Gentle Patagonian breezes...

... Or so said the author of an article we read on the bus from Buenos Aires to Neuquen, about two weeks ago. Joel and I looked at each other. Um, has that person ever been to Patagonia? Two weeks later and I am, as they say here, engripado. I have the flu, or the worst cold ever, and I lay a hefty portion of the blame on the gentle Patagonian breezes.

Neuquen province is very dry, but Neuquen city is tucked up in the confluence (is that a word in English?) of two rivers, and therefore a bit warmer and more humid than the desert at the doorstep. Zapala is a small city of around 50,000 people, about 180km away, out in the arid plains, at the foothills of the Andes and about 1100km above sea level. We have just spent a bit more than a week there visiting Joel's mum and little brother, investigating work opportunities and catching up with Joel's friends from way back. He knows a lot of people there, and a lot of people are ready to help us with whatever they can. It's a nice place, if a bit frontier-town - isolated, starkly beautiful surroundings, no internet at the house, patches of no cellphone reception... But it seems as though there are some real options for us that we just have to investigate further once we have my residency sorted. And whether or not broadband is available is one such option...

So the progression went like this: NZ-Buenos Aires (23 degrees when we landed, 13 when we left) - Neuquen (frosty mornings, warm sunny days) - Zapala (water freezes solid in the afternoons, and evenings are well below zero, snow has already fallen this year, and it's only just officially winter...) - Neuquen (where the heating system in this apartment is so efficient that I feel waaaay too hot) . And add to that a sprinkle of gale force breezes and jet lag and partying like it´s 1999 one night with Joel's friends in Zapala and I think it's only par for the course that I am now suffering in the throes of the lurgy. Joel had it bad a few days ago, but of course he had man-flu and nothing I have could compete with how bad he felt. I merely have a cold. Hmm.

But after more than a week at the frontier of civilisation, in the communications black hole of Zapala in the Patagonian desert, we are now back in Neuquen city to finish my residency application and see what our options are here. Joel is off talking to some important person or other, a legislative official of some kind who also happens to be a friend of the family. It is all about who you know and this family knows some good people. I am remembering how much fun internet is, and even though the only mail I ever get is from Onecard and some travel spam, I missed it! I am also going to try to unlock my cellphone today, so I can finally be upwardly mobile again. Although the cellphone networks here are so complex... within your network you dial this number without the prefix, but if you want to call someone on your network in Buenos Aires you have to dial this prefix between the area code and the number, and if you want to send a message, well, you can´t because it costs too much. Oh, and forget sending messages to and from other countries... Any questions? But I am sure I will get the hang of it and be contactable in no time.

*Inexplicable yet inescapable passage of time...*
It is now Friday and I started this post on Monday. Where did the days go? Well, in the intervening time I have learned how to make soy milk, and made several litres; I have started building a dog house out of the scrap wood at the new house site (have I even mentioned the new house before? There is a new house... More later); I have baked several edible delicacies of both the sweet and the savoury kind which have all been eaten with great gusto; oh, and I have managed, finally, after much running around and photocopying of papers, to achieve a Certificado de Residencia Precaria - or Certificate of Provisional Residency. I prefer to refer to it as my precarious residency. Precarious because it runs out in three months, in which time I have to have translated three papers that I already had translated in New Zealand and paid good money for, and the completed application has to be sent to Buenos Aires to be processed on a pile of god-knows-how-many Bolivian, Paraguayan, and assorted other applications then sent back... I have done so many laps, photocopied so many papers, I have had my fingerprints taken and sent to Interpol (there go my hopes of borrowing lots and lots of money here then moving to a tax haven and changing my identity) - and everytime I think I have finally got it all together I have to go and photocopy something else and have some other thing translated. Is a passport not an international document? Why does it need translating? Why does the translation done by the Argentinean Embasy not count in Argentina?

The upshot of all this though, is that I have made some contacts. The translator I called on a whim and a prayer happens to be a really lovely woman, a little bit older than me, with friends in the right places. And I must have made a decent impression on her also, because she invited me to have a coffee at her place when I pick up the translations. She knows those who run multilingual schools, where I may be able to learn Spanish and teach English at the same time. And It would be really nice to make a friend who speaks both languages. I hope to meet her again at the beginning of next week.

A brief word about living conditions and then I will let you all off the hook. We are staying with Martin (Joel's dad) and Silvia, (Martin's partner) in Silvia's apartment in Neuquén. They have just finished building a new and palatial house in a gated suburb a little bit out of town, and are just waiting for the finishing touches to be applied before moving in. Finishing touches include the garden, some light switches, toilet seats and shelving in the wardrobes - and curtains, of which I have inexplicably become responsible. I happened to naively mention how much I liked the Roman blinds we had in our apartment in Wanganui, and how they would not be so hard to make and now I seem to have promised to sew them. But I figure they can't be that tricksy, and I know an expert on the matter with whom to consult if things should go haywire - namely my cherished mother, who has just recently been finished a similar project at my dear maid-of-honour's house. And yea, so that's where I am building a dog house out of scraps. They have two dogs who are currently guarding the site while they aren't living there: Petrona, the bitch with the gimpy leg (no really, she is a female dog who was hit by a car and rescued, but has a gimpy leg. Sheesh, what did you think?) and Achilles the macho dominante, otherwise known as the big smooshy German Shepherd who just wants cuddles. The dog house will be as palatial as the people house, I have no doubt.

So when they move there, the idea is that we stay in the apartment until we know for sure where we go and what we do. It will be nice to have our own place, it has been a while. I am itching to start work here and now, now that I have permission to do so, but I have to be cool until Joel finds the right job for him, wherever that may be. Neither of us want to make the same mistake as we did in Wanganui - we took the first jobs that came along, and found it very hard to then leave, or even look seriously for something more suited to our respective education. Not this time, this time we do it right, while there are still people inthe world who don't mind feeding us as long as week cook, clean and build dog houses.

No photos today, since I am not on my computer, but I will post some soon I promise. Photos of snow, and house, and dogs and the world. Maybe even the casino, where I am trying to persuade the people with the automobile to take me this weekend. I have no desire nor money to gamble, but I imagine it to be all shiny and glitzy and sparkly and shimmery, which I like. Who you calling magpie?!

Be well, stay in touch!

La Viajera
(Viaje = a journey, trip; Viajar = to travel; ergo Viajera = traveller, in the feminine form. I thought it appropriate, what with one thing and another.)