I’m in Calafate, it’s another ridiculously sunny day for a place that supposedly has some of the worst weather in the world, and I am beginning to feel the effects of four days without much sleep and with plenty of alcohol. Things have become surprising social as of late and definitely very international around these southern parts.

I met Ivan in the plaza of El Bolson. Ivan is a PE teacher in Buenos Aires. He is tan, a bit bigger than me, and clearly goes to the same barber. He was lounging in the park with his pack, waiting for his friend to arrive at the same time I was there contemplating the mystery of Maroon Five’s popularity in South America and just what I would look like with dread locks. Probably like a metrosexual version of the Predator, only with a bigger nose and without those cool tusked outer lips.

Ivan and I were just chilling in the park next to each other when he was trampled by a couple of runaway dogs, a little boxer named Dala and one of those yappy lap dogs I can’t identify but all look like dust mops with eyes. The dogs belonged to two 18-year-old girls, Maribel and Mailen. Ivan, clearly infatuated with Mailen, moved over to where they were sitting and began to talk. Tired of sitting alone silently, I got up, went to the bar and returned with some drinks.

Can’t speak the language? Try beer.

For the next few hours I sat in the park with my three new friends and with the help of a few bottles of El Bolson Rubia and a handy Spanish-English dictionary I happened to have in my bag we managed to communicate. Despite our limited vocabulary, the girls seemed to know at least the important words to keep my attention. Like fuck. And lesbian. Marijuana. Beer.

They even asked me if I was gay. I swear to God I need to stop wearing this breezy little cotton skirt around, no matter how much I like the way it makes me feel pretty.

They invited us to go dancing with them at El Sol, a pizzeria and pub in El Bolson. They gave us their number and told us to meet them at one. I swear this nocturnal lifestyle in South America is destined to kill me.

I wandered back to the Hosteria Steiner where I ran into Amy and Paddy at dinner. They had apparently taken my advice and braved the walk to the hostel and were now staying just a few doors away from me. I sat down and joined them for dinner and one, two, maybe four bottles of local wine. We talked drunkenly about politics and travels and the history of Ireland. Paddy is a break dancing, professional graffiti artist who grew up listening to bombs shake his house in Belfast (I swear I couldn’t have made that up if I tried), and Amy, his girlfriend from Newcastle, a social worker and occasional actress with an easy smile and a ring through her lower lip.

We sat and talked until our nice host closed the kitchen and took a cab to meet Ivan at El Sol. Our new lady friends didn´t show. Argentine girls, apparently, are just as reliable and punctual as their American compatriots.

Amy and Paddy had been traveling through South America for months, and with Amy’s lessons in Spanish she was quite comfortable communicating with Ivan. Ivan and I were still limited to single word conversations until I heard him use the right word with Amy.

Escalada.

“Escalada?”

“Si. Es mi vida.”

“Escalar! La roca!”

Its seems Ivan is a climber. Within seconds Ivan and I were digging through the dictionary and developing a vocabulary that allowed us to talk all night about rocks and routes and experiences in the vertical. By the end of the night and three more bottles of Quilnes Ivan and I were fast friends. By the end of the night and three more bottles of Quilnes, Paddy was regaling us with drunken Irish marching songs before passing out for a fast siesta in his chair, and Amy had convinced Ivan to visit the UK after explaining that British girls are crazy for the Latin boys.

Everyone exchanged email addresses, and just shy of five, I made it back to the hotel, fell into bed and didn’t wake up until noon.

I wandered down to the plaza again for lunch and again ran into Ivan. He told me he was meeting Mailen and Maribel at two to go to Lake Puelo. We turned around, went to his friend’s house, packed a bag and met the girls several blocks away to begin our potentially long walk toward the lake. We had already missed the bus so we hitched a series of three rides. Twice in the back up random pick-up trucks and finally with the four of us stuffed into the back of a rickety Suzuki Samurai as we bounced the final five kilometers down the dusty dirt road to the shore of the placid mountain lake.

We spent a lazy summer afternoon cooking ourselves in the sunshine, swimming in the cold, clear water of the lake, listening to my iPod, and as is customary in Argentina, drinking hot maté out of a single cup. We hitched a ride with the bus back sometime around eight and spent the evening at Mailen’s house for coffee and pastries with dulce de leche, before finally heading back to my hostel to look at climbing pictures on the computer and to drink another bottle or two of cheap, red wine.

Over the course of two days with the help of my dictionary and a bit of patience we had generated a vocabulary of random Spanish and English and were able to communicate quite comfortably about virtually any subject. Ivan had grown confident in his English and has promised to learn before visiting the states. I have promised that anytime they do visit Los Estados Unidos, mi casa, su casa, and at least for Ivan, any rocks he wants to climb, he has a guaranteed belayer with me.

I woke slowly, far to early at about six in the morning, my head still pounding from two days of sunshine and alcohol, and left to catch my bus back to Bariloche in order to make my flight to Calafate. Ivan even woke up early and met me at the station to see me off. I didn’t figure the girls would have made that trek, but as both Ivan and Maribel live in Buenos Aires, we have agreed to meet in four weeks there for my finally two weeks in South America.

I arrived in El Bolson frustrated and anxious to leave. I left wishing I could have stayed longer.

After one bus, one plane, two cabs, and a desperate need for a case of Red Bull, I found myself here, deep in Patagonia amongst throngs of tourists, and the dry stubble like a five o-clock shadow of short tufts of grass and shrubbery covering the treeless hillsides of Calafate, buffeted by winds that don’t seem to stop, and next to the largest lake in Argentina.

PS: More stories later. Drunken Swedes, homeless at dawn, breakdancing at midnight, and really, really big ice cubes. It's a balance here. When I'm writing I'm not out doing. And most of the time, I'd rather be doing.