Success, sunny days and a touch of mountain rescue.

Imagine this; you have just driven 1650 kilometres from Buenos Aires to a small mountain city known as Bariloche. You and your friends are eager to go out and experience some good times in the wilderness that inhabits the surrounding mountains. You hike out to a beach on a lake where you are more or less alone, in the evening it is an essential part of the whole camping out on the beach scene to have a camp fire where you and your friends can sit around, share a few beers and enjoy the stars on a beautiful clear January night. At about 11pm the fire is lit, a few beers in and everyone is having a brilliant time, laughter can be heard with the occassinal sound coming from the forest, perhaps a fox, a wild cat, maybe even wild boar. Your fire has been going for a while but shortly after midnight a pocket of air inside one of the sticks you picked to use as firewood sends flying a small piece of extremely hot coal...you think nothing of this. No more than five minutes later you hear an unusual noice and turning your head in confusion you discover a wall of fire, easily twenty feet high. You have just caused a forest fire which will lead to thousands and thousands of hectares, national park - land that is to be respected, enjoyed, and shared by everyone who visits- to go up in flames. Most of these trees were over three hundred years old, not even my grandchildren will have the fortune of seeing this area like it once was. All because you thought you were cool lighting your camp fire in the middle of the woods and creating that picture perfect scene for you and all your friends. Nice one.

This is one of the many ways forest fires can and do start as. I drove past ten years ago at night and saw C. Catedral up in flames, half a mountainside completely engulfed, fire crews overwhelmed by their powerlessness against the destruction of this huge fire. Today i had the fortune of taking a two hour walk from the base of C. Catedral to a beach on Lago Gutierrez. Through the two hour walk i went past the 10 year old vegetation that was beginning to slowly forget and regain all that was lost in just a few days of intense heat.

It's recovering pretty well, trees are beginning to grow through the smaller vegetation which is already thriving, but the burnt down, dried out skeletons of what were once hundred year old trees are still there, as a reminder of what something that can start out so small can become and destroy. It is prohibited to start any kind of fire in the area, yet only today i saw a group of people settling down at the beach on this lake, less than two kilometres from the burned down area, starting out their camp fire. There are places to have camp fires at, but some people never learn.

Despite all this, we had a wonderful time at the beach; the lake was very calm, the day was very warm and the Quilmes were very cold...perfect! I even got to use some of the bandages from my first aid kit bought over three and a half years ago for my first Duke of Edinburgh expedition! (boot irritating the heel situation).

On the way back to civilization Edu decided to roll his ankle, so we had to carry him back all the way to the main road, which fortunately at that point it was no further than thirty minutes walking. We took him to hospital, and after a three hour wait and experiencing an emergency room which left a lot to be desired for, just small details like doctors ,a door handle and perhaps a washing basin in the "bathroom". He was eventually sent home and told to rest, i guess that marks the end of adventure on their holiday.

On a more positive note, i passed my driving test on Thursday morning, and will hopefully if all goes to plan have a car sometime in March. A lot of road trips ahead, and it will be easier to access mountains which are perhaps a little far from the city to reach by foot. I hear from some fellow travellers that the peaks near El Bolson still have a lot of snow, so maybe i will stay around here and explore some of the local peaks first before the 10 day mountain refuge expedition i mentioned on a previous post. The weather has started to get a lot sunnier and although tomorrow is supposed to go from 27 degrees we had today to a cooler 18, next week is hopefully going to be back to proper summer weather like yesterday and today's.

Well that's all for now,
I hope for those of you in England the snow is clearing out and all is back to normal.

Thanks for reading!
Santiago.