Small mishaps, lovely places

Click, click, click, click….whaaat?? Before we left El Bolson, we took a number of pictures at our beautiful cabin and of the horses and sheep that were grazing in the grass outside it. We had stopped at a hidden fruit plantation located in a lovely valley, took pictures with the owner who took us around to show us acres of blackberries, raspberries and elderberries. When we continued on, some stunning pink colored mountains flanked the highway and of course, they were captured on film. We then reached our destination, the town of Esquel, in the Chubut province, and we took several pictures here, as well.

When we ventured further, to the town of Trevelin, I asked Diane to take a picture of me by the sign welcoming us to town. I thought I’d check how she did, and, to my dismay, the photo screen said, “no card”. I had left the camera card in the laptop, which meant that none of the pictures I took this day, up to this point, were ever saved. Oh well, it’s just a pimple on a beautiful face. We then had to rely on my cell phone to capture the rest of the day.

The drive to Esquel took us from extremely scenic mountain valleys back to Patagonian desert scrubland. The road itself, Rt. 40, alternated nicely paved pavement to rough gravel. When, at last, we reached Esquel, we checked into our hotel to shed our luggage and quickly explored our new surroundings. 21 kilometers from Esquel lies the town of Trevelin, which we had planned to visit. It is located in a fertile valley and it is famous for having been founded in 1865 by a group of Welsh immigrants. The town is very proud of its Welsh heritage, and many signs are displayed both in Spanish, as well as in the Welsh language.

At the Trevelin sign (when I realized I was shooting blanks), we met a couple of cool ladies traveling in an old Citroen jalopy through Argentina, from north to south. They took the picture of us at the sign with my phone, and we kept running into them a few times throughout the day. In Trevelin we visited the very interesting heritage museum and had a giant plate of pastries, including Welsh black cake with, what else, Welsh tea, at a (you guessed it), Welsh tea house.

We then headed to a waterfall, located but 5 miles from the Chilean border, which is only open on Tuesdays and Thursday. While the waterfall was nice indeed, the spectacular vistas from this area were absolutely superb. I wish I could have used my camera, but my cell is a valuable ally when in need, so I can only be thankful that I could rely on it.

Tomorrow we’ll be undertaking the longest drive of the trip. There are no sightseeing stops planned, even though they always seem to materialize somehow, and the road, we are told, can be pretty rough.