A Word in Edgewise: Honeymoon in Bariloche

The two weeks we spent in Argentina started off with a breathtakingly beautiful bus ride from Chile followed by an unpleasant incident in Argentine customs. The dispute over the borders of Patagonia had again heated up between the two countries. Having all my maps and articles about Argentina confiscated in the days before Internet was worse than a mere inconvenience. Nonetheless, relieved of belongings that were suspected to contain references to or images of more land for Chile and less for Argentina, I felt lucky to be waved through customs, still holding my most indispensable and irreplaceable possession, The South American Handbook. Not so lucky were two Swiss girls on our bus: they were detained at the border and denied entry to Argentina.

Arriving into Bariloche, we felt cheered by glittering lakes, towering mountains, and the charm of this unique village in Argentine Patagonia that looked and felt like a burg in Bavaria, again reflecting the lingering influence of the nineteenth century European colonization of the cone of South America.

At the Viejo Munich restaurant, there was the predictable chucrut (sauerkraut) to accompany the bratwurst, but our appetite for German food was waning and we opted for what Argentina was really famous for: grilled beef. Neither of us consumed a lot of red meat, and our budget was such that we couldn’t afford steak dinners even if we wanted them. In this early part of our trip, we were establishing our preference for local dishes in simple eateries so that we could sample the culinary part of each country’s culture. However, at the Restaurante Europa in Bariloche, the beef dishes were so inexpensive that we treated ourselves to a luxurious dinner of filet mignon and sides, plus a bottle of wine. The bill for two was $12. The prices were so amazing—even for 1979—that I recorded them in dollar equivalents in my journal: T-bone steak, $2.20; filet mignon, $3.90.

Even without cheap and abundant steaks, I was charmed by my first impressions of Argentina. Bariloche was picturesque and small, yet quite international, being a popular resort and legendary for its lakes, mountains, waterfalls, and forests. Joyce and I rode a tram to the top of the ski resort (no snow yet), and took in a stunning panorama while we munched on our authentically Argentine lunch of empanadas filled with a mixture of beef (of course) and raisins. We talked, dined, shopped, toured, and sampled famous Bariloche chocolate with locals, Brazilians, Italians, Danes, and the two Swiss girls, delivered to Bariloche three days after their border fiasco in Chile.

When we signed up for an excursion to the countryside, how could we have known that all 18 of our fellow passengers were Argentine newlyweds on a honey moon tour? Since the only other people on the bus were the two of us and the bus drivers, the nine couples were soon cracking jokes and making wild and suggestive proposals that we seize this serendipitous situation, stop at the first church, and have the local priest marry Joyce and me to the two bus drivers, and then honeymoon on with them into the sunset. I protested, “But, we must get to know them first to choose the one we prefer.” “No worries! You can always switch them later,” they countered, and accompanied their logic with a saying in Spanish to the effect of “Strike while the iron is hot”: El que espera, desespera. (Literally: “He who waits, despairs.”) It was uproarious, raucous fun: the newlywed husbands egged each other on, the brides giggled and chimed in, the bus drivers split their sides laughing, and Joyce and I played along as I tried to bat back joke for joke. When the bus finally returned to the town center to let us off, the honeymooners were hanging out the windows wishing us happy travels and, along with the bus drivers, blowing kisses. We blew kisses back, wishing them a lifetime of happiness, and waved goodbye until the bus turned the corner into their future.

For us, the future was 26 hours on the dawn bus to Buenos Aires, and it was time to pack. ***

Here, dear reader, my South American saga ends, and smack in the middle of things because, after Argentina, we went on to visit nine more countries, whose stories have already appeared in the UDJ in the past 18 months. Okay, I confess to not having planned out these 40 installments very carefully.

A brief history: I became a columnist for the UDJ in June of 2014, writing about words, language, and cultures. My first book, Wordstruck! The Fun and Fascination of Language, published in December 2016, is a collection of 60 pieces on those topics based on my column over the course of two and a half years. If I may give my own horn a toot: Wordstruck! was declared the National Winner in Humor by the Next Generation Indie Book Awards in 2017, and has also received two other national recognitions.

After that, I felt an irresistible pull to write about travel adventures. While teaching Spanish at Mendocino College, I took groups to Mexico, Ecuador, and Italy for study/travel programs and, with 15 to 18 people for two to three weeks in a foreign country . . . well, you can imagine how many potential wildcards in that mix! Beginning November 2016, I wrote a few articles for the UDJ on adventures from my years as a group travel leader.

Then one day—fateful, fortuitous, or fortunate—I wrote about being robbed on the streets of Bogotá toward the end of my trip around South America. I then felt compelled to reverse gears through three countries and write about haps and mishaps in Argentina, culminating in an unforgettable encounter with gauchos. After that, I kept to the chronology of the odyssey: Bolivia, Peru (my disgraceful tumble into a soup pot!), Ecuador and the Galápagos, the Caribbean, and home to . . . well let’s just say, more adventure. It was only after the final chapter appeared in the UDJ (March, 2018), that I returned to the beginning to write of how Joyce and I hatched this wild plan in the first place, and of our adventures in Chile and Patagonia. Now, after all that jumping around on newsprint pages, the continental loop has closed: Susanna and Joyce have met themselves in Buenos Aires where they launched in the article published on January 8, 2017. I’m sorry to see the story end because I have reveled immodestly in sharing it with you, gaining momentum along the way and the confidence and conviction that, yes, I would tell it all.

I ask myself for the millionth time why I delayed almost forty years before writing these tales; the answer comes in this very moment: All along, I was waiting for you. Thank you for sharing them with me.

Susanna Janssen’s South American travel memoir will be published in 2019. She has just released a new edition of Wordstruck! (now available at Mendocino Book Company), and is working on a handbook for intermediate students of Spanish. She invites you to her daily Facebook post on words and language at SusannaJanssenAuthor, and to her website SusannaJanssen.com. Email: susannajanssenauthor@gmail.com