December 24, 2010

Another rainy and cold day.

December 24 is a very special day for Norwegians. In many ways it is the combination of the US Christmas and Thanksgiving. At 5pm on this day everyone is with their families for the Christmas meal. All churches in Norway chime their bells at the same time and the quire “Sølvguttene” (the silver boys) sing on TV to “open Christmas”. We have done every second Christmas in France and Norway for the past 20 years, so being in Argentina was a bit strange for all of us.

After a slow morning we did a few phone calls to Norway and France to wish the respective grandparents merry Christmas.

We tried calling GOL about our luggage, but an answering machine told us they could not take our call. We realized we would probably have no news until after the holidays on Monday. It was now Friday and we started to plan for replacing our entire luggage. Helene started making a list of everything that was in the backpacks.

Afterwards we decided to wrestle with the weather gods and Jorge and Carmen brought me and the kids to the enormous lake next to Villa La Angostura, lake Nahuel Huapi. We are in what is known as the district of the 7 lakes. There are 7 enormous  and beautiful lakes here.

Helene was kind enough to liberate me from further shopping. She took our rental car to go get some last minute Christmas presents.

The beach we went to was beautiful, but the weather was unforgiving. Probably around 10 C (50 F) and a very strong wind combined with on and off rain.

Viktor preferred the weather in Brasil.

He really didn´t like the weather here:

The beach was on a narrow strip of land at the start of a peninsula. A short walk in the woods led to another beach on the other side of the strip of land.

This place must be fantastic in good weather. We had quickly had enough though, and Jorge gave us a sigh-seeing tour instead, US style, where we didn´t even have to leave the car.

We drove through a neighborhood with lots of very nice houses:

topped by this mansion:

Some very famous politician of historic importance had lived here. Unfortunately I did not manage to get the details. What a pity we never found the time to refresh our Spanish before the voyage.

Jorge then brought us to what he said was a part of Villa La Angostura not many tourists see. It was very close to the rich neighborhood:

What a contrast. As he explained there are no favelas (the slums in Brasil) in Argentina but there are still large differences between the rich and the poor.

We went back to the center and met Helene. Adrian and I stayed behind while the others went back to the house to have lunch. We wanted to go to an internet café, so Adrian could send some electronic gift cards as Christmas presents. We had lunch at a fast food place. We realized it was 6pm in Norway and that everyone was now sitting at the table eating their Christmas dinner while we were having our Christmas burgers:

The fast food joint had Wifi! We connected my iPhone and could call virtually for free with SkypeOut. Our calls were about 80 times cheaper than the phone calls we had made earlier in the day using my Norwegian SIM card. Adrian interrupted several of his friends during Christmas dinner and bragged about his Christmas burger, but they all appreciated it very much:

We strolled over to an internet café and of course, once again, we had gone straight into the siesta trap. Grumble mumble!

Luckily we only had 15 minutes to wait until it reopened at 3pm, or so we thought. We were going to get a good lesson in South American time culture. 3pm arrived, 3pm passed. By 3:10 there was still no sign of life:

At 3:13 the owner showed up. He unlocked the door and I was sure he would let us in. When I got uncomfortably close to the door he turned around and said something. I asked him to repeat and he said the same thing again, still incomprehensible to me, and quickly closed and locked the door.

Adrian peeked in and saw him turn on the screens, the machines were already running. Then he went over to the counter and started typing. After a while he started to slowly pull up the rolling curtains. Several times he stopped and redid a roll to make sure it looked good. Clearly, for us as customers, it was more important to have beautifully rolled up curtains than to have access to the internet. Curtain-watching is a well known pass-time of internet surfers. Here he is half-way through this important ritual:

At 3:25 he finally opened the door and let us in. No excuse or remark, just a smile and a welcome to us and the other two who had been waiting. They did not seem frustrated or surprised at all.

When we were finished we walked over to the bridge at the entrance to the town and waited for Helene to come and pick us up. There are flowers everywhere here and the water from the rain emphasizes all the colors. I took these photos on and near the bridge:

I had taken the marshmallows out of their forms in the morning for further drying. Now it was time to cut them and finish the process:

Finished product:

The guests started arriving around 9:30pm. People eat dinner late here in Argentina. 10pm is a normal time to go to a restaurant to have dinner. When I explained that people normally eat dinner at around 5pm in Norway they had to ask me to repeat three times until they understood that this was not a misunderstanding because of my bad Spanish.

Viktor held a mini-concert for everyone:

We had Christmas dinner together with Jorge and Carmens neighbors and good friends, Fernando and Lili and Lili´s parents; Carmen and Juan Carlos:

We drank a very good Calrissian wine:

The atmosphere was great and the wine helped our Spanish run more smoothly, at least it felt that way.

Even the family´s blood hound, Cleto, took part. He is very kind, but weighs over 70 kilos (150 pounds), something Fernando got to notice:

Presents are opened at midnight here and the kids counted down during the last hour. Once the time came everyone scrambled for their presents in a pleasant noisy chaos. Unfortunately, in pure greed, no one thought about taking pictures.

The neighbors and Jorge and Carmen had gotten us some cool t-shirts each.

Helene´s present to me was a Swiss Army Knife with everything, including saw, scissors and tooth pick. Perfect! I only hope I am able to remember to put it in the check-in luggage each and every time we take a new flight. Bets are taken, people. The odds are 3 to 1 that I will return to Norway with the knife in my possession.

The kids got candy from us, consumable presents are a good idea when you are traveling light.

I had supposedly bought Helene a scarf and everyone congratulated me on my good taste. The brutal truth is that when Helene came back from shopping she told me she had found the perfect present for her and, knowing how much I hate to shop, she had taken the liberty to not only purchase it, but also have it wrapped. When people started praising me I had to lean over to at least see the scarf before answering. I played along and thanked for the praise as quietly as I could. I have to admit, though, that it was a very nice scarf.

We kept on talking and drinking until after 2am and were quite tired in the end:

We had had an excellent Christmas Eve, even without our luggage.

Eirik

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