A small taste of home in Gaiman.

A picture of Rhuthun up in the living room of the Hostel!

An evening with the Hughes´s

Firstly, I´ve added more photos to the Torres del Paine post. Hope you enjoy them!

Well the last few days in Gaiman have been a real treat for me especially. All the way back in 1865 a group of Welsh families decided to come over to Patagonia and establish a new Welsh settlement out here. I don´t really know the reason, I probably should, but just under 150years later their descendents are still here and still speaking the language. I´d heard from people who have been here previously not to expect everyone here to be speaking Welsh, and that is still the case, but it was still very nice and very strange to step off the bus and immediately spot a small tea shop called Cymru Fach (Little Wales) on the street opposite.

We´d booked to stay at a place called Plas Y Coed and I´d already been in contact with Ana from here through email to arrange everything in Welsh so it was very nice to finally meet her and get to speak some of the lingo face to face with someone. I´d been a bit worried on the way of it all turning into a bit of a mess with me not understanding the accent (I have enough trouble understanding the accent from South Wales sometimes never mind here) but all turned out to be well and we had a nice chat about our trip and our plans while Kat stood there, roles reversed for once, not understanding a word.

As part of the hotel/hostel they also run a tea shop downstairs so of course after lunch we had to try some Welsh high tea and cakes. Wonderful they were too, nearly as good as Nain´s cakes at home! The interior of the tea shop was full of Welsh memorabilia, from tea towels to love spoons to stiching. Great!

As we´d been on a 30hour bus ride before arriving we didn´t feel like doing much. Strange I know but somehow sitting down for that period of time is very tiring. So we had a bit of a wander around, had a beer with a nice couple from the Wirral we met (the wife was learning Welsh) and then had a great dinner at the restaraunt across the road. Of course the menu was also in Welsh.

I´d been given some contacts from my Mum (diolch Mam!) of a Welsh speaking family out here which I was keen to get in touch with so after a quick phone call the man of the house Billy Hughes came out to Plas Y Coed to meet us and to arrange something for the following evening. What happened when we met I still now find completely strange yet very funny and something I just wasn´t expecting as it was completely new to me.

We waited outside and he arrived in his 4x4. We shook hands and of course as I knew who he was started chatting in Welsh, he sounded just like a local from home in Rhuthun! He explained that he doesn´t speak a word of English to which I replied no problem Kat speaks fluent Spanish. Now this is the funny bit for me. He would understand exactly what me and Kat were saying to him seperately but I wouldn´t understand what Kat was saying to him and she wouldn´t understand what I was saying to him. So this meant that we had to clarify what we were both saying to him in English, of which he wouldn´t understand a word! Fantastic!

Billy´s lack of English came as a complete shock to me. I´ve never met anyone before who speaks Welsh yet doesn´t speak English but of course here in a Spanish speaking country it´s completely normal. What I found strange was that he would switch between perfect Welsh and perfect Spanish, something I´d never heard before.

So, in the end he invited us round to his house for a Asado (Argentinian bbq) and to meet the rest of the family. We had a great night and really enjoyed meeting the kids and also the Grandmother who sounded just like any Welsh speaking Grandmother but of course speaking to Kat in Spanish. I just can´t get over it! I realised also how littered with English words my Welsh can be when I´m speaking with friends and family at home. The problem was here that I had to think more about the proper Welsh words as of course they wouldn´t understand the English words.

We had a great piece of lamb cooked by Billy and enjoyed hearing their stories and sharing various experiences and differences in culture. The whole family is coming to Wales in July so we really hope that we can meet them again. Diolch yn fawr!

Tonight we take another bus ride northwards to a place called Bariloche. A night´s stay there and then we should be back in Santiago on Thursday. We´ve heard that Barilocke is a bit of a tourist trap of a town so we shall see what we find. We were talking today that we still haven´t done any ´proper´tourist stuff like tours and boat rides and like so this may be a good chance.