Day 284: Trevelin – Argentina – Mar 28th

Waking up, the weather outside was foggy and wet, reassuring us that not waking up for the sunrise was correct! Down at the dining room, the host brought out some really awesome breakfast. With real coffee, tasty bread and delicious jam. The whole setting reminds you of wonderful B&Bs you’d get in Niagara or somewhere warm and cozy! Talking to the host, we confirmed that she was indeed born in the village and the daughter of one of the founders of the village. This whole house was built by her father, and the craftsmanship is astounding as everything in the whole place is ORIGINAL. Our hardwood floors couldn’t last a single winter without showing signs of shitty craftsmanship, theirs lasted 50 years…. Looking around the house, it was full of interesting objects and pictures of this towns short but storied history.

We headed out, bid our farewells to the host, and wandered aimlessly around the town. There was a carpet factory tour, but they were on siesta when we got there. The town itself was very small, and lots of little hotels and shops dot the streets. Not in much of a hurry, we ate lunch at a recommended spot, and had possibly the best steak AND best beer we’ve had on this trip so far. The beer was actually produced by another child of the original founders, and never have we had such a tasty fruity lager before. Unfortunately, they don’t sell it anywhere else! And only a few restaurants have it!!! Such a shame…… and as much as we loved to stay and relax here for another day, we had much more ahead of us.

On the road for the rest of the afternoon, we made it to the Chilean border town of Futuleufu around sunset. There’s one thing that’s almost as impressive as the Chilean tourist offices, it would be their parks. Every city, town or village has a BEAUTIFUL and MASSIVE park located in the middle, with lots of public space all over. You really feel that the gov’t here is at least doing something, and seems pretty organized as well. We snapped a few pictures and headed to the road leading us back into Argentina. Getting out of Chile this time was much easier, and we got out of the office in about 10minutes before driving another 5minutes to the Argentine customs office. We rolled in, and the office pointed us to a spot to park…strange, seems like all the officers were all standing outside. When we got out of the car, they yelled at us “MAS RAPIDO, RAPIDO!”. We were confused, but never are we going not do what the customs officer says, so we ran inside and did our stuff. A slight confusion occurred with Alan’s dual passport situation, as his Cdn passport is almost running out of pages he opted to switch to his HKSAR passport, which gave the customs officer too much to contemplate. Nevermind, they were too eager to shut down and head back home as they closed at 8pm! Turns out, we got there at 7:58pm…. lucky us, as a car got turned around as soon as we got outside.

Driving into the even bigger city of Trevelin (est. 10,000 people!), we had a hard time finding the hostel we wanted to stay at. It was recommended by our guidebook, by our hosts in Puyuhuapi and the website pictures looked amazing!! Luckily, the tourist office was still opened at 8:30pm and we headed in to ask, only to find out IT HAS BEEN CLOSED FOR TWO YEARS! W T F? We had a tough time finding a place to stay, but drove around and found a really cute B&B run by an old lady in her own home…..

Cooking dinner, which was once again pasta with dehydrated soup mix, our host saw us cooking, then came in with a bag of apples saying she had too many and it was a gift to us. I think she pitied us at our meager (but tasty) meal, and gave us the apples out of kindness. What a nice lady! The apples were great too….haha!

We can’t wait til tomorrow, as the real reason we came to Trevelin lies in one, and only one reason….