Colors too gorgeous for my camera

Rose and I are in Bariloche, a small gorgeous tourist town on a lake surrounded by mountains. It’s mostly known for skiing, but it’s too early yet. We flew in yesterday. It was more expensive than a 19 hour bus ride, but we’re saving our sitting muscles for the 30 hour ride to come on Tuesday when we go to El Calafate. Our hostel is really adorable. We are the only guests at the moment, which is good because we are not very good at making plans so we need lots of help. It’s off-season here; apparently it normally rains all the time during the fall, though we’ve been lucky so far. Yesterday we didn’t do much after we arrived, besides take a long nap and cook a sub-par dinner. How did I make rice that was both mushy and burnt-tasting? I don’t understand.

I woke up and went downstairs to ask for help reserving something, and as I was walking back upstairs I happened to glance out the window and said, “Oh my God,” mid-sentence, because of this:


I even wrote a little haiku:

golden mountain dawn
dark cypress silhouetted
against silver lake.

Hope those aren’t too boring to read…they are fun to write, like little puzzles (how do I get an idea into the set framework?).




We took an hour-long bus ride around the lake to another little town and then walked half an hour and then took an hour-long boat ride to see Bosque de Arrayanes, a national park with a forest of craaaazy cinnamon-colored trees. I need to fact-check this, but I’ve been told they suck up a lot of water to kill off surrounding plants, and perhaps that also explains why they feel cold to the touch? I’m not sure. Anyway, we took the boat there and then hiked 13 km back through lovely forest.







My legs are tired. I’m out of shape, and I’m going to join a gym as soon as we get back to BA. Seriously. If I don’t write here that I’ve joined a gym next week, I expect angry emails. It’s time to stop pretending that I don’t need to work out, that 40 minutes walking every day is enough. I prefer running outside, but it’s too big of an ordeal to run outside in that city, and I need to stop making excuses.