Short Holiday in Argentina

Argentinian Pampa with Volcano Lanin

A long time you have not read of me because I was quite busy with lots of things. First of all I (almost) finished our bathroom tiling, installing a bath tub and the wash basin and terminating the floor. As well I renovated the children´s bathroom where from I removed our bathtub. The children now have to be content with a shower only. What for I had planned about two weeks took me more than one month. When living in Chile with Inés and nine children European mind based timetables do not work. Now there are just some details like a towel rail missing and I can´t see tiles anymore. At least those not installed yet.

Because Inés is also quite busy with the restaurant and season is coming soon - which means we hardly won´t have any time together - we decided to take some holidays of house, kids and work. Only the two of us together a few days without any things to do. We had planned and postponed the trip for almost a months. One time Inés had to work, another time someone got ill (actually first Inés´oldest son Pablo then Inés and finally myself had been caught by an influenza virus) or there accured any other problems. Finally we managed to travel to San Martín de los Andes in Argentina right across the Andes range for two days.

San Martín is the Argentinian equivalent to Pucón situated right in between the Andes on a scenic lake. We started the trip with a delay of almost three hours because that day there had been a simulation of an eruption of the volcano in Pucón what for all public travel in the morning had been postponed. We went to the 'Mamuil Malal' pass on the food of volcano 'Lanin' which marks the border to Argentina. The road up there leads through the 'Villarica National Park' where it is just a gravel road meandering through dense native forest coming around scenic lakes and waterfalls. Suddenly in the middle of nowhere you come to the border stations where you have to do all the bureaucratic routines first to leave Chile and then to enter Argentina. Waiting in the line you can enjoy a tremendous view of nearby volcano 'Lanin' (although from the height of the pass there are still more than 2500 metres of altitude to the peak missing). When you passed the border controls and crossed the Andes range the landscape changes drastically. The Andes work like a meteorological divide and while on the Chilean side rain fronts coming in from the Pacific Ocean are caught and rain down creating that evergreen dense forests on the Argentinian side there is the 'Pampa' a dry grassland with only few low vegetation. You keep going down a nevertheless awe inspiring valley on a soon again well paved national highway that is only interrupted by adventurous weak looking bridges now and then. Finally we arrived at San Martín found a nice room and went to discover the town. We had our first Argentinian steak accompanied by ´Malbec´ the most typical Argentinian red wine.

The next two days were really relaxing. We slept as long as we wanted to in the morning and did just typical tourist program as we had been in the mood to do. We made a boat trip on 'Lácar' Lake to a small deserted beach area called 'Quila Quina', where you can find a restaurant, a Mapuche settlement and a scenic waterfall. After a walk over there we went back with the boat going for dinner, having venison this time another delicacy of the region again accompanied by a rich 'Malbec'. The next day we made a city tour with an original old London double decker bus some young guys are running over there. We had not been sure what it will be like, boarding the bus with just couples of rich Argentinian retirees but where positively surprised. That guys really showed you the town in an interesting, amusing way reviving town's early days and history as well as introducing you to the surrounding giving you a lot of interesting facts about the region and its history, geography and biology. Once again we ended the day with a delicious dinner of meat.

We came back to Pucón really relaxed and a little sad that it just had been two days of vacations, starting a vegetarian diet after that enormous amounts of meet we have had these days. Now we are awaiting the season and what it will bring to us. Let's hope nothing bad!