Esquel, El Bolsón, Mendoza

So, remember how much fun I had in Mendoza last time I was here? So much fun that man, I just had to come back again...

No, in truth, what really happened was THE STORY OF EMMA FALLING IN THE WATER: I travelled from Puerto Madryn to Esquel (Welsh colony) and discovered I couldn't go to the National Park nearby until Saturday - I arrived on a Wednesday - so for two days I decided to go a little north to El Bolsón and do some walking around there, lovely. The weather was pretty apalling, but I thought stuff it, I've only got two days, once I'm wet, I'm wet, I'll be fine. So off I go on my walk. And there are three bad things that can happen to you on a Rainy Walk: wetcoldwind, footinbog and triponlog. Luckily, I avoided wetcoldwind, and was in surprisingly good spirits even after footinbog and triponlog-fallonface.

Marcos at the information centre told me I could walk all the way to the Chilean border in a day, so off I went, getting a lift across the delta from a friendly boat man, and then following the helpful yellow rocks, all very easy. The forests around there apparently inspired the Disney film 'Bambi' and you can really see why - tall pines, dense forest, April showers, huge beautiful lake, gushing streams. Very beautiful.

My half way marker for the trip was the gendarmerie, so I popped in to show them my passport and asked them if I could eat my packed lunch inside, and they were very hospitable, and told me that I wouldn't make it all the way to Chile and back, but since I had my sleeping bag, I could stay in the cabin they had out back. Half of me thinks: awesome adventure, the other half thinks: 5 men, 1 girl, middle of nowhere, but after telling them all about my husband in Afghanistan, I think they are friendly enough and I agree.

So off I go on my walk again, and everything is grand until on the way back, I have a classic Emma-is-an-idiot moment where I slip on my bum crossing a river and everything gets soaked. At some point during this river-slipping-bum incident, I lose my camera to the lake and everything is ruined. So I go crying back to the gendarmes: 'I am cold, everything is wet, what do I do? Boo hoo etc.' and they looked after me and gave me tea and a dry set of clothes.

However, when the three older gendarmes come back from their fishing trip, the radio tells us that there are three Argentinian boys stuck on the other side of the river, which has now swollen, so we have to get in the boat and go and rescue them and their dog - very exciting. And we all hang out with the gendarmes over night and drink maté and talk about football.

Then the next morning we are all taken home across the lake in the speedboat, but because these boys were in a bit of trouble, the LOCAL PRESS are there, and a 16 year old has been taken out of school to translate my traumatic story. I try and make it sound as interesting and dramatic as possible i.e. not 'I fell on my bum and everything got wet and I lost my camera', rather 'rapids and eels and Loch Ness Monsters and huge bridges and at one point mermaids' and then I got taken back to El Bolsón in a police vehicle and that was the end of the adventure, other than it snowed and there were no buses and I was stuck in El Bolsón whilst all my stuff was in Esquel.

Then, feeling cold and wet I decided walking, lakes and mountains were not for me, so I got into contact with Una and Kate, lovely, lovely girls from Ireland, who told me they'd be in Mendoza, so I took a 24 HOUR bus journey (my whole life), met Janet and Matt from Massachusettes and then drank a lot of red wine on a tandem bike (awesome), met the legendary Mr. Hugo, bought a new camera, allowed Mendoza to redeem itself and have just been to a very, very strange bar with some odd fish in it and had an argument with a snob about state vs. private education.

Off to Chile tomorrow, hopefully if I can get a bus ticket.

Sorry for lack of photos of footinbog and triponlog, the lake has stolen them all. I'll hopefully be able to get some tandem photos up soon... and until then, I hope these pics of the trip from Argentina to Santiago through the Andes will make up for no fallonface.