As we stood ordering bagels, we suddenly remembered we had eaten lunch at the same Noah’s on the day before we flew to Buenos Aires in early October. “I feels like we were just here,” Colly said, and I agreed while my chest hiccuped with anxiety.

It felt as though all those months abroad — which had stretched so elastically and netted so much in a single week, so that on the first of every month I’d express disbelief at how much we had experienced — had snapped back and condensed into a blip to make mental space for the task of reorganizing our lives and getting ready to move back into the house.

Checking out of a hotel in Marlow, England, on our last morning before flying back to California.

I’m feeling profoundly mixed emotions upon our return and need to think more about the transition before trying to write much about it. I got weepy on our last night in Marlow, a lovely town outside of London, as we checked out of a hotel a final time and toasted our trip; then, I got teary with joy as we approached my hometown of Ojai last weekend for a reunion. I also am in the process of thinking through the next phase of this blog, so stay tuned and thanks to all of you who’ve read it regularly!

In the meantime, I’m publishing the following list as proof and as a reminder to myself that we really went to all of these places. We called this our “sleepover list” and had fun updating it as we traveled. Most are linked to previous blog posts if we wrote about that destination. Three places are listed twice since we visited there twice, so the number of places totals 83, but the bottom line is that we moved and unpacked 86 times!

The Sleepover List: August 15, 2009 – June 15, 2010:

1. Claremont hotel, Oakland (slept there the night before we left since our house was all packed up)
2. Holiday Inn Express, Fallon, Nevada
3. Days Inn, Delta, Utah
4. My brother and sister-in-law’s cabin on Last Dollar Road in Telluride, Colorado
5. Colorado River campsite during rafting trip
6. Holiday Inn Express, Moab
7. Mountain Village condo near Telluride
8. Mesa Verde National Park motel, Colorado
9. Double Tree Hotel, Durango, Colorado
10. Pearl Street rental home in Boulder, Colorado
11. Quality Inn near Black Canyon National Park, Gunnison, Colorado
12. Telluride family cabin again
13. Red Feather Inn near the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, Arizona (what a dump!)
14. El Portal Hotel, Sedona, Arizona
15. Holiday Inn Express on Route 66, Barstow, California
16. Morgan’s parents’ house in Pacific Palisades, California
17. Casa Ojai Best Western, Ojai, California
18. Embassy Suites near LAX
19. Recoleta apartment, Buenos Aires, Argentina
20. Llao Llao hotel, near Bariloche, Argentina
21. Cabaña at Villa Huinid, Bariloche, Argentina
22. Guardianes del Bayo, Villa La Angosturo, Argentina (aka the place with all the gnomes)
23. La Comarca Suites de Montaña hotel next to the gnome cabaña,Villa La Angosturo, Argentina
24. Overnight on the bus to Mendoza (this link is to Colly’s great blog post about the experience)
25. Casa Glebinias, Chacras de Coria (near Mendoza), Argentina
26. Meridiano Sur hotel, Santiago, Chile
27. Quay West apartment, Auckland, New Zealand
28. First night RV: Waiwera Holiday Park, North Island
29. Second night RV: Beachside Holiday Park near Paihia in the Bay of Islands, North Island
30. Third night RV: Kerikeri Top 10 Holiday Park, Kerikeri, Bay of Islands, North Island
31. Fourth night RV: Kauri Coast Top 10 Holiday Park near Dargaville, North Island
32. Last night RV: Orewa Beach Top 10 Holiday Park, Orewa, North Island
33. Cabin at Blue Lake Top 10 Holiday Park, Rotorua, North Island
34. Van der Boom’s house, Whakatane in the Bay of Plenty, North Island
35. Great Lake Motel, Taupo, North Island
36. Holiday Inn, Wellington, North Island
37. Cabin at Harris Hill farm, Nelson, South Island, New Zealand
38. First night campground in Abel Tasman National Park, South Island
39. Second night campground in Abel Tasman National Park, South Island
40. The Barn backpackers’ lodge, Marahau, South Island
41. Abel Tasman Marahau Lodge, Marahau, South Island
42. Chelsea Gateway Motor Lodge, Westport, West Coast of South Island
43. Karamea Last Resort, Karamea, West Coast of South Island
44. Charming Creek B&B, Ngakawau, West Coast of South Island
45. The one and only Blackball Hilton, Blackball, West Coast of South Island
46. Greymouth Gables Inn, Greymouth, West Coast of South Island
47. Flock Hill Lodge along Arthur’s Pass, South Island
48. Kirkpatricks’ guest house, Queenstown, South Island
49. Meriton apartment, Sydney, Australia
50. Jemby Rinjah Eco Lodge in Blackheath by the Blue Mountains, Australia
51. Albury Country Comfort Motel, Albury, New South Wales
52. Jubilee Lake Holiday Park, Daylesford, Victoria
53. Anchor Belle Caravan Park, Phillip Island, Victoria
54. Apartment at 1 Esplanade, Lakes Entrance, Victoria
55. Cabin at Batemans Bay Big4 Holiday Park, Batemans Bay, New South Wales
56. United States Embassy, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory
57. Apartment at Clifton Suites, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory
58. IBIS airport hotel, Sydney (what a dump!)
59. Kowloon Shangri-La hotel, Hong Kong
60. Oakley Court Hotel, Windsor, England (barely 14 hours between flights)
61. Apartment in the Barri Gotic quarter, Barcelona, Spain
62. Aiguaclara Hotel in Begur, Costa Brava, Spain
63. Renaissance airport hotel, Barcelona
64. Apartment in Rome, Italy
65. Apartment in Venice, Italy
66. Albergo il Focolare, Treviso, Italy
67. Hotel Du Lac on Lake Garda, Malcesine, Italy
68. Apartment in Vernazza, Cinque Terre, Italy
69. One night in the awful hotel-that-shall-remain-nameless, Florence, Italy
70. Hotel Loggiato Dei Serviti, Florence, Italy
71. Hotel Hermitage, Prato, Italy
72. Hotel Campione near Lugano, Switzerland
73. Hotel Cascada, Lucerne, Switzerland
74. Hotel Splendid, Interlaken, Switzerland
75. Apartment on Lake Geneva, Montreux, Switzerland
76. Hotel Perren, Zermatt, Switzerland
77. Hilton Garden Inn, Bologna, Italy
78. Hilton Airport Hotel, Rome, Italy
79. Marriott Grosvenor Square, London, England
80. Oakley Court Hotel, Windsor, England
81. The Grand Hotel, Brighton, England
82. Silverdale B&B, Seaford, England
83. The Compleat Angler, Marlow, England
84. Morgan’s parents’ house, Pacific Palisades, California
85. Lower School dorm at The Thacher School, Ojai, California
86. Morgan’s parents’ condo in Mammoth Lakes, California

That’s it! Next stop, on June 20, home in Piedmont, California!

Related posts:

1. Eat, Run, Love
2. Two Months To Go
3. Playing Around Rotorua

The kids were troopers as we waited for a cab that never came and then walked a long way back carrying the groceries.

My first impressions generally hold true, but it turns out I got off on the wrong foot while getting to know Chacras de Coria, the town where we spent the past eight days. A week ago, Morgan and I briefly considered leaving here early; now, on our last day, we don’t want to depart.

This suburb of Mendoza has been described as “tranquil” and a “gourmet ghetto” of restaurants, but our introduction to the town goes down as one of our more stressful days of travel.

We came to Mendoza to see the wine region and stay at the highly rated Casa Glebinias — an enchanting collection of casitas in a garden setting. Exhausted and stiff from a 17-hour overnight bus ride (read Colly’s post for details) and lacking a rental car, we decided to walk the three kilometers to the main square in search of groceries rather than call a cab.

The first thing we noticed were high walls, bars and razor wire encasing each property. Graffiti and litter covered much of the streetscape, as though little care is given to the world beyond each person’s guarded property line.

Home, safe home: Driveways like this are typical around Mendoza.

Walking to town turned out to feel riskier than crossing eight lanes of traffic in Buenos Aires. Most of Chacras’s narrow streets are lined by two-foot-wide open irrigation ditches called acequias that are part of Mendoza’s historic and ingenious system for watering its bodegas. Morgan, the kids and I carefully walked single file between the ditch and the street, trying not to fall into the murky water or get hit by cars that graze the shoulder as they impatiently pass each other. We frequently were startled and inadvertently jumped sideways as barking Dobermans and other ferocious-looking guard dogs rushed at us from behind cyclone fencing.

Irrigation ditches on virtually every street in the Mendoza region capture runoff from the Andes and transport the water to the bodegas (wineries).

When we reached the center of town, we realized we had made the mistake of coming mid-afternoon, when everything shuts down for siesta. Virtually every business opens from about 9 to 1 or 2, then closes until 5 and reopens until 8. Restaurants generally serve lunch from 1 to 3:30, when families eat a large meal and then nap. People return home from work after 8 and start dinner around 9:30 or 10.

We arrived to the center of Chacras around 3:30 and found the business district eerily deserted, every store locked and barred. We killed time exploring until the market reopened. (The kids periodically asked, “Where are we going?” and wilted each time we answered, “Not sure.”) After we bought groceries, we asked a nice clerk to call us a cab — and waited, and waited. Eventually, we shouldered the groceries and began a long march back. The kids were silent and stony faced, having crossed over to that point everyone periodically reaches during travel, when exhaustion, disorientation and over-stimulation push the body and mind into an autopilot mode of endurance.

The back door of our casita -- the one the dogs know how to open -- leads to the garden.

It was one bad afternoon — that’s all, and it was soon to be erased by the rejuvenation we discovered at Casa Glebinias, where we’re renting a two-bedroom casa.

The gate to this property, which sits on one of the town’s cleanest and quietest streets, opens to nearly two acres of garden in full bloom. Some fifty trees — including different types of conifers, maples and citrus — surround and dot the property. Roses, azaleas, lavender and blooming vines climb and color every wall. The perfumed 80-degree warm air is filled with the sound of songbirds and two honking peacocks.

Colly gasped when she saw it and said, “This is just like The Secret Garden!” She’s right — it’s a hidden garden paradise.

Colly and Kyle were thrilled to discover their "secret garden" includes a play structure.

This view of the other side of the play structure shows the owner's house in the background.

A retired couple named Alberto and Maria Gracia tend the garden and host the guests. He worked as a scientist and she was an art historian before they became full-time innkeepers. They built their home here twenty-five years ago, and only three years ago built the casitas for rentals. Alberto recycled and restored much of the building materials — including tall, century-old doors with intricate moldings and antique hardware — so the guest houses look as though they were designed in the early 20th century.

In stark contrast to the angry guard dogs that scared us elsewhere in the neighborhood, Alberto’s three dogs — two shepherds and a black Lab mix — adopted us as soon as we moved in.  The black one stands on his hind legs and uses a front paw to work our door knob (we don’t have the heart to lock him out), and he and his two friends freely enter our house and lay at our feet throughout the day.

I'll miss working in this spot! We had a lot of good meals and homeschooling sessions around this table.

These are two of the three pooches who were by our sides all week long.

Turned off by Chacras on our first day, and lacking transportation, I decided I’d be content to stay ensconced in our secret garden compound. Gradually, though, we ventured out, each time warming up to the neighborhood and its people. The restaurants, which seemed so off-putting when we first saw them darkened and locked behind bars during the day, transformed themselves after dark into lively hubs that revealed large back yards with outdoor seating. Everyone was so friendly when we met them. One of our favorites, Las Negras, warmly welcomed us on a night when power was lost in a wind storm. They stayed open for business by the light of dozens of candles. Every bottle of Mendoza malbec we tried there and elsewhere lived up to its reputation, always superior to the white wines we tasted.

This restaurant made do during a power outage with dozens of candles, and we had an unforgettable meal.

After a few days, which included an unforgettable excursion on horseback, we felt overdue to explore the city center of Mendoza. We expected a smaller version of Buenos Aires with high rises, traffic and noise, but instead found a leafy city with stores and sidewalk cafes reminiscent of Santa Barbara.

We started by walking around Plaza Independencia and noticed groups of teenagers and adults, probably at least 300 total, parading with banners and colorful flags in preparation for some kind of performance. The banners revealed that they were choral groups from all over Argentina celebrating an annual gathering. We stood among them and watched curiously as they divided into roughly four big groups, grew quiet, and then followed a conductor’s instructions to break into a chorus of Handel’s Messiah. As the familiar English lyrics and brilliant four-part harmony hit my ears, I felt tears spring to my eyes and goosebumps on my arms — that was not what I expected to hear on that random afternoon in Mendoza!

Choral groups from around Argentina filled Mendoza's Plaza Independencia with song during our visit there.

We returned the next day, this time in running gear, and headed for the vast Parque San Martin, which is about as big as Central Park and houses a decent zoo. The park was designed 100 years ago by a famous French-Argentine named Carlos Thays who also designed the glorious 3 de Febrero park in Buenos Aires. Morgan and I took turns touring the zoo with the kids (who were enchanted by all the springtime baby animals, especially the baboons) while the other one of us ran around the park.

The gothic gates to Mendoza's Parque San Martin.

Morgan and I keep puzzling about how our feelings toward the town of Chacras and the greater Mendoza area evolved over a mere week. We’ve grown accustomed to the feel of the place; as we walk to and from town for errands, we overlook or shrug off the crumbing infrastructure and graffiti and instead focus on the trees, the interesting hand-lettered signs and the textured color washes of paint. Many of the security details — the bars, wire mesh and fences — appear on closer inspection to have decorative touches. How can someplace that at first seemed rather intimidating and unattractive now seem so comfortable and quaint? I’m sure there’s a lesson about traveling to be spelled out from that, but for now I’ll just accept it with gratitude and leave with a more open mind.

Goodbye, rock and corner that felt like home after a week. (That's me in blue in the background.) This is a well-known landmark in Chacras; if I told any cab driver to turn right at "la piedra pintada," they knew where to go.

Related posts:

1. Guts and Gauchos in Mendoza
2. Buenos Dias Buenos Aires
3. Welcome to Patagonia, Where Paradise Packs a Punch

Getting a glimpse of gaucho life on a ranch near Mendoza, Argentina.

“Well, that’s something your children aren’t likely to see in school,” a chipper young woman from the UK said in a typically understated British way. She was referring to a dozen or so desiccated, grayish-black pairs of horse testicles that were the size of plums and hanging on barbed wire by a weathered corral used for castrating young studs.

The gaucho Orlando, whose horse had a type of hand-crafted bridle and saddle I'd never seen before.

We were at a ramshackle ranch about 40 minutes outside of Mendoza. I had traces of amniotic fluid from a newborn goat on my hands, flecks of spit from a llama on my shoulders, and dirt and manure all over my shoes. Dust, kicked up by a wind storm that had turned the sky brown above these drought-parched hills of Argentina’s wine country, coated my nose and hair.

“They saw a lot of things for the first time today,” I said, picturing Colly and Kyle studying a gaucho named Orlando, who wore flaps of cowhide on his legs and tucked an 18-inch blade into his waistband, and whose dirt-crusted little finger won’t bend because a puma tore its tendon.

We all experienced new sights and sensations that morning: We rode in an unfamiliar type of saddle cinched to some of the scruffiest, skinniest steeds we’d ever seen, and we viewed the nearly complete skeleton of a horse that had been gored by a bull. We kept our eyes peeled for a wounded cougar that had been trapped but not killed, and then we stopped along the trail to taste bacon-flavored homemade tortillas — thicker and doughier than the Mexican kind — and to sip mate tea from a shared gourd.

Kyle liked eating tortillas on the trail and getting to know the gaucho.

Colly handled her horse and its unusual tack well and loved galloping on the trail.

Two days after traveling north for 17 hours by bus to the Cuyo region from Patagonia, we signed up with a tour company called Kahuak for this half-day ride to see the countryside. I had guessed the region might seem like a Latin American cross between California and Arizona — vineyards meet dude ranches — and that the experience would be more charming than challenging. I was mostly right about the look and feel of the area (although we’ve been disappointed since our arrival by the ugly, depressing high-security architecture everywhere that features bars on windows, high walls in front of homes and razor-wire fences defining property lines).

We were surprised, however, to discover an excursion more authentic and eventful than expected.

Pablo, the guide, talked to Colly about snakes and pumas.

We were joined by three women who looked in their twenties or thirties — one from Ireland, one from England and one from France — who were visiting Mendoza for various reasons. As we drove together in a van on a dusty dirt road toward the ranch, Morgan and I both commented how the mountains reminded us of the wilderness behind our hometowns, Ojai and Santa Monica. Spiky yucca and some type of shrub like chaparral covered the ground, and cacti and thistles blooming yellow flowers added a few spots of bright color. On a clear day we could have seen the Andes foothills that lead to the 22,000-foot Aconcagua (which is about three hours away by car), but a violent wind storm that knocked out our power the night before had left the sky tinted with dust and obscured the view. It wasn’t exactly pretty, but I liked the familiar feel of it, as though I were in Southern California on a hazy summer day.

We saddled up for a two-hour trail ride that was mostly a nose-to-tail amble but allowed for a few stretches where we picked up the pace. Colly nagged her nag into a gallop, and Kyle managed to cling to his saddle on a fast-paced trot. The horses thrilled the kids, but I found the landscape and conversation more interesting than the ride. While Orlando galloped off to check puma traps or to herd a stray, I listened to the English-speaking guide, Pablo, explain how the gaucho manages some 500 horses and raises goats.

Back at the barn, surrounded by goats ...

... and dogs.

The biggest eye-opener came after the ride, when Morgan and I were in a goat shed crowded with week-old kids and handing some to Colly and Kyle to hold. We were petting and cooing over the cute goats — and inwardly absorbing the sobering news they would be killed in six months for meat — when suddenly we noticed Orlando and Pablo spring into action a few yards away. We realized that two newborn kids and a mother goat’s placenta had dropped unexpectedly onto the ground right by us. Orlando and Pablo began rubbing the two mewling babies and swatting away several hungry-looking mutts that hovered too close. As our family moved closer to watch, a guanaco (a South American relative of the llama) chose that moment to spit all over my back. I scarcely noticed or cared because I was transfixed by the helpless minute-old kids.

Orlando and Pablo turned to catch the mother and force her to nurse, leaving the newborns pathetically struggling in the dirt, so I knelt down and started vigorously petting them the way I had seen. “It’s eating your pants!” Colly said as one tried to nurse the hem of my jeans. Orlando reached over and grabbed one of the babies and stuck it to the teat of the mother, who was butting and kicking.

Orlando and Pablo forced one newborn to start nursing while the other struggled on the ground.

“The mother, she no good because no rain,” Pablo said, suggesting in broken English and Spanish that the animals’ intuitive rationing of calories trumped their maternal instinct. He said it hasn’t rained for eight months, and now the region is heading into what promises to be a tough summer. An underground spring waters the horses, but we could see from their protruding hips and ribs that they don’t find much to eat as they roam freely on this open land.

We had just finished explaining to the kids what the afterbirth coming out of the mother goat was when Pablo said it was time to head back — and on our way through the gate, he gestured toward the hanging horse testicles. Kyle visibly shuddered and said, “Wow.” Then, on the van ride back, he said, “I’d give that five stars.” I asked him to explain why, and he said, “Well, horse riding is fun, but that was so different, and there were people from all over!”

We’ll post more from Mendoza soon, but for now we’re still reflecting on that ride.

Related posts:

1. Warming Up to Mendoza
2. Buenos Dias Buenos Aires
3. Welcome to Patagonia, Where Paradise Packs a Punch

Sarah and me in the crowd waiting for the start of the K42 Salomon Adventure Marathon.

I’ve now been running just over half my life.  Well, that’s if you count as running the two laps I would jog around Curtis Park in Sacramento with my sweet, now deceased Labrador in the early 1990s.  Although my running has increased from this early start, I can honestly say that I’ve never contemplated writing a race report. It seems somewhat absurd, given my running abilities, to subject others to stories of how many power gels I consumed along the race course or what my mile splits were. However, I realized while running the Salomon K42 Adventure Marathon in Patagonia, there’s a first time for everthing and I should write about why this race was so great, and since I haven’t written a blog post yet, I figured I could kill two birds with one stone.

To give away the ending, I did not win the race, which was done by some guy who never runs mountains and did this insane course is 3:07.  But I am happy to say that I was just about average.  Before this race began, in a fit of inner geek escaping out, I took last year’s race results, imported them to Excel and determined the average finish time of all runners together was about 5:15.  Therefore, I am close to average — not really the stuff of a great race report.

But as you can probably tell, my placing in this race had nothing to do with why I wanted to make this my first race report, and first blog post.  What made this race great was that I enjoyed it more than any other marathon I have ever done.  I’ve now done six marathons since my first in 2005, and all have been different, with some more difficult than others.  I remember being so dehydrated and lacking electrolytes in Vermont that I was not sure I could finish the last 500 feet of the race.

But this marathon gave me a number of firsts: (1) I have never done a marathon, or any run in my life, that had over 10,000 feet in vertical gain and loss (or “an accumulated unevenness of 3,100m,” as the Babelfish translation of the Salomon race FAQ page states); and (2) I have never been on my feet for a single run lasting almost five and a half hours; and (3) this run was the first real trail run that I have done since breaking my big toe in August.

Beyond the statistics of running more elevation and for longer on my feet than I ever have, this race really reminded me of why I love running: being able to run though some of the most beautiful places on earth, with other people who share the same passion, energy and excitement about the event and the feeling of tremendous personal accomplishment for finishing the race.

The view of the start line and Lake Espejo, which is one of seven lakes in the region (click to enlarge).

This event, in particular, removed any competitive aspect very early on and allowed me to purely enjoy the personal aspects of it.  It began with us all huddled in the cold morning air by Lago Espejo (“Mirror Lake”) waiting for the start. The lake is about three miles from the little ski resort town of Villa La Angostura. It’s off a street called Siete Lagos because there are seven lakes, this being the lake district in the Andes foothills, and the border to Chile is just 26 miles east. Sarah and I moved up as close as we could to the starting line, but there was still about fifty feet packed with runners in front of us. Sarah commented that it would be a slow start, and she was right.

Starting off on a tight dirt road, the 1200 marathoners and the 800 15K runners were forced like water into a funnel. There was little or no running on this road, only moving the same jumpy-walk/jog with the crowd. The conditions only got more compacted as the road gave way to a small dirt trail where the runners further compressed and slowed. I quickly realized that large sections of this race would be run at whatever pace everyone else was going, since passing anyone on these narrow trails was not possible.

Runners funnelling onto the dirt road right after the start (photo courtesy of the race website).

After the first mile of running, mostly up a pretty steep single-track hill, the course did mercifully open up to more of a wide trail where two could run alongside each other, and it felt a bit less claustrophobic.  At this early stage I still had some vague idea that maybe I could do this course in the 4:30 that I ran the Catalina Island Marathon in a few years ago.  After all, they both have what looks like two major uphill climbs, the biggest being about 2000 feet from bottom to top. I quickly realized that the elevation chart on the website was quite misleading, in that it only showed the big highs and lows.

The elevation profile shows what appears to be a smooth course with two major hills.

What it failed to indicate is that almost no single stretch of this course was flat.  Unlike Catalina, or any other race I have ever done, this course was always either going uphill or downhill, rolling hills, straight up, or straight down the sides of mountains. With the combination of realizing that I was on the hilliest course I have ever seen, including more single track where you can’t pass, I soon gave up any real care about time.

After realizing that I would finish at precisely the moment that I finished (whenever that would be), I started taking in the scenery and taking pictures. The other thing I could concentrate on was the wonderful crowd that came to watch and cheer the runners.  Much of the early part of this race was along rolling dirt roads with picturesque houses where the owners, their kids and their big dogs would sit in the front cheering.  Knowing almost no Spanish, I don’t really know if they were cheering me or telling me that my pants were on fire.  However, I did keep hearing the word “chica,” so they might have been telling me that I run like a girl.

Early in the race with Lake Nahuel Huapi in the background.

Of course the most amazing aspect of this race is the location, which was confirmed at almost every turn.  Other than a 100-yard stretch along the highway that leads to town, this course was along dirt roads with views of the snow-capped mountains and beautiful Lake Nahuel Huapi. The single track and trails were through dense forested regions, with mountain streams that were luminescent blue from glacial runoff.  All the trees were heavy with green moss from the constant rain and snow that blanket this area for most of the year.  This area has the feeling of Alaska with the wild undeveloped rainforests that are simply stunning.

The forest surrounding a major uphill section of the course.

One of the big features of this race that concerned both Sarah and me greatly in light of the cold weather and snow leading up to the race was the riving crossing at Mile 8.  We had visions of waist-deep glacial water and stepping on a rolling submerged rock, only to float down the river and arrive at Lake Nahuel Huapi days later.  The anticipation of this moment was only heightened by the fact that we ran near the river for quite some time and could hear the sound of the rushing water, while climbing a steep hill before the crossing.  I also heard shouts up ahead of me, and had visions of people taking the aforementioned headfirst accidental plunge into the unforgiving spring runoff river.  Of course, the shouts were in Spanish so I have no idea what they were saying.  Perhaps, “Oh for God’s sake help me,” or maybe “I’m being swept away.”

Runners behind me crossing the river.

As I turned the corner on the trail, I saw a line of people, some splashing through and some tip-toeing, through an ankle-deep stream.  It was not exactly the terrify-me-to-my-core river crossing I feared and kinda hoped for.  Nonetheless, it was fun to jump into the river and feel some measure of being an Adventure Sports person.

After that river crossing we started our first major hill, where the 15K runners split off toward town and their finish.  The entire hill was basically un-runnable single track that just went up and up through a dense forest of primarily straight pine like trees with no sun breaking through the canopy.  It was quite fun to get to the top and do a nice downhill all the way back toward town, although some of the runners around me insisted on doing crazy-man-losing-total-control running on the downhills, with arms flying in all directions and legs pumping into the air.  I named one guy “The Bombadier” since he would always bomb down the hills like crazy, only for me to repeatedly pass him on the uphills.

After running above town on trails, we hit the main highway for about 100 yards and then quickly turned off onto a dirt road that started up the ski mountain Cerro Bayo.

"Runners" ahead of me climbing mud- and snow-covered ground.

We hit a section that was steeper and muddier than the famed connector at the fire trails above UC Berkeley.  Many sections required holding onto plant life to climb up the unstable, muddy trail.  However, numerous more macho men than myself were determined to get up these sections without using the brush and would attack the hills like trying to climb a vertical slippery slide, only to turn all those around them into bowling pins as they inevitably slid back into the others.

Mud on the steep climb up Cerro Bayo.

Early on the climb up this hill I searched for a walking stick to help with the straight-up march. I wanted one that was really light and small, and I was lucky to find one just the right size, and as this climb intensified, I was so happy to have my little stick that I started having thoughts of wanting to keep it forever.  “I could pack it in my suitcase and bring it home,” I thought.

View from the top (almost) of Cerro Bayo.

As we approached the top I was extremely excited to emerge from the trail onto a runnable dirt road that looked like a Cat track for the ski area, until I immediately realized we still had a long trek up through the mud and snow before we could come down again.  When we finally reached the top of Cerro Bayo, I really was attached to my little stick and did not want to discard it, but I started having visions of Tom Hanks in Cast Away with his soccer ball that he named and would talk to.  I decided the little stick made it all the way to the top of Cerro Bayo from the bottom and that it should rest there, so I sadly discarded it.

Soon after I let go of my stick, we started on the downhill, which consisted of running down a ski run on loose-pack, large-grain sand and rock. I heard a guy shout “SHIT,” and hearing English, I asked what happened.  He said as soon as he started down and hit this loose sand, both his shoes entirely filled with the pebbles and sand, and he could not run.

The ski "run" down Cerro Bayo.

(I later learned that this also repeatedly happened to Sarah.)  I took to surfing down the sand as best I could, while “Bombadier” flew by me.

The run down was silly and fun, and a really nice break from the monotony of the climb up Cerro Bay.

I’ve never run down a ski run before (another first). After reaching the bottom of the Cerro Bayo trail, we were dropped right back on the highway, which was the only miserable part of run (and luckily it only lasted a few hundred yards). It was bright, dusty from cars flying by, and exhaust filled the air.  Mercifully, this stretch was over quickly, and we went back to a beautiful dirt road and then a trail above town.  I could hear the blare of the loudspeakers at the finish line in town and was very happy to see the 40K marker, which meant I only had a little over a mile to go.

The final half mile was on the main street of the little town of Villa La Angostura, which we have made home for the last week.  The crowd was wonderful and still relatively excited and cheerful even though the elite runners had finished over two hours before.  Little kids loved to stand in the street so they could get “low fives” as you ran by to their extreme pleasure and giggles.  I got lots of cheers, and as I ran down the chute to grab my 5:20 finishing time, I heard my name being shouted. I was so happy to see Sarah right past the finish line, who was calling my name and smiling.

Me finishing the race with a big smile.

I told her I enjoyed this race more than any I have ever done, and she was just so happy to see I had not bonked, quit or died on that difficult course.  We both talked about how we really wildly underestimated the course and the need for calories (I had four “GUs” with 100 calories each, and she had five, to put in some obligatory race report information).

Although Sarah had a difficult race, with about eight stops along the way to fix shoe and sock problems, she still managed to pull off a win in her age division and tenth female overall.  She found this fact out by hearing her name repeatedly shouted over the loudspeaker while waiting and worrying about me.  She said it sounded like “Saaarrraaaaah Smeeeeeeeth,” “Saaarrraaaaah Smeeeeeeeth!”  I’m sure that in her catastrophizing she assumed she was being summoned to be informed that I had careened off the side of a hill or worse, but she was happily surprised to find out the insistent calling was to get her to the awards podium. With that, the race was over.

Well, I didn’t win my division (I was 70th out of 171 in the men’s 40 – 44 group), but this moment in Patagonia is one that I will always remember and cherish for how lucky I am to be able to run a course like that (at all), and to be in a place as beautiful and different as here. Events and times like these are what I dearly hoped my year-away trip would provide, and this, so far, was one of the best.  This event really put us into the life of this small town, and we were surrounded by people from Argentina and across South America (I think there were only two or three other Americans total). Even though I can’t really speak to the Latin Americans and don’t understand what they say, I have a much better understanding of this part of the world than I did before.  Mostly, I am comfortable here even with the language barrier, and events like the 42K just deepen that level of comfort and the realization that although there are major differences between different parts of the word, there are even more similarities.

Related posts:

1. Welcome to Patagonia, Where Paradise Packs a Punch
2. Gnome, Sweet Gnome In Villa La Angostura
3. Branching Out on Lago Nahuel Huapi

Arriving at our cabaña, we discovered that "los gnomos" are part of its charm.

Our arrival to Villa La Angostura, about an hour north of Bariloche, set the tone for a wacky week. Driving the windy road on the shores of Lago Nahuel Huapi thrilled us with views of snow-capped Patagonian peaks but made poor Kyle throw up all over himself in the car. When we eventually reached our cabaña complex, called Guardianes del Bayo, we probably looked as bad as we smelled because an icy rain and wind left us bedraggled and shivering.

The living room decor includes antlers and this little gnome.

As we unloaded our belongings and cleaned up the mess, my eyes took in a babbling brook that cut through a well-kept lawn and a cluster of wood cabins, flowing past a play structure and under several arched footbridges. Then my ears caught a tune from long ago that was piped in from speakers somewhere — The Carpenters’ “Top of the World.” Karen Carpenter’s saccharine voice singing “I’m on the top of the world, lookin’ down on creation …” floated through the breeze and became a tape loop in my brain.

Then I began to notice pointy red hats on little bearded figurines inside and outside our cabaña. And then the sign with our cabaña’s name: Los Gnomos.

With a mix of shock and awe — uh-oh and oh, wow! — we realized we had booked ourselves into some kind of fairy-tale lodge where everything seems a little bit off.

It’s not just our cabaña — these wooden creatures are everywhere. Just as varnished burl bear carvings decorate the landscape in the backwoods of Northern California, so do fanciful carvings of mythical spirits on these roadways.

I met this elf on the main road into Villa La Angostura.

Morgan did "I'm a Little Teapot" by this wood carving.

This part of Patagonia has a distinctive, Disneyland-esque style of mountain architecture that I hereby dub Gnome Home. We got our first hint of it in Bariloche, at a restaurant called Tarquino that we nicknamed the Hobbit Hole, which has an exterior that belies a surprisingly sophisticated menu.

Tarquino restaurant in Bariloche is a prime example of "Gnome Home" style.

But Gnome Home truly flourishes in this smaller, quainter tourist hamlet of Villa La Angostura. Large, heavily lacquered logs, all gnarled and knotted, frame every door and window, and over-sized, lumpy-looking rocks form the foundations and chimneys. Some of the dimensions of doorways and furniture seem designed for trolls — low and wide — while other doorways and stairways seem unnaturally narrow.

The kids are enchanted by the place and seem more elfin with each passing day. All they want to do is read, play make-believe and run around. They’re probably inspired in part because Morgan is reading The Hobbit to Kyle and helping both kids draw hobbit-like creatures. Another book we’re reading together, Lois Lowry’s classic The Giver, motivated them to spend hours creating a fictional community. They seem to have moved past their homesickness — at least for the time being — and Morgan observed the other day that it’s been weeks since we’ve heard either of them complain, “I’m bored.”

The kids are having fun just being kids, especially when playing outside this kid-friendly cabaña complex.

But just as every fairy tale has something frightening, so too did our week. We had to cope with a dental emergency when a crown on one of Morgan’s molars popped off, leaving the tooth underneath painfully exposed. We had no choice but to seek treatment — and very limited options. Hence we found ourselves two days in a row in a small office that specializes in cosmetic dentistry for the tourist trade. It had a waiting room decked out as though designed to appeal to twentysomethings from West LA. The kids and I spent a few hours sitting there on an oddly curved couch with faux fur trimmings, surrounded by neon accent lights and multiple video screens that played MTV videos from twenty years ago. We had noticed in Buenos Aires that American pop from the ’80s and early ’90s is big, playing on radios and in stores everywhere, but this dentist office showcased retro flashbacks as much as any late-night VHI marathon.

Video screens playing hits from the 1980s helped Morgan take his mind off his tooth pain and made the trip to the dentist slightly surreal.

Morgan, meanwhile, seemed to be disassociating while watching four music video screens that surrounded the dental chair. When the dentist (a fashionable and relatively young woman) prepped Morgan’s tooth, he discovered that she skimps on Novocain, and he later described the process as excruciating. The good news is that after back-to-back appointments, everything seems fine.

Perhaps you’re wondering, after all this, why we’re here as opposed to somewhere warmer and not quite so weird, such as Mendoza (where we’re headed next week). We came to Villa La Angostura, which has a population of around 7,000, for this weekend’s Salomon K42 trail marathon that traverses the town’s main peak, Cerro Bayo. Some 2000 runners and their families have arrived for the 42K and 15K races, so the town’s three-block center permeates an athletic vibe. We’re two of only three participants from the United States registered for it, but the event draws runners from all over South America.

To my dismay, I saw more fresh snow outside our window a few mornings ago (not what we need in advance of the trail marathon). The gnome on the windowsill seemed to mock me.

Earlier this week it seemed the weather would play a trick on us all, as fresh snow coated the ground and deepened the frigid knee-high river that runners have to cross, but the sun came out yesterday and everyone is cautiously optimistic it’ll hold. Nonetheless, I’m admittedly nervous about this event. But Morgan is game for it, and so am I. If I find myself plagued by doubt, exhaustion or hypothermia, I’ll just keep singing that Carpenters’ tune that’s been stuck in my head all week: I’m on the top of the world …

The shores of Lago Espejo by Villa La Angostura will be the starting area of Saturday's Salomon K42 trail marathon. I am dazzled each time I discover more peaks and lakes like this!

The marathon goes up and over this peak, called Cerro Bayo. We probably really will feel "on top of the world."

Related posts:

1. Welcome to Patagonia, Where Paradise Packs a Punch
2. When It Rains…
3. Branching Out on Lago Nahuel Huapi

Lago Nahuel Huapi, in the Andes foothills near Bariloche, as seen from our cabaña (click to enlarge).

Lake Nahuel Huapi spreads and branches out in all directions around this pocket of the Andes foothills of Patagonia, and its water has mesmerized us since we arrived a couple of weeks ago. Its surface changes almost hourly with the weather, from a glassy reflection to white-capped waves. It even harbors its own Nessie-like legend, and the kids are fascinated by the idea that maybe, just maybe, a plesiosaur-like creature whom locals call Nahuelito is lurking in the waters just off our cabaña’s deck. Nahuelito was caught on YouTube and the Sci Fi Channel, so it must exist, right? We all got a good laugh out of this clip, especially the music:

Click here to view the embedded video.

The lake dominates the center of Argentina’s oldest national park with the same difficult-to-pronounce name, Nahuel Huapi (try na-WHELL whoppy), which is a phrase from the indigenous people, the Mapuche,  meaning “island of the jaguars.” In the center of the lake sits a 12-mile-long finger of an island called Victoria.

Whoo-hoo, we're going on a boat ride! We were all smiles when we boarded the Cau Cau boat for Isla Victoria.

A few days ago, when the rain around Bariloche let up for a day, we jumped at an opportunity to board a boat for a day trip to Victoria. We didn’t research it much but simply wanted to get out on that water and see the views. One thing we did plan ahead and do right, however, is go on a day when an English-speaking guide was scheduled for the tour. Thanks to this wonderful guide and some good luck, we discovered a dream field trip for kids and grown-ups alike: visually stunning, physically active, and awash with interesting science and history lessons.

The six-hour tour is run by an outfit called Cau Cau and takes off from Pañuelo Port next to the Llao Llao hotel. We boarded a big, comfortable catamaran that can seat over 250, but on this off-season cloudy day we were joined by only about 50 other tourists. The guide, whose name I didn’t catch, translated everything for our family so we could hear about the history of Isla Victoria on the half-hour ride over.

Kyle didn't want to look up from the book he was reading on the Kindle, even when Morgan tickled his chin.

He told us it was this island, not the lake and surrounding park, that first had the “Nahuel Huapi” name, until it was changed to honor some pioneer named Victorica. Then the Europeans around here in the late 1800s confused Victorica with Victoria — or maybe decided that everything should be named Victoria — and the queen’s name stuck.

The island was severely deforested for timber, but then in the mid-1920s Argentina’s agricultural minister decided to turn it into an environmental laboratory of sorts by planting numerous exotic species and experimenting with forest management.

The guide tells Colly and Kyle about how a tree nicknamed "monkey tail" evolved.

We got to see, for example, 80-year-old sequoias that grow about 30 percent faster and bigger than their siblings in California because of environmental factors unique to the island (stuff like the soil, climate and dearth of threats to its growth). Seeing these giant redwoods, feeling their spongy bark and marveling at their size was like receiving a surprise gift from back home.

In another corner of the island, where pine were closely planted in perfect rows like in a tree farm, we saw how they grow straight, tall and virtually limbless to reach the sunlight. Standing in stark contrast to the uniform trees was a twisting, gnarled old pine with branches in all directions — one of the oldest trees on the island, having survived the previous century’s deforestation. We decided the old tree reminded us of Ed Asner’s character Carl in Pixar’s Up.

The giant trees made Kyle seem more impish than usual.

If my arms were big enough, I would have hugged this tree from home. It's one of many California sequoias planted on Isla Victoria. They're only 80 years old but grew faster than their California counterparts.

Then it was time to board the boat and head to a smaller island for a tour through Arrayanes National Park to explore an ancient grove of arrayán — a type of myrtle native to Argentina and Chile. Who knew that a bunch of myrtle trees would be worth writing home about? These cinnamon-colored species twist and embrace like dancers, their peeling bark creating a vibrant two-toned texture and pattern unlike anything I’d ever seen.

A pathway leads through the forest for about a half mile.

The arrayanes up close.

At Arrayanes National Park, with the Cau Cau catamaran in the background.

When we headed back to the port, the clouds began to lift and part as the sun went down and tinted the sky pink. With our heads lifted high to look at the sky, who knows if we might have missed a Nahuelito sighting?

These peaks are considered mere foothills in the Andes.

Lago Nahuel Huapi in the late afternoon light, as seen on the boat ride back.

Kyle kept a lookout for birds.

At last, a bit of blue sky!

Related posts:

1. Welcome to Patagonia, Where Paradise Packs a Punch
2. Gnome, Sweet Gnome In Villa La Angostura
3. When It Rains…

Morgan and I spent a lot of time last week doing travel research and making reservations while the stormy weather kept us mostly inside.

Before Morgan and I left in mid-August, we talked a lot about how there will be times when traveling gets tough, when we feel fatigued and worried about the myriad consequences of uprooting for a year, and when we second-guess our choices. We knew we’d feel homesick not just for home per se, but for friends and familiar routines, and we might feel pangs of regret. That’s why we added the “no regrets” phrase to our tagline — not because we’re blithely traipsing off in the world with nothing weighing us down but our backpacks, but rather because we knew from the start that doubt might haunt us, just as first-time home buyers flirt with buyers’ remorse when the repairs pile up and bills come due. “No regrets” is shorthand for “no turning back, so let’s make this work, and in the long run we’ll look back and be so glad we did it.” Or in Spanish, vale la pena. It’s what we say to each other and to ourselves to bolster confidence and commitment, because what we’re doing takes an occasional pep talk.

Last week was one of those weeks.

This may come as a surprise, since the previous post about arriving in Patagonia was so effusive. As my brother noted, we seemed besotted with the landscape. We still are, but we had, for lack of a better word, a moody week, exacerbated by a steady rain and cold that limited our ability to get outside and explore. Cabin fever and my head cold infected the cabana’s coziness.

A tour of Bariloche's chocolate museum lifted our spirits one afternoon and also gave us all an interesting history lesson.

Nothing terrible happened — no accidents or thefts — just minor disappointments, annoyances and parenting/sibling flareups. For example, a close call on a run (described on my running blog) made us dwell on worst-case scenarios and the extra steps we need to take to avoid them. Then there was a fiasco involving the Kindle, in which something that should be simple — shipping a defective Kindle back to Amazon.com and receiving a replacement — turned into a weeks-long abject lesson in navigating international customs, taxes and language barriers, which took more money, phone calls and cab rides than I care to relate. Morgan, with the help of his dad back home, eventually sorted it all out.

We experienced a higher-than-average number of travel planning snafus, such as when I screwed up and booked some wrong dates for New Zealand and couldn’t simply change them back. Then, more hours spent speaking and emailing in broken Spanish to make a reservation for lodging we really need next week, and finally getting to the bank to make a deposit to secure it (because a lot of these places require cash deposits, not credit cards called in) — and then discovering, as the rain fell and cab drove away, that the bank closed an hour earlier. Now we know that banks close at 1:00 on Thursdays.

And then there was the case of the bored, clever 8-year-old gremlin named Kyle who kept changing passwords and other settings on IPhones, IPods, laptops, in-room safes and any other device with a button and a silicon chip, in spite of repeated reminders and warnings, which led to technical difficulties and parental reprimands. And a laughably bad daytrip, which Colly described on her blog better than I ever could.

Kyle has grown very attached to this dog, which belongs to the groundskeeper. He loves playing with her, but then gets sad when he remembers our dog back home and realizes he'll have to say goodbye to this dog, too.

Meanwhile, I struggled to put more than two sentences together on this blog, briefly contemplated a pitch for a freelance writing assignment and then abandoned all efforts for several days, convinced that no one would ever care to find and read my long-winded prose since I’m apparently the only one in the over-saturated travel-writing universe who has decided not to Twitter.

All four of us, at various times, argued over how best to spend our days and how best to homeschool. We tossed and turned at night over long-term plans and got teary about missed friends and holiday traditions.

I’ve probably lost a lot of readers at this point who have no patience or sympathy for this sad sack. I hope you understand my main motive: to document some of the down days along with the good times, so that we don’t forget them when we wax nostalgic a year from now, and so anyone contemplating a similar journey gets a more complete picture.

Colly, bless her heart and mind, channeled our collective mood into her blog post linked above and created a pro/con list about long-term travel. Thinking about what I might list, I realized almost everything would be a “pro” but could also be a “con.” For example, “more family time” — definitely a positive, until you grow tired of finishing each others’ sentences all day long and yearn to socialize with others. “Flexible schedule and more free time” — wonderful, except on days when you struggle to prioritize and feel adrift. “Homeschooling” — so far so good, but when for whatever reason the process backfires, it’s a painful double-whammy: you’re a bad parent AND a bad teacher. “Experience new cultures and simpler ways of life” — always good, and I’m so grateful to see the world from outside of the Piedmont bubble, but feeling like a fish-out-of-water occasionally wears thin.

Halloween 2009: The kids were blue because they knew from friends' emails that they were missing parties, school costume parades and trick-or-treating. Argentina doesn't celebrate Halloween, but Morgan and I surprised the kids with some candy and we all had fun taste-testing the Latin American brands.

A couple of days ago, for example, I grew frustrated at the grocery store by my inability to decipher the strange brands and felt helpless to cook anything decent for dinner since I don’t have any spices or proper cookware. As I fruitlessly looked for frozen pie crust, canned pumpkin and condensed milk, I thought, Can it really be this hard to make a pumpkin pie? Yes, when you’re the only one in the country who craves pumpkin pie in October, it is!

But these lows don’t last. I knew this one wouldn’t, and it didn’t. Like in a marathon, as a favorite piece of advice I once heard goes, “There will be highs and there will be lows, and neither will last very long.” The same is true with long-term travel. Appreciate the highs and ride out the lows. Look up and around and think, We’re really doing this, we’re really seeing all these parts of the world together. Hallelujah!

Several factors pushed us out of last week’s funk: Morgan’s good advice and dark humor, a momentary lifting of the clouds for a fantastic day trip (details and photos in a post to come), the hatching of bird eggs outside our window, and — as is so often the case — running. If I have one piece of round-the-world travel advice to share this week, it’s this: Nurture a hobby as you go. It can be hiking, art history — anything that adds more meat to the skeleton of an itinerary, motivates you to explore more of the landscape, and makes you feel better when you get stalled in one point. Thanks to running we toured Buenos Aires on foot, and now we’re altering our itinerary to fit in some more races (such as the Nov. 14 Salomon K42 trail marathon in Villa La Angostura).

Cause for celebration: The eggs outside our window hatched! All week long we watched the mother guard her eggs and squawk at anything threatening. Yesterday, Morgan rescued a chick that fell down a drainpipe.

Running takes us places not found in any guidebooks. For example, I experienced a sense of accomplishment last week when I booked a room in the middle of Nowhere, New Zealand, following a string of travel-planning setbacks. We’re going there so Morgan and I can both run a trail race the weekend of January 16 — the first race we’ve ever registered for that requires runners to carry a whistle and safety blanket — and I think I even managed to find a babysitter (broadly defined) to watch the kids during the event.

The race ends on the West Coast of the South Island in a tiny hamlet called Blackball, at a roadhouse called the Blackball Hilton (the use of “Hilton” appears to be a long-running joke). We wanted to stay there since it’s the only place around, even though the most recent review on tripadvisor.com warns, “The rooms were tiny, dated and not to mention dirty. The room had layers of dust in it, dead flies and dirty carpets. The bathrooms were at the end of a corridor, and were also very dated and had flimsy locks.”

I placed an international call through Skype to the proprietor and had a lovely chat with a lady who seemed to come from Kiwi central casting, who punctuated each sentence with “right-oh!” and “no worries!” She told me she would be delighted to keep an eye on my kiddos during the morning of the race, and Colly and Kyle could have the run of the pub and help her manage the festivities as runners crossed the finish line. This was all oddly reassuring, not alarming, to me. Sometimes you just have to go with a gut feeling. I reserved the night before the race in the Blackball Hilton’s “family room” (who knows what that room classification means exactly), and I hung up very happy and grateful to know that we have a date in New Zealand two-and-a-half months from now in a backroad tavern with 100 other trail runners to keep us company.

Related posts:

1. Playing Around Rotorua
2. Essential Gear For Long-Term Travel
3. Welcome to Patagonia, Where Paradise Packs a Punch

Our first view from the hotel by Lago Nahuel Huapi. We were struck dumb as we took in the view (which extended in all directions beyond this IPhone snapshot); all we could say was, "Wow."

Another shot of the lake from our first day near Bariloche.

I wish I knew what to call these beautiful creatures. They're everywhere.

The weather goes to extremes, too, like a toddler whose sunny disposition changes without warning to a tantrum. We arrived to an intensely blue sky and refused to believe forecasts that hinted at possible snow flurries. Snow? Slushy rain, maybe. But yesterday, we woke up to blizzard conditions and were transfixed as snow covered tulips and left white layers on all the trees.

It's spring down here. At least, we think it is! It's hard to tell.

When I woke and saw these snow-covered forests, I felt a split-second flutter of excitement about the onset of winter before remembering that this is an anomaly and summer is around the corner.

We heard the storm was called a nevada de tonto (or something like that), meaning a fool’s snowstorm, because it took everyone by surprise, and another person mentioned it snowed harder yesterday than any day in winter. Colly called it a “swinter wonderland” (for spring + winter).

We were enchanted — and woefully under-dressed. When it crossed my mind last week that I might need warmer clothes for Patagonia, I bought a pair of tights in Buenos Aires to wear under my sleeveless dress. A blizzard? So we piled on layers under our thin windbreakers and kept warm enough (sort of).

"Can you say, 'está nevando'?" "No, but we can say, 'We're freezing!'"

If you’re wondering where we are exactly, we’re about 1000 miles west of Buenos Aires, near the border of Chile, in the Rio Negro province on the Andean range. We’re in the midst of a vast national park called Nahuel Huapi (which I still can’t pronounce!), and the main town, Bariloche, is a ski destination. We spent part of the week about 13 miles west of Bariloche at the Llao Llao Hotel — which, like its surroundings, is over-the-top in scale and grandeur. (Pronounce it like Zsa Zsa’s name ending in “ow,” as in “Zsow Zsow.”) Opened in 1940 and rennovated in the early 1990s, it was reborn as a world-class hotel after being shuttered for lack of funds and neglect for nearly two decades, starting in the mid-1970s (not surprising, since that time coinscides with the country’s Dirty War). It reminded us of Yosemite’s Ahwahnee with rustic yet luxurious hunting-lodge architecture and decor.

The view of the back of Llao Llao and its grounds from our room. Believe it or not, we were in the most affordable "non-view" room. I'll take this view any day!

Click to enlarge and see Morgan's series on how the weather changed in four hours.

We went there because so many people recommended it, and we wanted a short stay in a hotel where the kids could swim in an incredible indoor-outdoor pool and do other activities organized by the hotel (it’s a very child-friendly resort) while we got the lay of the land and figured out longer-term accommodations. Getting the lowest-level room at off-season rates made Llao Llao almost reasonable in terms of cost — but still, I’m wincing at the bill. It was a guilty pleasure to be there for three days, but we were quite ready to leave, feeling bloated from the obscenely lavish breakfast buffets and gouged by prices for drinks and other services. Our happiest memories from the place involve swimming at the heated pool in the storm and eating dinners in the lounge, where we played nonstop games of Uno and five-card draw, using peanuts for poker chips.

The Llao Llao lounge, where we ate dinner a couple of times.

Affordable cabañas to rent are available all throughout the region — especially in these non-holiday spring months, when tourists are few and far between — so Morgan did a lot of research to sort through the options. We ultimately decided to stay close to Bariloche for a couple of weeks since the town, which some criticize as too touristy, has more to do than some of the more quaint and far-flung other towns. He found a cozy little place with a deck overlooking the lake. It’s part of the Villa Huinid hotel, so we have access to the hotel’s pool and gym, but it’s a separate condo-like one-bedroom cabin with a kitchen so we can cook meals. We adore it and are grateful to be in a place that feels like a home.

Morgan in our cabaña. The sofas in the background convert to beds for the kids.

My kitchen for the next two weeks.

The kids were thrilled to discover a play structure, chicken coop and several free-roaming dogs right outside our cabaña.

As for what we’re doing — besides transitioning, exploring and studying with the kids — we’ve spent a lot of time researching the area and deciding where to go from here. After much deliberation, we decided to stay in this region for almost a month and then drive up to Mendoza, rather than fly or take 18-hour bus rides on side excursions to places such as Iguazú Falls on the East Coast or El Calafate glacier down south. There is so much to see and do right around here, but it’s hard to tune out those who advise we can’t pass up the chance to see other parts of Argentina. Imagine being a foreign visitor to the United States and hearing people say, “You absolutely have to visit Yosemite and Niagara Falls and …” — which entails a lot of air travel and expense. We’ve decided to stick to our original plan of settling into a region and getting to know it. We plan to rent a car a few days from now for day trips, and in a couple of weeks move to a cabaña about an hour away near a town called Villa La Angostura. We recently signed up to run a trail marathon near there on November 14.

Speaking of running, Morgan and I got in one good run before the weather turned. We headed out on a trail that passed through a tunnel of bamboo, fern and cypress tress. Slowly we climbed as the vegetation thinned and the lakes came into view. I’m at a loss for words to adequately describe the feeling of being up there and taking in that view — feeling so small, so remote, so full of life and gratitude, disbelieving where we were and what we were seeing. Thankfully, Morgan brought his camera.

Morgan and I went on one trail run before the stormy weather hit. It started with a couple of miles through thick bamboo.

We made it to the top of one of the peaks.

This is heaven! (in spite of the cold)

Morgan's pano from our trail run (click to enlarge).

Related posts:

1. Branching Out on Lago Nahuel Huapi
2. Gnome, Sweet Gnome In Villa La Angostura
3. A Mountain Marathon in Patagonia That’s Way Above Average

Also, I uploaded a batch of snapshots from our first week here to the flickr photostream (not including the pics already published on the blogs). If you’d like to view this slide show below, simply click the “play” button on it — but if you also want to see the captions that go with it, do the following:

• click play
• move the cursor to the bottom right-hand corner of slide show screen and push the button that takes it to full-screen mode
• move the cursor to the upper right-hand corner and click “show info” to see the captions
• go to “options” in the upper right-hand corner and click “slow” so it scrolls through the photos slowly enough to read the captions (or scroll manually through the pics by moving the cursor over the thumbnails along the bottom of the screen).

Sorry it’s so complicated! One of these days we’ll put our rudimentary multimedia skills to use to make a nice audio slideshow in a better interface, but until then, I hope you enjoy this.

Related posts:

1. Buenos Dias Buenos Aires
2. Welcome to Patagonia, Where Paradise Packs a Punch
3. Gnome, Sweet Gnome In Villa La Angostura

Since I’m still sorting it all out, I have notes rather than a coherent narrative to report.

The Flight: It was great. Since I have a deep and irrational fear of flying, I normally say that in hindsight about any flight (i.e. “We didn’t fall out of the sky, so it was great!”). But really, this was great, and I have my father-in-law, George, to thank for strongly suggesting we upgrade to Business Class. I set aside my guilt about splurging and fully enjoyed the fully reclinable seats (nicer than any First Class seats I’d ever seen) and our access to American Airlines’ Admiral Club Lounge during our four-hour layover in Miami (where the kids managed to settle down and do their daily “home”schooling).

Their smiles say it all!

Colly declared she never wanted to leave the plane because she was so happy in her tricked-out seat, and she proceeded to watch movies and indulge in the service the entire time, not sleeping a wink. Lying horizontal with a couple of beers in me, I felt as though the turbulence that normally makes me clutch the armrests was instead a hand rocking a cradle, and I slept like a baby.

To our relief and gratitude, the apartment management service got our last-minute voicemails and arranged a driver to pick us up, and also had someone meet us at the apartment at 9 a.m. to let us in (much earlier than regular check-in). We had screwed up and forgot to tell them ahead of time when exactly we were arriving, so we resigned ourselves to the likelihood we’d have to catch a cab and hang out for the morning until gaining access to the apartment at regular check-in time.

These tired travelers did a good job of being patient through baggage claim and customs.

We were delighted to be welcomed to Buenos Aires so auspiciously — our luggage made it intact, we got through customs without a hitch, a driver with our name on a sign was waiting, and our apartment turned out to be everything and more that we hoped for. ¡Eso sí que es la vida! (This is the life!)

The Apartment: There are scores of Buenos Aires apartments to choose from on the vrbo.com (Vacation Rentals By Owner) site. We chose this one, on Pacheco de Melo in the Recoleta neighborhood, for its location, style, reasonable price and — this is what clinched it — what we could discern about the owner, Mila Caceras. She’s Californian and also runs a B&B in Point Reyes called One Mesa, which has received glowing reviews. She was exceedingly friendly and helpful via phone and email when we booked the place months ago.

This isn't our building -- it's the one across the corner, photographed by Morgan from our balconey -- but it's typical of the Recoleta neighborhood architecture.

The stairway around the elevator shaft.

The building dates from the mid or late 19th century and is not far from some of the most fashionable streets in the city. A cafe is on its first floor, and another cafe is across the street. We passed through a small entranceway with marble and wood trim, and were escorted into a tiny wrought-iron elevator that looks as old as the building. It holds three or four people max, so we took multiple trips to get ourselves and our baggage up. I suppressed a shriek as the elevator (which looks and rattles like a cage) lurched and shot upward five flights to the top. A marble spiral staircase winds up around the elevator shaft, and I prefer to take the stairs!

The first thing that struck me when we opened the door were the high ceilings — higher even than our home in Piedmont — and the decorative plaster molding that forms curlycues and rosettes in each corner and around each light fixture. And the light fixtures — what a wonderfully bizarre mix of old and modern: a pair of candelabra chandeliers drip oversize crystal baubles in the sitting area, while polished chrome and wavy glass flixtures over the table and in the entranceway look like they were taken from the MOMA.

A view of the kitchen and entranceway, taken from the living room, with me working and Colly sliding on the floor.

The kitchen is small, but so cool! There's a loft overhead.

The whole place has been remodeled in a design that I would never dream of doing — mixing old-world romantic furnishings with modern chic — but it really works. In the dining and sitting area, for example, the armchairs and dining room set look like French antiques, the sofa is 1950s modern, and the coffee table and countertops are polished concrete. The hallway wall is made of opaque glass that floods the space with natural light. The gorgeous wood floors and tiled entrance have been waxed and polished so that they gleam.

Kyle and Colly love hanging out in the apartment.

Kyle in the living room, still vainly searching for English-language cartoons on the TV.

The overall effect is super cool yet elegant — more hip and luxurious than we’re used to — and I’m getting used to the cacophony of honking horns, revving engines and music from car windows that floats up from the street below.

The Language: Speaking Spanish has been challenging but a source of endless entertainment. After months of Morgan and the kids rolling their eyes at my attempts to teach them a bit, they’re suddenly all ears and eager to try. For example, when Morgan got in the shower and noticed there wasn’t any soap, he asked, “Sopa?” and I replied, “You wanna wash with soup?” He then carefully practiced “jabón” and learned not to confuse it with “jamón” (ham). Colly likes learning verbs such as “quiero” (I want) and “puedes darme?” (can you give me?). Only Kyle seems a bit resistant and intimidated by the strangeness of it all, and his obligatory “grassy-ass” for thank you comes out with a note of defiance.

After a couple of years of intermittently taking adult-ed Spanish classes and listening to a Spanish podcast, I can read fairly well in Spanish, but I struggle to understand speakers and can barely converse! Plus, here in Argentina, no one speaks the two styles I had developed an ear for, the rapid-fire Mexican staccato or lisping Castilian. Argentine Spanish lilts like Italian and seems to make constant reference to a guy named Joe, until you realize that all the double-L “y” sounds are pronounced like a “j,” so “yo” becomes “jo” and “pollo” is pronounced “poy-joe.”

On our first day at a minimart, where we all stood in the aisles jet-lagged and dazed by the panoply of new, strange brands and packaging (milk comes in small boxes, beer bottles are sold individually), I tried to ask the Korean-Argentine clerk where the peanut butter is (Tiene usted mantequilla de maní? — Do you have butter of peanut?). A string of Korean-Argentine-accented Spanish and quizzical looks followed. Another clerk came to help, and they proceeded to lead me around the store, showing me every type of peanut product they sold, and then taking me to the butter aisle to show me the mantequilla. I kept shaking my head, saying “para pan, con mermelada, para sandwiche!” (for bread, with jam, for sandwich!) and I mimed the action of spreading something on bread. Ah! they said, as if they finally got it, and took me to the jam aisle, proudly showing their wide selection of marmalade and jellies. “Con maní?” (with peanuts?) I ventured to ask, and they looked at me like I really was nuts for wanting a jam made out of peanuts. I thanked them and said I was sorry, “acabamos de llegar en Buenos Aires” (we have just arrived in BA) and they nodded sympathetically. Later, I googled “peanut butter in Argentina” and discovered other travelers wondering where to find it; apparently, it’s not a common item.

Later in the evening, I redeemed myself by placing my first phonecall in Spanish and ordering take-out. We didn’t want to go out for dinner because we were so tired, and the peanut butter incident left me too flustered at the store to buy enough ingredients for a proper dinner, so we got a menu from a nearby restaurant that delivers. I studied the menu and reviewed our order — dos ensaladas mixtas, 1/2 pollo, brochette de lomo (beef loin on a skewer), tortilla a la española (Spanish version of quiche). Then I took a deep breath and placed the call.

The halting conversation that followed was more heart-thumping and nerve-wracking than any phone interview I ever did as a journalist. A barely comprehensible and hurried man answered the phone. When he detected my accent he slowed down a bit, but when I chickened out and asked “habla inglés?” he ignored the question and kept speaking Spanish. We worked through the salad order, but then the order for half a chicken did me in. French came back to haunt me and I said “demi” instead of “medio.” “Huh?” he said in the universal language of “what the f—?” I tried dropping the “half” and repeating simply, “pollo,” to which he demanded, “muslo o pechuga? muslo o pechuga?” “Pechuga?” I guessed, and that satisfied him. (He was asking “thigh or breast?” and I ordered the breast meat.) Then I ordered the beef, but was so stressed I completely forgot to ask for the tortilla española. He asked me my address, and I realized I had not rehearsed how to say our street number, 2009. Do I say “two-zero-zero-nine” or “two thousand nine”? I tried both. Then there was confusion to sort about the floor and apartment number. The phrase “trial by fire” crossed my mind. I was desperate for the call to be over (and sensed he was, too). I repeated “thank you” numerous times and hung up.

My big accomplishment on Day One: ordering take-out dinner over the phone!

Morgan congratulated me, poured me some wine and the minutes ticked by as we waited, unsure whether nuestra cena (our dinner) would ever show up. A half hour later, we both jumped and bolted for the door when the buzzer rang. It worked! A delivery guy was there with succulent grilled meats and salads at our doorstep, we paid him 70 pesos plus 10 for tip (less than 20 US bucks total), and I finally relaxed.

The dogs: I could go into detail about our impressions of the city itself  — the sights and sounds we took in on long walks together, and when Morgan and I each ventured out on a solo run — but I’ll save that for another time, except to share here one of the biggest surprises: Buenos Aires is a city full of dogs. On nearly every block at any time of day, dog walkers can be seen escorting a pack of 10 or 12 dogs down a sidewalk. Not just little toy dogs that can be carried like a fashion accessory; rather, medium- and large-size dogs in all imaginable breeds. It astounds me how a single dog walker can handle so many dogs, and how well-behaved the dogs are (some walk without a leash, following the pack). Picture well-dressed office workers and shoppers nonchalantly stepping aside to let Labradors, boxers, retrievers and German shepherds through, as though dogs always have the right of way. Big dogs are parked and tethered to railings outside of cafes and stores like bikes filling up a bike rack. They all seem well acclimated to city life, and I’m getting used to the sound of barking mixed in with the background din.

Of course, seeing all these dogs makes me miss Teddy even more, but so far, that’s the only sharp pang of homesickness I feel.

Related posts:

1. Running Around Buenos Aires
2. Welcome to Patagonia, Where Paradise Packs a Punch
3. Branching Out on Lago Nahuel Huapi