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. 83 Places, 5 Continents, 10 Months

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. Welcome to Patagonia, Where Paradise Packs a Punch
3. Christmas in a Manger at Nelson, New Zealand

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