Mission

I’m in a small dusty town in Northeastern Patagonia – in between a lot of places but not much of a destination in itself. After four days of artisanal chocolate, coupled with ascents to other-worldly vistas and a dorm room where I dreamt to an orchestra of sleep apnea and the scent of unwashed bodies, I am grateful for a couple days of solitude off the traveler circuit. . . not that I didn’t enjoy it. I did. I ended my stay in Bariloche, just on the other side of Patagonia, with a 40-mile bike ride on Saturday with one of my roommates – all five of them boys, by the way – and a couple from another hostel. I figured I should get myself nice and tired out for the long bus ride – which began with yet more breath-taking scenery that defied my photographic skills and is better left to the postcard-makers.

Traveling has become the kind of thing that people put on their resumes as a skill, and the rest of the world has a bit of a leg up on us North Americans. Staying in hostels is fun because you meet an international crowd, cook in a communal kitchen and hear reviews on places you’re thinking about going next. If you’re lucky, you also get to have discussions about the Israeli-Palestinean conflict over dinner cooked for you by your Irish dorm-mate, who’s contrite because he came home drunk the night before and kept you awake while making out in the bunk below you with some girl he met at the pub. You might also get to play Russian card games that seem esoteric to us because of the host of complicated rules and regulations and exceptions and secrets but which are actually known by every Russian over about age ten. You also might have your mandolin repaired, drink mate and ‘charlar’ the afternoon away with a world-famous luthier -- interspersed with philosophical conversations in Spanish about human nature and said luthier’s performance on any one of dozens of different instruments from throughout the history of music. I would include his url here, but it seems it expired the day after I saw him. Those of you who are interested in having a handmade instrument that is a true work of art and which will make you want to be worthy of playing it (you know who you are), I will gladly hook you up with Raul Perez of Bariloche.

After all of this, you might enjoy a couple of days in the Gran Choele Choel, making things with bits of paper, writing and playing a little music, eating your meals at the truck stop across Route 22 and enlisting people in town to help you search for the relatives of a friend – all with little more than charm and heartfelt, if rudimentary, Spanish language skills.