Goodbye to thee, Argentina ...

Chris with Cristina's mother at La Ciudad con el Fuego, Mapuche territory

After two nights in Esquel we took the bus a little way south to Trevelin, another of the original Welsh settlements in Patagonia. Upon arrival we got changed in some bushes (to make full use of the laundrette) and went to a Casa de Te called Nain Maggie's for Welsh tea (tea and cake), which was a surreal experience - outside, we were in Argentina; inside, we were in Wales. Except the staff only spoke Spanish. The gift shop was the best part, it could have been at Harlech Castle. There were tea towels with Welsh dragons, toy sheep, loads of things made from wool and even those awful little decorative teaspoons - but the wool was llama wool, and the teatowels and sheep were juxtaposed with mate pots and straws (the equipment used for Argentinians' favourite drink, bitter herbal mate). It was a bizarre place.

In Trevelin we stayed with a lovely couple called Mariela and Alejandro, in their absolutely beautiful open-plan house. That evening, topical as ever, we watched Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid, which was filmed in the town. The next day, Mariela and Ale took us on a drive up to Nacional Parque Los Alerces - the place featured in the previous video blog - but this time to the southern end, where there is a huge hydroelectric dam. A feature of our travels so far has been a sense of everything being connected, demonstrated perfectly by this enormous dam which we learnt did not power the town, but produced the electricity to power the aluminium factory attracting all the new families to Puerto Madryn, where we had been only a week or so before. We also visited a piscicultur, where trout were being bred for release back into the rivers, which was a surprisingly lovely place given it was a fish farm.

On Saturday, September 24, we took a bus up to El Hoyo, so called because it is in a 'hole' in the mountains and much lower and warmer than the surrounding area, to meet a very special couple, Gabriel y Mariana. They welcomed us into their little home - with a view of la catarata, a huge waterfall spurting out of the mountainside - with such huge hearts. We spent the day having lunch with their friends, walking up to la catarata and watching the condors there, and testing out different versions of Mariana's homemade limoncello (for which we now have the recipe!).

The next day was the most special of our trip so far. Mariana and Gabriel took us to spend the day with their friend Cristina's family at their Mapuche reservation. Last year they reclaimed the territory that had belonged to them many years ago - Cristina's grandmother had lived there as a small girl, and today she is 84 and the head of this amazing little community. She was absolutely tiny, like a little cloth doll, but was dashing around the place, running the show, and throwing rocks at her arch nemesis: the cockerel.

Cristina's husband, known as Gringo because he is Hungarian not Mapuche or Spanish, took us on a walk  (they have 100 acres) to see trees that had been felled by loggers on their land and were waiting to be taken away. A recent court case ruled that this was allowed - but the Mapuches cannot cut down their own trees.

Sarah helped prepare wild mushroom stew with the women - see Mariana's travelling kitchen blogpost on the subject here for proof - and later Chris helped the men build a boundary fence. There was a lot of hole-digging, and apparently they wanted to hire him ...

After a full day of walking in the mountains on Monday, on Tuesday we hitch-hiked up to San Carlos de Bariloche via a few hours in 'hippy town' El Bolson. Bariloche is in a beautiful location in the foothills of the Andes, the town is on a slope facing lake Nahuel Huapi and seemingly endless mountains beyond. There are four-feet-high piles of volcanic ash in every street thanks to the nearby eruption in Chile earlier this year, and the ash gets everywhere (including up your nose and in your eyes). But the ash in the air also gives a kind of extra dimension to the landscape, and made the view from Cerro Campanario even more dramatic (and it was already one of National Geographic's top ten views in the world).

In Bariloche we also ate a lot of free chocolate samples - there are chocolate shops everywhere, the town is supposed to be the Switzerland of Argentina - and drank a lot of wine with our new Dutch friend Tejs. We had intended to drive up to San Rafael in Mendoza province with our Bariloche host Julie, but the plans fell through and instead we spent an extra few days there before hitch-hiking to San Martin de los Andes yesterday. We spent the evening watching the Argentina-Georgia rugby match with our host Julio and his friend Pablo, and today the three of us will take his boat (and maybe kayak) to the lake here in San Martin. It is a beautiful day, perfect for an asado on a lakeside beach.

Tomorrow we will take a bus to Temuco in Chile. We have been in Argentina nearly four weeks now, and are almost used to the subtleties and idiosyncrasies of the place: the road names that are the same in every town; the house-numbering convention; the crazy way everyone drives (put your emergency lights on, put your foot down and hope for the best); not eating dinner until at least 10pm; the fact nobody anywhere has any change, ever; the mate-drinking etiquette; the incredible little alfahores cakes; the weird yellow ibis/chicken birds, as we have named them. We are looking forward to seeing what similarities and differences Chile will bring. Different weather? Different accents? Different flora and/or fauna? But one thing is for sure: pigeons are the same everywhere.

SARAH