On the Road again after Work Away
Our first work-away experience was awesome! Susan and Dave were such great hosts and our time with them went by so quickly. They immediately made us feel comfortable and welcome. Rex’s “sound effects” on the first evening was a real ice-breaker. (Rex is their giant Rottweiler.)
We are now on the bus from San Rafael to Bariloche! 16 hour long bus journey! Our longest trip thus far. We left this morning at 1:45am. The bus was 40 minutes late which is not too bad I suppose. Back home, in RSA, I’ve taken a few busses which have been a few hours delayed. We booked and paid for our Bariloche bus tickets online at www.andesmar.com. It was very quick and easy, but, if you do book via internet be sure to print out your tickets. They wouldn’t let us get on the bus without printed copies. It was quite silly, we delayed everyone because we had to print out the exact tickets which they could see on our phone and they had our names on their list. It felt to me like a waste of paper but at least they waited for us while we were doing this.
Anyway, back to our time on Susan and Dave’s farm…I can’t believe 2 weeks went by so quickly! It was interesting to hear why they chose to move to Argentina and not stay in England or USA, their home countries. They treated us as part of their family and we have learnt a lot about Argentina and a whole bunch of other stuff from them. I’ve learnt how to use a weed-eater, water-pressure-gun and cordless drill. They taught us how to play the card game, spades, which we really enjoyed. We never finished our last game….so I suppose Susan and I are still the spade champions! 😉
Marc eventually dug and burnt out all the Eucalyptus tree trunks and roots. It was quite a mission! We amused ourselves at night by giving the fire new life with the blower, and it also made good heat for melting marshmallows. Tiv had marshmallows she bought in the States- marshmallows aren’t common in Argentina. The dug-out area is now suitable for Susan to start a small veggie garden.
I got to do some creative stuff which almost made me feel guilty because it didn’t feel like I was working at all. They have a direction pole in the yard with various arrows pointing to different big cities – I added a Cape Town arrow to the collection. (And a Bolivia 50m arrow pointing to across the road.) I also made a pot arrangement display in front of the house. We had plenty of time to relax, read, sleep and our flat even had a projector so we could watch movies. So, we basically took a break from our travelling. It was strange to have to pack all our belongings in backpacks again…and I miss ol’ Catorce already!
Sunday is bocce day at Chuck’s place and we joined in the fun with the other ex-pats last Sunday and yesterday. Bocce is like bowels: a smaller white ball is thrown onto the field and then the aim is to get your balls closest to that ball. Everyone was very friendly and the food was good. Chuck was kind enough to entertain us at his house last night while we waited for our bus’s 1am departure time.
We played Bingo on the bus. It was a good way to try to remember what the numbers are in Spanish. Ha,ha, we were a bit lost but it was much more fun in Spanish!
So, here we are moving on, further south, in search of glaciers, whales and more adventure.
