So an unexpectedly successful early morning flight along the Andes landed us on time in La Calafete. Over the next few days we grew to love this place, it is friendly, lots of shops, bars and good places to eat. It also has lots of stray dogs and the Patagonian Brewing Company, what more could we need for a few days break.
El Calafete is well down south in Argentina, the world around us has no trees and is basically scrubland, lots of single story buildings and wide open spaces – a bit like Australia away from the cities.
Checked into our very friendly Lar Aike hotel and decided we needed to enjoy the local culture, but first, we had 2 weeks worth of dirty cloths to get sorted and after a long walk found the laundry.
To be honest, I have been doing Dualingo Spanish lessons for 22 days and I am one of the highest performers on the world, but nothing prepared me for the conversation with the laundry lady, in fact the only word I could thing of as she rattled aways was, Ensalata, and to be honest I was sure the word salad wasn’t going to help.
Eventually we reached a mutual understanding that the cloths would be ready by 1830, but in a discussion with Claire outside the shop I realised the day wasn’t specific, so another check confirmed it was today, so we had 3 hours to spare.
Our hotel was 25 minutes away so hardly time to get there and back, so we thought “maybe a beer” and went for a stroll to kill a bit of time. Before we knew it we found the Patagonian Brewing company full of people drinking beer, the other unexpected development was that we were expecting 10c and overcast, but got 20c and a sunny terrace. Everyone seemed very happy so we went in to the bar.
3 hours later, and after much testing of the local brew, we staggered back to the laundry and hugged the laundry lady and gave her lots of Argentinian cash, we also seemed to understand each other better, and we wandered off down the high street like a couple of vagrants clutching our bag of cloths in a dustbin bag. Thelady even pointed out we were missing one of my socks.
It was a strange walk home, often populated by vagrant dogs trying to keep us company, but luckily we found another bar called Pura Vide, which reminded us of Costa Rica (it means happy life), so we stopped there for a cocktail and the toilet. Unexpectantly we ended up with a bar maid that thought where we sat would be good for nose picking as no one could see us !
Things were getting a bit weird so we headed off and thankfully we have made it home safely.
We are feeling culturally at home in El Calafete, but we are back in the saddle for adventures tomorrow and off to the Perito Glacier.
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