chile:to.argentina.

surprise! we are in argentina. yesterday was filled with preparation for leaving, and today we drove all day and just got to our hostel after (almost) hours of searching for it. but first things first, yesterday:

we took care of all our chores early so we could catch a ride into town with tracy and help her in the store.

we had a blast rearranging the window display, she told us to just have fun with it and do whatever we wanted. truckee’s inner organizer/designer came out and i think we did a pretty good job.  we also did some pricing and unpacking new products, etc. at about 6 we walked over to ecole where they were screening a documentary about transition communities in the hopes that pucón would maybe want to pursue becoming one. basically a transition community is a town that aims to be entirely self-sustaining. they grow their own food, produce their own energy, and some of the ones in the video had their own currency like “e-cash” where everything was paid for by text message, or “time banks” which was cool because it was used in a community in new zealand that had recently suffered a hurricane and so people would pay with their time instead of money. they would dedicate say 15 minutes to helping rebuild a structure or cleaning up debris in exchange for food or clothing.

anyways after the video we ordered a big plate of nachos and settled in to listen to the big debate following the documentary. truckee and i were trying really hard to follow along but everyone’s spanish was so fast! we picked a good amount of it up, and at the end of the meeting there was a big group hug with everyone chanting “¡pucón in transición!”. it was pretty fun. after the meeting we picked up andy and all his stuff and headed back to the house to get ready for our early morning departure to argentina!

in the morning we did some last minute planting of our peas that decided to take forever to sprout, but then we gathered all of our stuff and snacks for the road and were off! the poor dogs were sad because they knew we were leaving them but they have some of tracy’s friends coming to visit them during the week so they’ll be fine. we picked up mateo the baker and his son Daniel at the bottom of the hill because they were catching a ride over the border, and they squished in the back with truckee and i. thank goodness they were only in the car for half the ride because it was a pretty tight squeeze.

it was so interesting seeing how quickly the terrain changed from chile to argentina, it was basically right at the border. the chile side was very lush and green and right when we got to argentina we were welcomed by snow on the ground and dry, desert-y terrain.

we were right at the foot of a volcano when we got out to go through customs

about an hour across the border we dropped mateo and daniel off at the bus station in junin. truckee and i used the bathroom there and found lots of graffiti and really strange toilets!

that is the tank which is up high on the wall and you pull a cord to flush.

we got some pizza for lunch which was delicious, despite the weird trend that they want to put big green olives on every single pizza, pit and all. after lunch we kept on with the rest of our drive, with stops along the way for photo ops. the sunset in patagonia was one of the most beautiful things i’ve ever seen.

we finally arrived in el bolson, but like i said earlier it took us quite a while to find our hostel because it was really dark and the little bungalows were hidden behind a huge fence and a very lush garden. we have a cute little hut though with a kitchen and everything! tracy has a bedroom to herself downstairs, truckee and i have a little attic loft on one side and andy has a little attic loft on the other side. the owner's name is augustin and he is super nice. he lives in a house next door and grows lots of food on the land around us. he brought us some of his homemade jam before bed and read us our chinese horoscopes? he said truckee and i are water monkeys and andy is a land snake. andy thought that was pretty cool until augustin just translated it into WORM. so funny.