The two Bariloches

Javier...

On our first evening in Bariloche, we befriended Javier, a man in his late 20’s with a thick beard and shoulder-length wavy hair. Javier left Buenos Aires as a teenager, fell in love with Bariloche and has been working at 1004 for nearly 10 years.

One night, I asked Javier about Bariloche’s social issues while he dried dishes and cleaned the counters of the communal kitchen.

“There are two Bariloches,” I told him. “The one tourists experience, with plenty of bars, food and alcohol, and one past the chocolate factories and the clothing stores, where prices are lower and houses are humble.”

“For example, Gwen and I just met a 9-year-old girl begging for food to feed her four siblings outside a supermarket. Her father sells wood for a living, but during summer, no one buys wood and school is out. With no money and without the free school meals, she has to beg to survive.”

“Are tourists to blame for the creation of two Bariloches?” I wanted to know.

“No,” he said. “Tourists just bring jobs to the city.”

He put the blame on lack of sexual education. He said men in Argentina are encouraged to have sex, but no one wants to teach about birth control or STD’s.

Javier sent me to bed with this question: “Why do couples insist in having more children than they can support?”

Yolada…

Earlier that day, I had wondered outside the “tourist walls” looking for a used copy of “Argentinos” — a brief history of Argentina by Jorge Lanata, a controversial left-wing journalist. Waiting for a run-down bookstore to open, I met Yolanda, a grandmother who escaped persecution in her native Chile. (Chile had a 17-year military regime that tortured some 28,000 people.)

Yolanda’s husband crossed the border in 1975. He had tried crossing a year before, but he was captured, beaten and released under the condition that he didn’t try crossing again.

The couple reunited in 1976, when Yolanda left Osorno and crossed the border with her three children. The family settled in Bariloche and became argentine citizens.

Meeting Yolanda made me realize how close I was to Chile, my father’s country. Osorno is just a five-hour bus ride from Bariloche through the Cardenal A Samoré pass.

On my way back to 1004, I stopped at a small corner store to buy ice cream at the local’s price. While I was indulging myself in the chocolate sin (anything that good must be a sin), I couldn’t help but wonder about military regimes and borders. Have the military regimes help Latin America? Have they made their citizens more afraid of the government? Have they help corruption or the economy? As citizens of the world, should we be allowed to travel freely across borders?

Hostel 1004

The service elevator squeaked all the way to the 10th floor. We had arrived to a warm Bariloche at around 5 p.m. and immediately got on a city bus heading downtown.

Our first mission was to find Hostel 1004, for which there are no signs. Thanks to the Lonely Planet, we got to the lobby of Bariloche Center and followed a security guard to the service elevator inside a dark, narrow hallway. And here we were, inside a claustrophobic black box, questioning our logic in picking this place.

All doubts were gone as soon as we opened the door. Gladis and Annie welcomed us with wide smiles into the reception area. To our left was the dinning room, followed by a wall of windows with a view of a lake surrounded by majestic mountains.

The sun was setting, and it illuminated the room with yellow shades. Every evening, travelers crowded the balcony with cameras in their hands. They would gasp and then remain quiet for few seconds as they saw the sky turn yellow, orange and pink, giving way to the night.

Coche cama

I opened my eyes just as the sun was beginning to warm las pampas and the deep blue lakes. I looked at the clock: 6:13 a.m.

We had left the overcrowded Buenos Aires bus station nearly 12 hours ago. We were mid-trip to Bariloche.

I looked at my right. Gwen slept sideways, wrapped in a blue blanket and comfortably resting her head on an inflatable travel pillow.

Argentines use sleepers (coches cama) to travel long distances. These two-story buses have wide seats, similar to those on an airplane’s first-class section, which makes it easy to snooze into dreamland. I grabbed my blanket, wishing I too had an inflatable travel pillow, and slowly let my dreams sink in.

Notorious, La Feria de San Telmo and el metro

We were late.

The jazz trio had been playing for about 40 minutes, but we made it to Notorious, a record store and jazz bar in Recoleta.

The pink lights set the mood for Tres Bien Ensamble’s soft melody: Cuerpo de Agua.

As we drank our Syrah from Finca Las Moras, we enjoyed our last night in Buenos Aires.

On day two, Gwen and I had jumped on the metro with two of my Uruguayan roommates, Alexis and Lula, and headed to the “arts and crafts” fair in downtown Buenos Aires – La Feria de San Telmo. The fair starts about five blocks from La Plaza de Mayo, where the mothers of the desaparecidos (the thousands who went missing during the military regime) held protests and vigils in hope to find their loved ones.

Tourists crowded Defensa Street while bohemians who fell in love with Buenos Aires hoped to sell their craft along side Porteños. On every corner, street musicians entertained with a repertoire that included anything from tango tunes to rock ‘n’ roll.

We walked by locals selling empanadas, freshly squeezed orange juice or alfajores (a vanilla cookie with dulce de leche in the middle). And we stopped to watch a tango instructor teach a Venezuelan tourist some steps.

We took care of lunch at Desnivel, and talked Uruguayan politics over French fries, beans, ravioli and Milanesa Napolitana (a breaded stake with melted cheese, ham and a tomato sauce on top).

We returned to the metro station with souvenirs and happy bellies.

The eight stations from Catedral to Plaza Italia were a quick review of Buenos Aires' fashion. A woman in a one-size-too-small blue dress, wearing blue high-hills and a matching blue purse was a deep contrast with a teenager wearing Converse shoes, a miniskirt and a white tank top showing off her tattoos.

We celebrated our last night with a second bottle of wine at the hostel, where other backpackers serenaded us well into the night.

Next stop: Bariloche – the Mecca of tourism and chocolate.

Palermo

As I turn on my back, the noise turns into a murmur. The air is dense, and I realize my back, thighs, forehead ... my entire body is covered in sweat. I try to shake off the dreams.

It’s spring in Argentina, but summer has arrived early. It’s almost 80 degrees outside.

"Perdoná," I hear a male voice say in the background.

I manage to give him a smile as I open my eyes. Five friendly faces are looking at me -- my roommates for the next 24 hours.

We are all crammed into a room packed with three bunk beds and eight lockers.

Outside, fellow backpackers are watching TV in the lobby/reception/dinning room. More travelers lounge on the balcony, singing along to Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone" for the 18th time.

“Ouch!” I hear myself say as I bring my hands to my face. I instantly regret the two glasses of wine I had over empanadas for lunch. My lips are dry.

I wake up Gwen, who is sleeping in a different room, and we are off to look for Tylenol. The corner store sells me a red pill, just one, for $1.50 pesos (about 50 cents). A bit hesitant, I wash down the pill with water and, half-jokingly, I ask Gwen not to leave me alone.

We celebrate our first night in Argentina at L’ecole, a French restaurant half a block from Palermo House, the hostel where we are staying. As I sip on my fist Argentine Malbec, a woman in a yellow dress spins around and around in the middle of the street.

I am in Argentina, the country of Ernesto “Che” Guevara, Jorge Luis Borges and Eva Perón….

Stage One

I opened my eyes and looked into the darkness. The red numbers said it was time to wake up and start my last Sunday as a crime reporter. Not the last forever, but perhaps the last for a very long time. See, with the current state of the economy and this industry, there is no money for overtime. No money for me to cover anymore Sundays.

I didn’t quite work enough Sundays to find my voice as a writer, but I worked enough to glimpse at the road ahead. So, in an effort to find my voice, I will use this blog to type my favorite leads and nutgraphs.

One of my favorite professors in college used to say: first you copy, then you imitate and then you take what you like from other writers, musicians… etc. and make it yours.

Most kids my age, 24, will probably be in the second stage. But I used my college years to learn a new language; to learn how to enunciate “focus” instead of “fuck us.” (Though I still have trouble enunciating “winner.”)

(BTW -- I learned this weekend that Gonzo re-typed The Great Gatzby many, many times before he found his voice)

****

From The Valley of Broken Hearts by Rick Bragg:

“If the heartaches were matches, her little house would have burned down a long time ago. Most days now the old woman just sits in the yard and dreams of a dead husband, in a valley crowded with ghosts of men who died too soon.

The passing years have worn most of the rough edges from Little Joe, so all that is left for his wife is smooth and perfect memory. Mary Ann Joe remembers a sweet man who took a job down the dark hole so he could buy things for her. She remembers his joy on that first big payday, and her fear the first time he coughed blood.”

St. Petersburg Times, August 1, 1993

Vertex

After dinner, the questions started. Before I knew it, tears were streaming down my face and my heart was aching.

Ah! There it was: the moment when I reached yet another vertex and my life changed forever.

Sure, I had doubts before, but there was something about hearing me say them out loud.

Quarter-of-a-life-crises. A year earlier, but here it is...