So.... here I am in Bariloche.... This is after 2 nights of flying from Alaska. A night of drunken sleep in Buenos Aires, and a quasi-sleepless night on the 20 hour bus ride to Bariloche which I didn´t sleep... Thanks Mom and Dad for the iPod... very sweet, but unfortunately I didn´t charge it while I was at the hostel and only had 2 iPod full hours of music before I had to watch movies on the bus... or read, which was what I mostly did... since movies like Biker BoyZ were not high on my list (sadly, I did watch about half of this movie).

I actually got here a few days ago, but I wasn´t up to making an update to my blog.... hopefully I will become more disciplined in this matter as I go along my journeys.

After getting to the hostel and getting situated, I wrote out a note looking for other hikers to go up in the mountains with. When I went to post the note, I saw that somebody else had just posted a note regarding the same... while I was writing the note. So, after agglomerating more people by the next morning, there were 3 Argentinian women and a guy from France/Germany...

They have a great trekking system here in Bariloche, they call it the Switzerland of the Andes... or something like that. We were off to a Refugio, or Mountain Hut, that was supposed to reflect the moon at night. The hike was great, we stumbled along in Spanish and English and breathed the fresh mountain air. The only bad thing about the hike was the horseflies that weren´t so painful, but their buzzing drove me absolutely nuts, which isn't so bad unless you are hiking up tough terrain and then almost lose your balance trying to swat the flies away.

Up at the hut, the flies weren't so bad and I decided to sleep outside on one of these aluminum coated sleeping pads that they have all over here and cost me only 10 bucks. I figured it would be just like old days of camping with my friends in Alaska. My friends thought I was crazy, they were sleeping in the Refugio, but with my down bag and body metabolism that is furnace-like, I knew I was up for it. I had a traquil spot a couple of feet from the lake and they joined me to drink the limoncello and chocolate we had brought along and watched the moon rise over the lake and the stars come out, sweet.

One by one, they all went to bed and finally I got to sleep. Well, the wind didn't pick up and the flies weren't bad. But the cushion from the sleeping pad wasn't at the level of a thermarest... I´m not averse to a stiff sleeping surface, as I had just experienced for the last couple of months back home in Alaska, but this was a little too stiff. As I was already out there and too lazy to walk the 2 minutes to the refugio to sleep, I tossed and turned, another half sleepless night.

The next day, they went back to civilization, while I blazed a trail up through the mountains above to another Refugio. I figured that up higher, where there was no vegetation and it was cooler, that the flies would cease and desist their evil doings. Alas, the whole trip was infested with them, with ever more challenging terrain to get off balance on while madly swatting the flies. Rrrr.

Well, I'm back to civilization for the time being and away from those silly flies.