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Had a wicked week in Bariloche seeing more snow than we have ever seen in our lives and risking life and limb learning to ski!
Did a two day beginners course at Cerro Catedral - South America's biggest ski resort - starting on the really baby slopes and advancing to the green ones with both of us covered in bruises and feeling like elderly folk within 24 hours.
By day two Tim was much more natural and/or crazy than I was and took off to the Blue slopes with our fellow snow friends Rosie and Ivan, while I stayed and showed off my 'skills' on the baby slopes keeping in constant accident contact with our walkie-talkies!
Spent the rest of the week eating a lot of white stuff and falling in spectacular style....and then celebrating apres ski for not being brought down in the so-called Blood wagon by sitting around supping wine overlooking the slopes where noone knows that you can't actually ski and you just look pretty cool in your googles!
By the end of the week, we were both going down the blue slopes, even trying a little 'swooshing' and had picked up all the relevant lingo. We are now fully versed in the proper useage of words such as 'rad' and 'gnarly'. Plus we experienced our first 'whiteout' when the fog is so thick you can's see in front of you and the sky is the same colour as the snow - very weird, like skiing in a dream - and also had our first 'dump' skiing when it has just snowed fresh snow!! Oh yes, we are now fully paid up member of the skiing community!
Just one minor setback, when on our last day we thoroughly shamed ourselves by convincing ourselves we were ready for a challenge and could come down the red slope from the top of the mountain at over 2000 metres. To our horror we failed to even disembark the chair lift at the top of the mountain, instead rolling down the hill in a perfectly executed tumble before two ski attendents ran to untangle us.
As if this was not bad enough, we realised at this stage that firstly there was no way in hell we were throwing ourselves down the red slope and secondly, a somewhat in bad timing, we had both developed quite serious vertigo.
In true humilating fashion the same attendants who had previously scraped us off the floor, had to arrange specially for us to go back down the chair lift past all the highly amused skiers coming up the other way. We did not meet anyones eyes....but made up for it by flying down the blue slope with our lowest number of wipeouts so far!! Hurrah for us!
When we we not clumping around in huge moon boots, we hung out with Bridget and Graham from BA Spanish school and Liam who came down for a few days....ate and drank, had more fondue, lived it up in Wilkenny Irish club and experienced our lowest temperature so far...an eyeball freezing minus ten!
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