Bariloche and Christmas

It's with a tinge of regret that we leave El Calafate and make our way up to the Argentinian Lake District town of Bariloche. Ad has not got the photos that he had hoped to get. The weather has not been on our side for perfect sunrise and sunset photo opportunities, plus when conditions have been good we have not been in the right location, not having a car. We have really had to soul search whether to carry on with our original plans or whether to go back to Puerto Natales and try to get better pictures. However Christmas is coming up and it all seems a bit of a mission to retrace our steps, let alone that it will put us behind schedule by at least a week or more. So we decide to push on.

When we arrive the weather is gorgeous and warm; we are going to be here for Christmas, I have never been away at this time of year before and certainly haven't experienced a hot Yuletide. Somehow is doesn't feel right. There's a little part of me that is missing being at home; not because I am a big fan of Christmas but I am a big fan of the parties that go with it...which we are missing. Which reminds me that, as in the often mis-quoted lyrics of the Police song Message in a Bottle - " it's been a year since I broke my nose" - aaaah Christmas memories.

Bariloche is heaving with people. It's situated right on a lake, with beaches and surrounded by dry deserty-type hills, some in the distance are snow capped. It is a lovely setting. Tomorrow is Christmas Eve and just as in Spain the evening will be an important family event. We look around to try and book a restaurant. However, the few places we try are doing a set menu and the prices are exorbitant, roughly four times the amount one would normally pay. Sod that. We decide that we will just go out tomorrow and eat wherever we can cheaply. We both have this niggly feeling about Argentina, in general, it is so expensive compared to other South American countries and one can't help feeling that you are being ripped off a bit. Having said that, we have had some great meals here and the wine is excellent...and cheap when compared with the UK.

For some reason we don't really know what to do with ourselves now we have reached Bariloche, so as normal, when in doubt, we get drunk. Well it is the baby Jesus's Burpday after all.

Christmas Eve night and we get all dolled up for a nice evening on the town. I is wearing my best boob tube and hot pants and is looking fierce!! We stroll down the main boulevard, obviously ignoring the wolf whistles that I am receiving, and search for somewhere decent to dine: somewhere romantic, intimate and a little special. After 2 hours of searching we can't find anywhere that we can afford. Even a scabby old Irish pub is charging 200 Pesos (40 pounds) for a set menu. We search some more, but to no avail. Ad is getting the hump as he wanted tonight to be special. And in the end it does turn out to be really memorable; for with no other option available to us, we end up dining on the first floor, VIP Area, of a Shell petrol station, overlooking the petrol pumps, eating cheeseburgers and chips. We is so classy!!

Christmas Day and I wake up itching like mad and appear to have been attacked by a swarm of mosquitoes the size of jumbo jets. I have huge bumples down the upper part of my right arm. Annoyingly Ad doesn't have one little nip. I comfort myself with the thought that these mossies have got taste.

We wander around the town, where surprisingly lots of shops are open. For some reason Bariloche is the place for students in their final year of college, from all over Argentina, to come and party. There are huge hordes of spotty, floppy-bad-hair-styled teenagers roaming around in packs of twenty or more. They are a little boisterous, but generally ok. (Oh as an aside, one thing that is really sweet about the Argentinians is the way that they always greet each other with a kiss; young, old, boys, girls - whatever combination- there is always a kiss, I like that). The afternoon we spend on the beach, soaking up some rays thinking about the lovely weather we are missing in London. The evening and we have booked a good restaurant where we have the sort of evening we was hoping for yesterday, the food is excellent and the wine is perfect. For my first Christmas abroad it has been lovely, relaxed and spent with the most important person in my life; I have never spent a Christmas with a partner before..I like it.

These fucking mossies bites are doing my head in, they itch so much I decide to sleep in my thermal underwear so the little fuckers can't get me!!!

Oh shit. I wake on Boxing Day and am covered with new, huge, bumpalations all over my back, arms and legs!!! Oh fucking hell, I think I have the plague, or small pox, or some tropical disease where I shall turn into one huge bumple and then explode!!!! I shall probably have to be hospitalised, isolated and probed in every orifice with big pointy things as hundreds of Doctors stand around me shaking their heads in consternation and bafflement at what ailment I have succumbed to and put me in a big jar, pickled, so that generations of new Doctors can stare at the freak of nature that I have become, whilst I plead with them to treat me with dignity as even though I look like the elephant man I am a human being and have feelings: or worse I might be sold to a travelling circus, trust up in some smelly cage where I shall spend countless hours enduring the screams of horror from the public sightseers who have paid tuppence to wonder at the grotesque form laid before them!!!! . I'm now convinced that whatever is going on that I shall probably be dead by lunch time!! We go to the pharmacy where all the people waiting, plus the pharmacist's assistant, look me up and down and state their own prognosis. The general feeling is that I am having an allergic reaction to something. Yes!!! Of course, I know that!!! I'm having an allergic reaction to dying!!!! I settled on some anti-histamines and some advice from the assistant that I need to centre my energy and have good thoughts....she kisses me as I leave the shop. Gulp!!!I wonder whether she knows more than she is letting on.........