The phone rang at 11am this morning and woke us up. Ruben informed us that we were late for checkout and to hurry and get packed up. The Garcia’s have a morning routine of drinking Mate and having a leisurely start to the day which they hate to break so although we tried to hurry we didn’t end up leaving the room till 12:30pm. We left and were in route back to Argentina. Ruben stopped several times for me to take some scenic pictures and made sure I got all of the best angles and views. We went through customs at a point more south than when we entered Chile, which was much nicer. The road was paved and the process was easier because we didn’t have to take everything out of the car and put it through x-ray machine scanners.
We drove for a couple of hours, stopping about every twenty minutes to take pictures. I got some great ones! We stopped and grabbed a sandwich in a small town called Villa La Angostura - I had a waffle with dulce de leche which was unbelievable. Our next stop was at Bahia Manzano which is a beautiful resort that the Garcia’s stay at from time to time. We walked around the waterfront and enjoyed the scenery. Next we went to Messidor which is a castle where Isabella, the 2nd wife of Peron, and president of Argentina locked in castle for 1 year until they exiled her to Spain in 1976 when the military took over. I am hearing a lot about the economic and social problems that Argentina continues to face, I feel bad because I feel like they feel trapped in their own country with a corrupt government.
About an hour later we arrived in Bariloche, Argentina which is home to the largest Ski Area in all of South America, called Catredral. This town, much like Pucon, reminds me a lot of ski towns in Colorado. There were tons of hotels and ski shops on every corner as well as lots of cute little candy shops and ice cream parlors. We didn’t have a reservation so we drove around and tried to find a hotel. Many places were booked because this is when all of the high school students are graduating and go on graduation trips to celebrate. Bariloche is the most popular spots for students to visit; 100,000 students go throughout each year, the graduation trips receive the most students than at any other particular time of the year. The schools set up tours and give the students hotel rooms and food and they are allowed to go out to the bars and dance all night to celebrate. We had a bit of a hard time finding a room and eventually found one hosteria with two rooms. It wasn’t exactly the Ritz Carlton but it had two beds and a private bathroom even though it was a bit dingy. We relaxed in the room for a bit, Maria was really unhappy with the quality of the room so we checked out a couple of other rooms that the hotel had available. We were surprised when the manager brought us upstairs to see a different room; the hallway was all torn up at there were construction workers everywhere. I was shocked to see them working at 7pm, regardless the manager showed us a room across the hall that was a bit nicer than ours but we opted not to stay there because we were afraid it would be noisy with the construction workers. I asked what time they started constructions and the guy said not to worry not until 11am.
We hung out in the room since we were all pretty tired from the drive. I played online and unpacked while the Garcia’s drank Mate. At 10:30pm we went to dinner at one of the Garcia’s favorite places called El Boleche de Albelto. We had empanadas to start which were filled with meat and really good. For dinner we had two different cuts of steak, lomo and ojo de bife, both were really good, I’m certainly getting my meat fix here.
We returned to the room after midnight and tried to find something on TV to watch. There were only about six channels that came in and they were all bad and in Spanish. Maria and I looked online and tried to find a movie that we could watch. We finally found Pearl Harbor on YouTube and watched that until 4am, my schedule is so thrown off here!
Bye for now.
Love,
Katie
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