Chris Writes:
Last night we chose to go to the nearest restaurant to our Hotel La Masia which was 400 yds away, which looks like a family house.
This turned out to be one of the best venues and one of the best meals we have had. We were hard pushed to think of a restaurant with such a stunning outlook:
In addition they offered an excellent menu and a great choice of wine.
Our creative juices were also flowing [not fuelled by alcohol] through the camera lens.
The bill was very reasonable and probably less than many local UK pubs.
We woke this morning to a temperature at least 7 degrees lower than yesterday, some clouds in the sky, and increase in wind and a growing acknowledgement by us that we may finally be far enough down Argentina to discard shorts and T shirts and be prepared for colder days to come.
The weather did not deter Mike from his morning run, as he tries to increase his dismally poor average daily step rate since September 23rd. However, it got him into such a sweat that he was creating even more heat in an already overheated hotel.
He was asked to sit at another table and didn’t disturb us or the six other hotel guests in a dining room that could hold 150+ people.
We plotted out the day which was quite simple. Visit the nearby Cerro Campanario chair lift for even better views of where we are. Head into Bariloche for a spot of shopping, get to the bank, and visit one of John’s Distributors of the Finca Ambrosia wines. After a spot of lunch in town we would welcome Lois as he was already on route from Panama to join us.
JP stayed behind to aid his recovery as he was still in pain until all tablets kick in, So Chris, Mike , Craig and Frankie took to the skies on what appears to be a touristic chair lift as there were certainly no ski runs of any colour from the top down.
What there was though, was absolutely magnificent 360 degree views of Mountains, Lakes and Forests to be quite honest it was mind blowing and all of us struggled to recall any view as magnificent in over the 200 combined years we have walked what is a magnificent planet which some people are intent on destroying.
Having taken 000’s of photographs between us we popped into a small cafe for hot chocolate and coffee. Frankie as he is now accustomed strolled confidently forward and ordered in Spanish and in response the man behind the counter asked him to speak in English as his Spanish was very poor.
Frankie had omitted to address the gentlemen personally and wish him a good morning which clearly narked him.
It was also over this coffee and Chocolate that Mike spoke about the infamous Llao Llao hotel which he had run past this morning which he thought resembled Berchtesgaden, a famous hangout of a certain Mr A. Hitler, that Frankie came out with a cracker advising us to ‘watch out for small people, as they are dangerous and cause trouble’. His comments were not related to indigenous people like the Mayan’s we had met some weeks ago but size disadvantaged people of a race normally of larger build. The proceeded to go through names of various dictators are war mongrel’s to justify his comments.
We just wondered if he would have made that comment if John had been worth us?
Our trip to Bariloche confirmed that whilst this area has great scenery, the town of Bariloche was not a patch on St Martin de los Andes some 200 kms up the road where we had stayed on Tuesday evening, Reasons being: 1]. it was impossible to park the car and it was the low season with hardly any visitors, the shops were all trash, trinkets and Chocolate shops when we had been looking for more upmarket shops for Christmas presents and 3] non of the several banks visited would allow us to withdraw money from our trip account and therefore left us penniless. Discovering the reason why were out of cash took Mike the next three hours which seriously impacted the number of photographs taken today.
The visit to Almacen de Vinos, the distributor of Finca Ambrosia wines was far more interesting.
Although there was no real tasting undertaken, Leo Besares was an extremely knowledgable wine seller and provided John with some good feedback on how the Ambrosia wine collections compare to the thousands of others he sells.
Our new word of the day was ‘Unctuous’ used by Leo to describe a competitors wine and a word that even Mike had not heard since he last read Dickens. It basically means oily, smarmy, or overly flattering, strange description for wine as used by Spanish speakers.
There then followed a lunch of baked cheese
and empanadas of various recipes prior to heading back to the hotel to meet up with Lois last seen in Panama.
Lois had been travelling 15 hours and explained how he nearly didn’t get to us on time due to a sick aircraft.
We haven’t yet explained to him yet that as he is the only member of the team under 50 that we had nominated him to boost the membership of the Bariloche Rugby Club who are looking for members between 5 and 50.
He could be very useful in explaining tactics and as a Frenchman provide an insight into how to avoid bad results and quote the example of the recent thrashing of France by Fiji 21-14 !
So, tomorrow is day 67 and we continue to head south to Esquel. We are the final team of six heading for the End of the World, Tierra Del Fuego. We have 2500 kms still to complete in only 6 driving days on roads that can throw all sorts of challenges as we have seen in past weeks.
We are in count down stage, we can now afford to ignore laundry requirements and throw dirty old socks T shirts, shorts and underwear out of the window as we progress down the spine between Argentina and Chile.
The Amaroks are ready, we are ready so…. ‘GENTLEMEN START YOUR ENGINES’ .
Our America’s Challenge Drive 