Lickable Wallpaper

We were lucky to come across Casa de Mara! After crossing from Pucon to San Martin de los Andes in Argentina (beautiful scenery, Riona is constantly overwhelmed by the Andes), we decided to slow things down a little and spend some time doing a Spanish course. We did some research and found a lot of good things said about La Montaña, a Dutch owned school in Bariloche. A number of people who´d written about the school also wrote about the immersion programme that they organised, where you could stay with a local family for the duration of your course. One home in particular sounded nice, with a great cook as host and large double room with its own bathroom and kitchenette – it sounded ideal and staying with a local family would be something different, so we rang the school, booked four days classes and a week’s homestay, and after taking another bus down to Bariloche were in our new home for the week trying to make sense of our surrogate madre, Mara!

It was pretty difficult considering our only Spanish came from a phrase book we´d picked up a few weeks earlier and Mara´s English was limited to a few words, but we managed to express ourselves with lots of hand motions and a little help from Mara´s friend, Mariana.

The Spanish classes lasted for four hours each day, from nine until one with a break for coffee and ´medialunas´ (croissants) in between. We´d one teacher (Flavia) between the two of us so it worked out well, and the fact that we were doing the classes out of interest and not because we had to made it much easier to pick up. A lot of the Spanish verbs and words are similar to French and English which also helped, and by the end of the four days we were able to follow most conversations, although we´re still speaking in very broken sentences and all in the present tense but it´s a start! We met some nice folk at the school and got to visit a community centre in a poor neighbourhood to help out with kid´s English lessons – it was interesting to see another side of Bariloche that we wouldn´t have seen otherwise, a long way off the chocolate shops and fancy cafes of the city centre.

Dinner was at nine each evening (the Argentinians do everything very late) and always yummy. There were usually six of us (Mara, her son Martin, friend Mariana and another girl from the US who was at school with us, Katie) and it was probably where we learned most of our Spanish. We´d head down to our own wee apartment at about eleven and do our homework while watching Gray’s Anatomy which neither of us had ever followed but will be sure to when we get back, its a good show :-)

Bariloche itself is a pretty place, an alpine style city set on a large lake at the foot of the Andes and full of fancy chocolate shops (Tante Friada´s at 686 Mitre has the best combo deals and the fastest internet we found in town).  Known as the ´Gateway to Patagonia´, its also the main access point for Cerro Catedral, one of Argentina´s main skiing areas.

We weren´t too pushed about doing much more skiing as we thought the conditions would be a bit crap given that it was the very end of the season, but we were proved very wrong and had some of our best days skiing ever. Catedral is a fantastic spot, far better than the last place we´d been, Whakapapa in New Zealand – the resort had much more buzz to it and the runs were uncrowded and in great condition, with only the lower pistes affected by the springtime weather. The view of the lake and the Andes from the very top of the mountain didn´t hurt either. The first day had clear skies and was really sunny and really was spectacular. We did two more days before deciding it was time to move on.

After nine days in Mara’s place, we filled up on an excellent steak dinner in El Boliche de Alberto (delicious fillet steak meal was about €7 each), packed our bags again and were dropped off at the station by Madre Mara, who packed us us a box of chocs and some tea for the journey. We then boarded the bus to Buenos Aires, a 19 hour journey north and away from the mountains, lakes and generally stunning scenery of northern Patagonia.

Tags: Argentina, Bariloche, Cerro Catedral, El Boliche de Alberto, La Montana, Skiing, Spanish School

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This entry was posted on Sunday, September 28th, 2008 at 4:11 pm and is filed under Argentina. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.