December 23, 2010

In the morning we helped make an an enormous batch of  Christmas fruit salad. All sorts of ripe fruits were cut into pieces and a little bit of lemon juice was added. Yummy!

It was raining and cold outside. Probably around 10 C (50 F). We are at roughly 800 meters altitude and the climate here is a classic inland climate with large temperature variations. We are also in what is called the wet Andes. Villa La Angostura has on average of 230 days per year with rain. We stayed indoors during the morning and the kids played board games. They had “The Game of Life” here in Spanish! The kids know the game and despite all the instructions and cards that have to be read during the game the kids somehow managed to play without a problem. Adrian has picked up quite a bit of Spanish (it´s part of his school curriculum this year) and the kids here know a bit of English. The kids played the same game they had played in New York, and the same game I played with my sister when I was a kid.

Jorge worked short days and when he came home from work he helped me call GOL. The numbers we had been given in Aeroparque (the airport we came through) rang, but no one ever picked up the phone. We called GOL´s main number at Ezeiza (the main airport in Buenos Aires) and Jorge spoke to a very friendly guy who could tell us that they knew nothing. There was no record in the system of our luggage having been found. We were starting to get used to the idea of having permanently lost our luggage.

The family has a good collection of hens, and Iseline helped Jorge collect the day´s catch of eggs.

In the late afternoon, around 5pm, we moved into the center of town to continue with my not-so-favorite activity; shopping. Villa La Angostura is a very nice town with wooden buildings all in the same mountain style.

I will get more beautiful pictures once the sun is out.

We were very impressed by the consistent architecture and beautiful main street. Villa La Angostura is a very recent town and was founded only 70 years ago. The main income here is tourism, the landscape is too hilly for any reasonable amount of agriculture. The Incas would have built agricultural terraces here, but modern man has only built resort hotels and ski lifts.

Yara, who is 10 years old, came with us as a local guide and interpreter. It was cold and we needed a lot of stuff, t-shirts and shorts did not cut it anymore. Most of it would luckily be covered by our insurance. We did not know if we would get our luggage back or not, but tried to focus on getting the most necessary stuff for the next few days. We needed Christmas presents, shoes, rain-proof jackets, pants, sweaters, etc, etc for 5 persons. Everything had to be tried on and tested. Time passed.

After a while Jorge and Carmen showed up in the main street, probably looking for us. We had completely forgotten the time and realized they had no way of getting hold of us. It was almost 9pm and poor Yara had been our hostage all this time. We had a very bad conscience, but it was difficult to express it using our very rudimentary Spanish.

Here we are back at the house with most of the stuff:

We had stopped by a specialty food store to get gluten-free things for Helene. They had all sorts of cool condiments and I used the opportunity to get some corn syrup, gelatine powder and food coloring.  I could now make one of my other sweet delights; home made marshmallows. They are fantastic, if I have to say so myself, and leave the ones you find in the shop completely in the dust. Making them is not very difficult, a walk in the park compared to mousse, but it is a time consuming process. After the kids went to bed I did the first stage, and made a quadruple portion that should last for a while. Everything is ready while the corn syrup and sugar is boiling:

As you can see I also used lemon juice. Tomorrow you will be able to see the next stage of the process.

In an attempt to find out if there was internet here I asked if they had a computer so I could show them our web site and blog. Unfortunately their line was down for the first time in 5 years. They had been without phone and internet for 2 weeks. The phone was just back, but the internet connection still did not work. This being the Christmas period the phone company was probably focusing on fixing the phone lines. We might be here for 10 days without an internet connection.

The weather forecast for the next few days did not look good, but we had good company and Christmas dinner was coming up.

Eirik

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