AG hostel, Puerto Natales

This hostel is hilarious! Have been enjoying a few days doing little more than getting up and making porridge, drinking coffee and chatting to the others that are staying here, nipping out into the cold to go to the internet place to update this blog, and then making a big soup for lunch, afternoon, dinner... It´s run by J, who used to live and work in the national park here, with the horses, and is filled with photos and drawings of horses, tack and headcollars, and other Baqueano bits and pieces. There´s a few of us staying here, from all over the place - a Chilean guy, Angel, who seems to live here and works as a social worker in a nearby village, Favio, a Columbian guy who is working in a local restaurant, Julia, a German girl who runs an arthouse cinema in Frankfurt, her friend Michelle, also German, who works as a guide in the national park, Marcus a Brazilian guy who is here on holiday, Saozig, a Tahitian girl also here on holiday, plus Marie and myself. Everyone´s been here at least a few days, it´s very cozy and fun in an unusual sort of way - we´ve just been doing very simple things like playing cards, cooking and so on.

This morning, J, who is also a musician, serenaded us all with his guitar whilst we had breakfast, and he´s been playing us CDs of his friends singing Patagonian folk songs this afternoon, and is cooking us an asado tonight. The house has polished wooden floorboards, and a strip of carpet running the length of the hall. J always wears shoes, but has little rectangles of sheepskin which he steps onto whenever he wants to leave the carpet, so we´ve been dancing/sliding around the floor on those to various types of music. It´s great staying somewhere where not everyone has the same first language, as it means we´re all defaulting to Spanish, which is good practice for me.