No hablamos mucho espanol

You are probably wondering what nuts have to do with our next stint on an organic farm, Los Pinos, but actually nuts played an integral role in our day to day wwoofing (volunteering) on the farm ... in fact I would now jump at the notion of raking up leaves if it meant not searching for, picking up, cleaning or peeling NUTS!!! This has been our predominant task amongst others: raspberry picking (the most enjoyable), potato digging, burning, sheep 'wrestling' i.e inoculating them and cooking (not the sheep!)

Los Pinos is situated 4 km from El Bolson, the so-called hippie town in the Lake District of Argentina, and boasts a beautiful setting, especially during the Autumn months where everything is littered in ORANGE. A family and their 14 year old daughter run the farm and live off its produce. They were not very happy to discover the latest recruit, a stray rotweiler puppy, who has been squatting at the farm for the past month, was tucking into their prize chickens. She was suitably punished and locked up on a lead as a result, poor little thing was just hungry (forever supporting the underdog). Fortunately a photo I took sold her to a family who will adopt her, let's hope they can handle her hyperactivity and need for 24/7 love and attention! She is very sweet. However, the cutest members of the family by far have to be the two ginger kittens, Rumplestiltskin and Co. I have adopted them and Gordon is sick of hearing me goo and gaa and feed them all our milk. (Photos to follow and you will see what I mean!)

There have been some other Wwoofers volunteering here as well: 2 Americans, a Spanish and a French chap, and as the latter do not speak English, we have taken the opportunity to use some 'Spanglish', or rather Gordon prefers to wave his hands about and make strange gestures, as you can imagine everyone is always in fits of laughter.

Lastly, the most exciting job yet has been inoculating the sheep, something out of a slapstick comedy watching the boys rolling around trying to grab at their kicking legs (sheep don't like to be handled), haul them over and hold them down (photo of their fear-stricken faces to follow). Pure comedy, especially with Gordon's added Irish rolling comentary to add to the ambience.

So we will leave you as Gordon is currently salivating as we speak, as we are about enjoy our 'asado' (bbq/braai) and the meat is soaking up the marinade, smelling 'rico' (delicious, but much more in Spanish) tick tock tick tock ...

Gordon embracing El bolson

Gordon and Mafalda (a popular comic strip character in Argentina)

To rent a horse, call this number.

Here is the horse you can rent.

Home needed please: the chicken eater 'Perrito'. Very cute. Very hyper.

Typical breakfast, bread and homemade jam

One of our 'vistas'

The path leading up to La Cassita. Our dorm for a couple of weeks

One week in hippy El Bolson and Gordon is already embracing his inner zen

Susan cuddling her new pellie

You would think this is natural, Susan tricked the cat into this image

Rumplestiltskin and 'Co'

Got a problem, what are you looking at?!

Frambuesas (raspberries), in the raspberry field. A successful afternoon

Another haul by Susan

These bags may contain nuts. A lot of nuts.

Drying the nuts post peel, getting ready for sale

Roly, the boss of the farm. Always content on his tractor!

Javi (foreground) and Gary in the field picking potatoes..

Now you see her....

Now you only see part of her! (The mini slaughter shack!)

Vicky the mother sheep dog.

Gary and Lauren being towed home by Roly after a long afternoon picking potaotes

Gordon ready to relax after work

Javi and Tom head down the field to the farm

Susan in a completely natural, certainly not posed for, shot

Tasty Mate

Analia, Arriana and Roly before Arianna's kayak lesson

Strolling the shores of Lago Puelo

These girls are all looking at something that is going on...

... because they are next in line

Tom flirting with one of the sheep

Roly injecting, Gordon wrestling

Gary catches one

Homemade burger time

Javi and Tom warm themselves on our parrilla/asado/bbq/braai

Tom, Gordon, Gary, Roly and Javi enjoying the bbq

A local relaxing in Lago Puelo

Suitably fed, watered and slept, we jumped on the bus to El Calafate, famed for its rather large glacier, Perito Merino. However, we have seen plenty of glaciers now and Glacier Grey in TdP (Torres del Paine) was very similar, so we decided to head straight to El Chalten to visit Mount Fitz Roy and his friends (Cerre Torre, etc).

El Chalten is a funny little town. It was only founded in 1985 as a 'frontier town' in order to claim the land before Chile did. The town is set in a beautiful valley with Fitz Roy as a backdrop and surrounded by high flat faced mountains. All the houses look like they would keel over with the slightest whisper of wind as they are mainly constructed from tin cans. The odd German bar or European eatery to satisfy the tourists' need to feel at home, makes this place rather unique. The town's infancy has also meant that it is frugal in amenities and mainly caters for the high season tourists looking to do adventure sports. The main drag is littered with excursion operators and hostels.

After leaving some of our belongings with the hostel, we pressed on to the Mount Fitz Roy trek in the early afternoon. This was considerably easier than TdP as the route is well trodden and only a gentle incline at the beginning levels off into a long plateau of autumn vegetation and streams galore. We arrived at the campsite with a sweet little view of Fitz Roy towering over us, a perfect way to relax, and whip out the kindle with bit of Julius Caesar (mind enlightenment).

There are several options in this area, one is to trek to Lago de los Tres which, sits at the foot of Fitz Roy up a steep hill or, an alternative, less trodden route, which we chose, is to head north to Piedra Blanca. This was a good wake up walk that took us up right up to the foot of the glacier on the back side of Fitz Roy, after a stint of boulder hopping and scrambling through a rock landslide. Gordon got a nasty bout of the sniffles, the weather was closing in, getting colder and rainy, so upon the return to the campsite, we made the decision to retreat to El Chalten like a bunch of sissies and grab a warm bath, something that is certainly hard to come by in your average hostel. A more disturbing moment was upon returning to the hostel for our bags, we were greeted with a hanging piece of LARGE meat next to our bags. Suffice to say, this wasn't there when we dropped the bags off. Most would think it was a cow or something normal...this 'tasty treat' was actually a Puma, the endangered, illegal to hunt type of meat. The owner was happy to inform us that he hangs it to dry and then slices bits off for his sandwich. This explains, upon arrival on the first evening, of finding legs, trotters and God knows what else in the communal fridge, unwrapped and mingling with everyone else's food! Cultural differences. We couldn't dispel the thought of puma meat as we were tucking into our 'homemade' burgers that evening. Let's move on, Gordon's stomach is turning as we type.

Right, it was time to get out of Chalten as we had a date with an organic farm in two weeks time. We got the 12 hour bus to a little village called Los Antiguos on the Chile-Arg border. A night there, we arrived at the one-horse town of Chile Chico on the Chilean side the following day and picked up a dog and a German lady. We finally shook both of them off, also took one look at the potential campsite and decided to hoof it out of there. Luckily, we were in time to get a very scenic ferry crossing across Lago Buenos Aires to Puerto Ibanez with a nice Australian couple with whom we exchanged the usual travelling experiences and advice. A short bus ride past the jagged Cerro Castillo on the Caraterra Austral, we arrived in Coyhaique. (Note, we took this route as it is meant to be much more interesting than the barren Ruta 40 in Argentina). We spent three nights in a fantastic German-Spanish run hostel, where the owners kept the place open just for us and we were the only guests for the three evenings. Great food, rustic atmosphere and forest surroundings, it was the perfect place to unwind and let Susan get rid of her nasty cold (Gordon was well informed that he gave it to her, as Susan had no issues in reminding him of that fact!)

Bus links north were rather unreliable in their timetables, so for the same price, we got a local ferry through the islands from Puerto Chacabuco to Quellon on Chiloe Island. This was a nice way to travel as an alternative to a road, as it allowed us to see various ports (as the locals were picked up and dropped off at random islands) and fjords with some very pretty scenery from the deck. We were the objects of much curiosity as there were only 3 of us tourists on the ferry and the other passengers were all local yocals that see foreigners only every once in a while.

Chiloe Island beckoned and we made our way swiftly through the island, firstly stopping in Castro for an evening (third oldest settlement in Chile and famed for its multicoloured houses on stilts, 'Palifotos'), where we stayed in the spookiest hostel yet (rocking-deceased-granny-ghost while you sleep in the room kind of spooky) and met a very friendly chap from Santiago, who would like to host us when we get up there. It's always nice to meet a friendly, genuine local who wants to help and get to know you. Then we travelled up to Ancud, a small fishing village on the north of the island. Yet another helpful local, who turned out to work in a hostel in Puerto Varas (our next stop) invited us to his hostel. This town witnessed Susan's dominant hunt for calamari. Unfortunately, this was not meant to be.

Puerto Varas, a charming lakeside town, with Volcano Osorno as its dramatic facade, was our home for a few days. Here we enjoyed the relaxed ambience of the town and took a day trip out to the base of Volcano Osorno and lunched on the side of an emerald lake until the wasps had enough of our company and chased us from our cosy spot. Bastards.

So, this brought us back to Bariloche after 5 weeks of southern Patagonia. A pretty easy 6 hour journey, but add in a broken bus suspension and it that turned into a 10 hour journey (and Susan's missed skype date, sorry Catherine!) We didn't complain because 2 broken down buses in as many months is not bad for a country that is known for the odd breakdown. Luckily, we had been to Bariloche before and knew our way around, which is a nice change from map reading and praying for a decent hostel when you arrive in a town. Susan, for the past 5 weeks, has had her laptop on the back of her mind as we had left if in Bariloche. To her content, it was still there, alive and well. Phew!

There has been some sad news...

Gordon's fro and beard are not what they used to be. He is once again as clean cut as he gets (evidence to follow...)

A view of the 'frontier town', El Chalten

Struggling with a circular route :-)

Susan and Fitz Roy

No comment

Fitz Roy through the autumn vegetation

Reading time with a sweet view in the background

Piedra Blanca glacier

The weather that we couldn't be bothered to deal with. We cut short our three day trek to 1.5. Sissies.

One of the many bangers hanging around Chalten, which we would have loved to buy to make travel easier.

The random dog that latched on to us. He was persistent in shoving his mouth into our legs, hands, faces, or whatever for attention. Two hikers left him in Chile Chico and he just hangs around the campsite now. Friendly dog, just needs a home.

'Chicos' waving to Susan.

Rio Simpson in Coyhaique, just down the road from our hostel

One of the many ports on the 28hr ferry ride. Looking at these little villages, it makes you think what they survive on. One would think fishing, but it didn't seem like it.

A local abode in Castro, typical colourful, tin houses of the region

Look at the eyes on this fellow!

Castro's fishing fleet.

You know the comment, too many cooks spoil the broth, well, this chap was one of the cooks over a fishing boat engine.

Castro's Palifitos. This town, like Ancud, has been rebuilt after a 1960's earthquake.

There is a massive disrespect for towns' history and public art in Argentina and Chile. Graffiti and a underwear thrown over the head of one of Ancud's past contributors. It's a shame. Graffitti is abundant on public sentiment.