Thursday, August 23, 2012

Delícia! And my inspiration for the day...

Delícia is one of my favorite words here. Most commonly it describes a beautiful day. According to the dictionary delightful would be the literal translation, but I think I like it so much because it sounds a lot like delicious. You could describe a day as delightful in English, but if you described it as delicious, how great a day would THAT be?!

And I'm finally getting used to the word shopping as a noun. The word shopping has been adopted into the Brazilian lexicon to mean mall

Let's go shopping at the mall. = Vamos fazer compras no shopping.  Where no does not mean no, but is a contraction of em + o (in+the or at+the).  Also tricky!

In an unrelated story, I was sitting in a waiting room this afternoon when out of the doctor's office came an elderly woman accompanied by another lady, presumably her daughter. Her back was so bent over as she walked that the top half of her body was nearly at a 90° angle with the lower half of her body. After a few moments of waiting to speak to the receptionist, she started chatting it up with another lady that she recognized in the room. And I mean CHATTING it up, with such a jolly, clear, opposite-of-frail voice! Their conversation was peppered with laughter. I was looking at my book, but read nothing as I focused on her words and tried to figure out what she was saying. (I didn't have much luck there, but she did sound like she may have been from Rio once upon a time based on her accent.) And I couldn't help but smile; in fact I was a little sad when she walked out the door. After she left, the woman she was talking to told me the woman was 86 years old and still did almost everything for herself (at least that's what I think she said). With her back bent the way it was, I imagine it must be pretty difficult to do things herself. But you wouldn't know it by the tone of her voice. The way she was carrying on she made ME feel old - I'm 38!

Friday, August 10, 2012

San Martin de los Andes

Our first stop in Argentina was San Martin de los Andes.  Otto has really been missing the skiing since moving from Canada, so we had to find a ski hill ASAP!!  :o)  The resort closest to us was Chapelco. The view was beautiful, but unfortunately the snow wasn't very good.  So we only got a wee taste of skiing/snowboarding; not what we were hoping for. Oh well, sometimes you get a lot of powder, and sometimes you don't. :/

Still, the town itself was very nice!  Many delicious restaurants to try and tea/coffee/chocolate shops in which to indulge in something sweet. On this evening we went to a fondue restaurant. The boys really liked it. Otto's eyes are closed in this shot, but it was the only one I had with Andy.


You can see the owners in the background reading the paper, waiting for more patrons to arrive. We ate on the early side each night, arriving at restaurants around 7:30pm, but generally people ate around 8:30 or 9pm.


This morning was took a stroll by Lago Lacar. 



Walking around town, we saw this unusual tree several times. 


One day we took a boat ride to Quila Quina.


Nice countryside to hike around, complete with seemingly wild horses roaming about.



We found a very pretty waterfall.


Mist rising up from the falls.


Another spot for another nice photo.

The walk back.


One day we checked out the playground in the town center.



They LOVED this wheel-chair accessible swing!



I took this photo shortly after take-off from San Martin on the way to Buenos Aires.  I was sitting on the other side of the plane, but the people across the row had their window open and the zoom lens on my little pocket camera is powerful! I'm not sure about the name of this peak.


More to come....