September 12, 2013
Swede Swede Argentina
Well it's been an eventful 100 hours! 3 beautiful cities on 3 different continents, a bus ride the width of Argentina and a beautiful day ski touring in Bariloche. Lots of craze-mazing experiences and a bit of no-comprendo induced stress, summed up as best we can in the photos below- there were a lot of favourites to choose from.
Wednesday: Flew from Stockholm to New York. Found out we had a 10 hour stopover and that Manhattan was only a 40 minute train ride away. Took that train to town, turned out it was a beautiful sunny day and rode around on an open top bus listening to a tour guide while eating fresh strawberries. Followed it up with the tastiest and most authentic Mexican food and beer I've ever had, and made it back to the airport in time for a beautiful sunset.
Thursday: Flew to Buenos Aires. Got a bus into the city center and then walked around looking like confused tourists while carrying extremely heavy ski bags. Eventually found the ginormous inter-city bus terminal and realised that we were probably just about to miss the bus from Buenos Aires (east coast of Argentina) to San Carlos de Bariloche (in the Andes, on the border with Chile), which was our final destination. Got to the bus 10 mins late. The bus was 30 minutes late. Got told (in rapid Spanish) that our bags were too big. Paid 100 peso each ($20 NZD) to get him to put them on the bus, which he put in his pocket in front of us. Lost our tickets for 5 minutes and almost got left behind. Found them, got on the bus, got over our heart attacks and settled in for the ride. Turned out it was a 'first class' bus- seats that reclined to 160 degrees, regular meal and drink service (including some crazy Argentinian wine spirit), movies and on-board toilet. Luxury for two tired travelers!
Friday: Woke up in time to savour the rest of the 22 hour bus ride as we rolled up the last of the desert plains to the impending Andes range, which radiated a distinct Mordor-like aura as heavy black stormclouds brooded over them. Got really excited! Arrived at the bus stop, tipped a guy 4 peso (90 NZ cents) for carrying our ski bags (which were now ~40kg each, as we had added our carry-on bags from the plane), and then somehow fitted them in a tiny taxi to town, which cost 30 peso ($6.50 NZD). Our local friend and my Fischer Skis teamate Niki Salencon picked us up in the worst car that I've ever seen to cost €3000 (Argentinian import tax has gone into overdrive to protect their crippled economy and anything not made in the country has become insanely expensive) and took us almost directly to the climbing gym and then a bar, where we met some of his other local friends- who immediately invited us to join them on a back country mission the next day. How could the 1st chapter of this trip get any better?
Saturday: First day skiing South America! It reminded me a lot of 'backcountry' skiing in NZ, which meant we drove up an non-maintained 4WD track as far as we could and then hiked for an hour or two with our skis on our bags to get to the snow. Once we got there we were stoked though, toured up through a magical forest to a very wintery ridge system. There had been some recent heavy snow and so the avalanche danger confined us to low angle skiing, but to be sliding on soft white stuff got us so stoked, having just come from northern hemisphere summer! Tired and satisfied we stumbled back to the truck and home for our first southern hemisphere shower, a sleep, and dreams that the month to come on this continent would be as much fun as getting here. Chapter 2 already in the making....