Lets make things better

Trip Start Jan 24, 2006

Trip End Ongoing

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Flag of Argentina Bariloche, Argentina
Thursday, March 2, 2006

My lack of ability to communicate in Spanish is starting to piss me off. I can understand a lot more than I could and do simple travel type tasks. Conversation is pretty much impossible . I take a week's lessons. Obviously this isn't gonna totally sort the problem out but some education is better than none. The lessons vary from useful to useless. The teaching occasionally suceeds but this is more by accident than design. Hours are wasted going through lists of words that you would use to describe your house. "Hello I have a sofa and a table in my house".

"Wicked, let's dance," said that exquisitely beautiful dark haired Argentinian girl.

Interestingly the Spanish for retired is jubilante. Also profesor/profesora in Spanish just means teacher, a fact that the language schools exploit to their advantage

this bridge was cool

. However, it wasn't a total waste of time.

Have set a travelling record by not travelling anywhere for five days. It's been good hanging out at the hostel with the typical diverse mix of nationalities, ages and backgrounds. Travel brings together people with similar motivations/psychological issues?? Personally, I find life with the nesters back in England pretty boring and lacking in variety. Obviously people want to have their babies and build their nests but I ain't a nester.... at least not yet. For now there's a whole world to explore and I'm only just scratching the surface. The hostel itself is a gem, one of the best that I and many others have stayed in. Because it's a small family business it's friendly without any stupid Babylon rules. Some of the commercial places try and ban people from drinking their own booze in the hostel and sell the shitest wine available for 10 times its value. It even comes in 700ml bottles. They will do every thing they can to try and get people to pay over the odds for services and tours. They shouldn't be allowed to claim that they are backpacker hostels and the travel guides shouldn't support this type of attitude. But they do. At home it's the same. Travel agents give bad advice. I was advised by Sta Travel that I should book a return within three months due to visa requirements. This is total bullshit and simple generates the agents more rebooking income. Chatting with other travellers has revealed other similar tales. An American I met was advised that he needed an air pass because bus travel was difficult and expensive. Again total bollocks. Next time I will probably just try and deal with the airline direct.

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