The breakfast at the Le Village hotel was noticeably better than any of the previous hotels. Margarita especially approved of the crepes and dulce de leche available with breakfast.
After breakfast, we made our way to the laundromat to get our load of dirty clothes cleaned. While we waited for our clothes to wash, we managed to check out the local museum. At first, we were the only visitors and we had the museum official to ourself as she explained how two Indian cultures had merged into the one Mapuche culture under pressure from European colonization. The museum was very small - only three rooms, but the official captured Margarita´s attention. We were eventually joined by an older couple while Michaela began to tire of being in the backpack and we let her roam around on the floor. As usual, the couple and the official seemed to delight in Michaela´s movements and noises.
Later, while waiting for our clothes to dry, we spent some of our time at one of the plazas where a large statue of a horse-mounted San Martin was located. When a pigeon landed near us and got Michaela´s attention, Margarita grabbed some crumbs from the backpack and started throwing them around so the pigeon would stay nearby. I started grabbing crumbs as well and ended up finding some Indian rupees from our last trip (we really need to clean our things a bit more thoroughly!). Michaela set to chasing the pigeon around until she was bored and head for the statue in the center of the plaza. We left her alone, while keep a watchful eye from a distance, until she began to climb the statue in a way that makes us nervous wrecks ;-) All the while, Margarita is videotaping, as I make my way to the statue to save Michaela from herself. As soon as she saw the stairs at the base of the flagpole, she quickly made her way up and smiled broadly when we reached the top and stood up.
When a couple of dogs appeared near Margarita, we made our way from the center of the plaza to go and see the dogs. No sooner had Michaela begun having fun with the dogs when a man came to tell us that one of the dogs was sick. Great.....so we cleaned off Michaela´s hands and mouth and then noticed that the dog had left some blood on the ground. Don´t we have enough to worry about?
After one round of drying, the laundry still wasn´t dry and we had to kill some more time while it dried.
Finally we headed off to find a waterfall that the tourist office had told us about. We headed west off the main road just outside of San Martin de los Andes onto another unpaved road. Michaela has been a trooper while confined to the car seat for these drives.
Before we turned off towards the waterfall, we took a short diversion to the border with Chile since it was so close. You need an international driver´s license to drive in Chile, so I hadn´t expected to actually go into Chile, but I wanted to get close. At the border, we stopped, intending just to ask if we could drive in and come back. However, there was nobody at the border post. The doors to the building were locked and it looked abandoned. The gate at the border was up, so Margarita (who had checked the doors) climbed back in and we drove into Chile. We quickly turned around, but encountered a small problem trying to get back in as the gate from Chile into Argentina was down. Since I knew that another vehicle had gone in, I asked Margarita to step out and lift the gate, which she did (we have a picture!). And so ended our brief trip to the border.
Then we headed back to the turnoff and crossed a bridge over a river. Like most of the bridges we have encountered on unpaved roads, this one was a one-lane wooden bridge with planks lying perpendicular to the direction of travel and two sets of three wooden planks lying parallel to the direction of travel for each set of the vehicle´s wheels.
After crossing the bridge, the road started to get noticeably worse. At one point, I began to wonder whether the road was passable by anything other than a four-wheel-drive vehicle, but I managed to get the Fiat past that point. After a few hundred more meters, the road went downhill and was in such a condition that I was very unsure of whether we would be able to make it back up the road once we went down it. While I really wanted to see the waterfall, I also knew that I was in a non-4WD car with my 13-month old daughter on a road that obviously doesn´t see much traffic in a place that gets quite cold at night without a cell phone. While disappointed that we had driven so far with no reward, stopped by the river by a bridge and got out to walk around. The area was beautiful, but like so many areas, even in the national parks here, cows and horses make their presence none with numerous piles of manure and the rocky shoreline of this river was no exception. Michaela delighted in standing up next to a old log on the river and picking up the rocks. However, when she started to crawl around, we had to control her movement very carefully to avoid her placing her hands smack into a pile of manure. When Margarita grabbed a very long (6-7 feet) piece of dead caña colihue (like bamboo, but solid) to playfully swat me, Michaela grabbed it and delighted in manipulating it. She held onto it even as I picked her up to return to the car. Finally, I had to wrestle it from her and she cried :-( We turned around and headed for Junin de los Andes to find a hotel for the night.
The trip back along the dirt road to the paved road just north of San Martin de los Andes seemed shorter than the drive there (isn´t that always the case?). While San Martin de los Andes had the feel of a resort town (complete with expensive shops), Junin de los Andes felt much more humble. The town was much less flashy, although some of the hotels cater to vacationing fisherman. After a brief trip to the tourist office (it always amazes me how even the smallest towns have tourist offices) we decided to check on a hotel (Hostería de
Chimehuín) mentioned by both Lonely Planet and the tourist office. After we both checked out the room, we agreed to take a room overlooking the Chimehuín river, which bordered the hosteria.
The room was larger than any other previous rooms we had been in and the bathroom was absolutely huge. But for some reason, the shower stall was extremely small. Also, unlike other accomodations, there was no bidet. And it seemed that there was no hot water. There was a small gas heater to heat the room, and it needed it badly. We unpacked out things and relaxed for a while before setting out for dinner. Once we opened the curtains, Margarita became enamored of our room as it was gorgeous - with a view of the river out window and trees in their fall colors out the other. As we relaxed, it became clear that the gas heater was not going to be enough to keep the room warm. In fact, when we left the room, it seemed that the outside air was actually warmer than the air in our room. Before we left for dinner, Margarita asked the hotel clerk to do something to improve the heat in the room and for extra blankets.
Dinner was good - we had the typical carnivore meal that we´ve been getting used to. This time, we ordered an expensive (20-peso) bottle of cabernet sauvignon with dinner. Still the bill only came to 51 pesos. As usual, Michaela´s patience for sitting in a high chair for dinner ran out before we finished dinner and we found ourselves hurrying to finish and leave the restaurant.
Back at the hotel, an electric space heater had been added to help the gas heater and it made a huge difference. The room was now warm enough to walk around comfortably with little clothing on. However, the tile floor was still cold, as was the bathroom. Before we had left, I had closed the door to the bathroom, thinking that it might help if there was less air to heat. Now I worried about gas heater in an enclosed space and carbon monoxide poisoning. It would really suck to go to sleep and not wake up. This was somewhat mitigated by what I knew were windows and doors that didn´t seal well. But now that I have a daughter with me, I have become overly cautious about such things, so in addition to moving anything flammable away from the heaters, I opened the door to the bathroom (and its window).
Obviously, we didn´t have a problem.
Posted by mike at May 14, 2003 06:38 PM