped each backpack in plastic to protect them. When I asked when they had arrived she said that she didn´t know, but probably yesterday morning. They had not bothered to call the 3 phone numbers they had by now, and she offered no explanation as to why. I was in no mood to quarrel and gladly signed the luggage release papers.

It felt like a second Christmas:

Everything was there and in good shape and order, possibly with the exception of Helene´s gluten-free bread which was a bit dry and squashed flat. We could finally give our hosts their original Christmas presents: Traditional Norwegian mittens:

Tomorrow we will hike again.

See you around, folks!

Eirik

—–

At last the rain stopped and it got a little bit warmer, somewhere between 15 and 20 degrees C ( 59 and 68 F) during the day. We used the opportunity to play some soccer in the morning with July and Yara. I might have a future career waiting for me as a sports photographer. I took this photo the very moment July scored on Helene:

Iseline and I also took a stroll around the neighborhood to get an idea of where we were. We are very close to the center of Villa La Angostura, just a 5 minute drive, yet we are in the countryside. The houses in the neighborhood are of different standards. These 3 are more or less neighbors:

Here is Jorge and Carmens house:

They have 3 dogs. One is Negra, who is quiet and likes to mind her own business:

Then there is Polaqua. She is also very quiet and her face makes her look a bit sad. She loves to be cuddled and will come and poke you until you do so:

Finally there is the blood hound, Cleto. He is one year old, in dog years he is only 7, and still a child, With his 70 kilos (150 pounds) and massive muscles this makes for an interesting combination, Can you imagine having a 70 kilo massively muscular 7 year old kid around the house? Cleto is just as clumsy as you would expect. He comes running towards you at maximum speed  (which is substantial) and doesn´t care to slow down before he hits you. He wanders too close to people and things and knocks everything and everyone with his hard-striking wagging tail:

Jorge was busy in the garden all morning preparing the Christmas Day lunch. He barbecued a whole goat kid:

At around 2pm the guests arrived, the neighbors, Fernando and Lili and Lili´s parents; Carmen and Juan Carlos. We had another great Christmas meal:

In the afternoon we went down to one of the many beaches of the enormous lake Nahuel Huapi which completely dominates the landscape here. Our surroundings are absolutely beautiful and reminds us very much of the French Alps. There are great views wherever you look:

even from the beach:

The water was a bit chilly and only Adrian, Iseline and Cleto dared to go in:

I took off my watch and put it in the water.

I got my watch as a gift when I held a presentation in Geneva 5 years ago and have come to love it. It is the watch equivalent of a Swiss Army Knife. It has a thermometer, a barometer showing air pressure tendency (and thus probability of good or bad weather), an altimeter and a compass. It is water tight down to 40 meters and in addition it shows the time.

More or less normal Norwegian swimming temperature; 16.2 C (61 F):

We just relaxed and had a good time at the beach:

In the evening we celebrated Adrian´s birthday. He turned 13 today! Unfortunately we only had one candle, so he had to blow it out thirteen times:

Later in the evening I misplaced my head. Luckily Helene found it on a shelf in the living room:

Whew! Close call.

Eirik

—–

Another rainy and cold day.

December 24 is a very special day for Norwegians. In many ways it is the combination of the US Christmas and Thanksgiving. At 5pm on this day everyone is with their families for the Christmas meal. All churches in Norway chime their bells at the same time and the quire “Sølvguttene” (the silver boys) sing on TV to “open Christmas”. We have done every second Christmas in France and Norway for the past 20 years, so being in Argentina was a bit strange for all of us.

After a slow morning we did a few phone calls to Norway and France to wish the respective grandparents merry Christmas.

We tried calling GOL about our luggage, but an answering machine told us they could not take our call. We realized we would probably have no news until after the holidays on Monday. It was now Friday and we started to plan for replacing our entire luggage. Helene started making a list of everything that was in the backpacks.

Afterwards we decided to wrestle with the weather gods and Jorge and Carmen brought me and the kids to the enormous lake next to Villa La Angostura, lake Nahuel Huapi. We are in what is known as the district of the 7 lakes. There are 7 enormous  and beautiful lakes here.

Helene was kind enough to liberate me from further shopping. She took our rental car to go get some last minute Christmas presents.

The beach we went to was beautiful, but the weather was unforgiving. Probably around 10 C (50 F) and a very strong wind combined with on and off rain.

Viktor preferred the weather in Brasil.

He really didn´t like the weather here:

The beach was on a narrow strip of land at the start of a peninsula. A short walk in the woods led to another beach on the other side of the strip of land.

This place must be fantastic in good weather. We had quickly had enough though, and Jorge gave us a sigh-seeing tour instead, US style, where we didn´t even have to leave the car.

We drove through a neighborhood with lots of very nice houses:

topped by this mansion:

Some very famous politician of historic importance had lived here. Unfortunately I did not manage to get the details. What a pity we never found the time to refresh our Spanish before the voyage.

Jorge then brought us to what he said was a part of Villa La Angostura not many tourists see. It was very close to the rich neighborhood:

What a contrast. As he explained there are no favelas (the slums in Brasil) in Argentina but there are still large differences between the rich and the poor.

We went back to the center and met Helene. Adrian and I stayed behind while the others went back to the house to have lunch. We wanted to go to an internet café, so Adrian could send some electronic gift cards as Christmas presents. We had lunch at a fast food place. We realized it was 6pm in Norway and that everyone was now sitting at the table eating their Christmas dinner while we were having our Christmas burgers:

The fast food joint had Wifi! We connected my iPhone and could call virtually for free with SkypeOut. Our calls were about 80 times cheaper than the phone calls we had made earlier in the day using my Norwegian SIM card. Adrian interrupted several of his friends during Christmas dinner and bragged about his Christmas burger, but they all appreciated it very much:

We strolled over to an internet café and of course, once again, we had gone straight into the siesta trap. Grumble mumble!

Luckily we only had 15 minutes to wait until it reopened at 3pm, or so we thought. We were going to get a good lesson in South American time culture. 3pm arrived, 3pm passed. By 3:10 there was still no sign of life:

At 3:13 the owner showed up. He unlocked the door and I was sure he would let us in. When I got uncomfortably close to the door he turned around and said something. I asked him to repeat and he said the same thing again, still incomprehensible to me, and quickly closed and locked the door.

Adrian peeked in and saw him turn on the screens, the machines were already running. Then he went over to the counter and started typing. After a while he started to slowly pull up the rolling curtains. Several times he stopped and redid a roll to make sure it looked good. Clearly, for us as customers, it was more important to have beautifully rolled up curtains than to have access to the internet. Curtain-watching is a well known pass-time of internet surfers. Here he is half-way through this important ritual:

At 3:25 he finally opened the door and let us in. No excuse or remark, just a smile and a welcome to us and the other two who had been waiting. They did not seem frustrated or surprised at all.

When we were finished we walked over to the bridge at the entrance to the town and waited for Helene to come and pick us up. There are flowers everywhere here and the water from the rain emphasizes all the colors. I took these photos on and near the bridge:

I had taken the marshmallows out of their forms in the morning for further drying. Now it was time to cut them and finish the process:

Finished product:

The guests started arriving around 9:30pm. People eat dinner late here in Argentina. 10pm is a normal time to go to a restaurant to have dinner. When I explained that people normally eat dinner at around 5pm in Norway they had to ask me to repeat three times until they understood that this was not a misunderstanding because of my bad Spanish.

Viktor held a mini-concert for everyone:

We had Christmas dinner together with Jorge and Carmens neighbors and good friends, Fernando and Lili and Lili´s parents; Carmen and Juan Carlos:

We drank a very good Calrissian wine:

The atmosphere was great and the wine helped our Spanish run more smoothly, at least it felt that way.

Even the family´s blood hound, Cleto, took part. He is very kind, but weighs over 70 kilos (150 pounds), something Fernando got to notice:

Presents are opened at midnight here and the kids counted down during the last hour. Once the time came everyone scrambled for their presents in a pleasant noisy chaos. Unfortunately, in pure greed, no one thought about taking pictures.

The neighbors and Jorge and Carmen had gotten us some cool t-shirts each.

Helene´s present to me was a Swiss Army Knife with everything, including saw, scissors and tooth pick. Perfect! I only hope I am able to remember to put it in the check-in luggage each and every time we take a new flight. Bets are taken, people. The odds are 3 to 1 that I will return to Norway with the knife in my possession.

The kids got candy from us, consumable presents are a good idea when you are traveling light.

I had supposedly bought Helene a scarf and everyone congratulated me on my good taste. The brutal truth is that when Helene came back from shopping she told me she had found the perfect present for her and, knowing how much I hate to shop, she had taken the liberty to not only purchase it, but also have it wrapped. When people started praising me I had to lean over to at least see the scarf before answering. I played along and thanked for the praise as quietly as I could. I have to admit, though, that it was a very nice scarf.

We kept on talking and drinking until after 2am and were quite tired in the end:

We had had an excellent Christmas Eve, even without our luggage.

Eirik

—–

In the morning we helped make an an enormous batch of  Christmas fruit salad. All sorts of ripe fruits were cut into pieces and a little bit of lemon juice was added. Yummy!

It was raining and cold outside. Probably around 10 C (50 F). We are at roughly 800 meters altitude and the climate here is a classic inland climate with large temperature variations. We are also in what is called the wet Andes. Villa La Angostura has on average of 230 days per year with rain. We stayed indoors during the morning and the kids played board games. They had “The Game of Life” here in Spanish! The kids know the game and despite all the instructions and cards that have to be read during the game the kids somehow managed to play without a problem. Adrian has picked up quite a bit of Spanish (it´s part of his school curriculum this year) and the kids here know a bit of English. The kids played the same game they had played in New York, and the same game I played with my sister when I was a kid.

Jorge worked short days and when he came home from work he helped me call GOL. The numbers we had been given in Aeroparque (the airport we came through) rang, but no one ever picked up the phone. We called GOL´s main number at Ezeiza (the main airport in Buenos Aires) and Jorge spoke to a very friendly guy who could tell us that they knew nothing. There was no record in the system of our luggage having been found. We were starting to get used to the idea of having permanently lost our luggage.

The family has a good collection of hens, and Iseline helped Jorge collect the day´s catch of eggs.

In the late afternoon, around 5pm, we moved into the center of town to continue with my not-so-favorite activity; shopping. Villa La Angostura is a very nice town with wooden buildings all in the same mountain style.

I will get more beautiful pictures once the sun is out.

We were very impressed by the consistent architecture and beautiful main street. Villa La Angostura is a very recent town and was founded only 70 years ago. The main income here is tourism, the landscape is too hilly for any reasonable amount of agriculture. The Incas would have built agricultural terraces here, but modern man has only built resort hotels and ski lifts.

Yara, who is 10 years old, came with us as a local guide and interpreter. It was cold and we needed a lot of stuff, t-shirts and shorts did not cut it anymore. Most of it would luckily be covered by our insurance. We did not know if we would get our luggage back or not, but tried to focus on getting the most necessary stuff for the next few days. We needed Christmas presents, shoes, rain-proof jackets, pants, sweaters, etc, etc for 5 persons. Everything had to be tried on and tested. Time passed.

After a while Jorge and Carmen showed up in the main street, probably looking for us. We had completely forgotten the time and realized they had no way of getting hold of us. It was almost 9pm and poor Yara had been our hostage all this time. We had a very bad conscience, but it was difficult to express it using our very rudimentary Spanish.

Here we are back at the house with most of the stuff:

We had stopped by a specialty food store to get gluten-free things for Helene. They had all sorts of cool condiments and I used the opportunity to get some corn syrup, gelatine powder and food coloring.  I could now make one of my other sweet delights; home made marshmallows. They are fantastic, if I have to say so myself, and leave the ones you find in the shop completely in the dust. Making them is not very difficult, a walk in the park compared to mousse, but it is a time consuming process. After the kids went to bed I did the first stage, and made a quadruple portion that should last for a while. Everything is ready while the corn syrup and sugar is boiling:

As you can see I also used lemon juice. Tomorrow you will be able to see the next stage of the process.

In an attempt to find out if there was internet here I asked if they had a computer so I could show them our web site and blog. Unfortunately their line was down for the first time in 5 years. They had been without phone and internet for 2 weeks. The phone was just back, but the internet connection still did not work. This being the Christmas period the phone company was probably focusing on fixing the phone lines. We might be here for 10 days without an internet connection.

The weather forecast for the next few days did not look good, but we had good company and Christmas dinner was coming up.

Eirik

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