Wandering around San Carlos was beautiful, the spring feeling of a ski town is not always a friendly one, with a number of businesses closing for refits and so on. We took the chance to do some work on our ideas, and generally enjoy the place. The walk between our lodging and the centre of town was around one kilometer so that helped us keep the effects of the sugary and really very tasty bakery snacks at bay which are sold at small bakeries, it seems, at every corner. The days were beautiful and sunny, the trees in bloom and it seems the people here have a very good work life balance.
We headed to the supermarket on several days to buy some lunch and lounge around the lakeside,and it seemed pretty much everyone else did as well. The shops were closed all afternoon, which is a very Argentinian thing it seems, and then open late in the evening again. Taking the best from each European culture I suppose. Evenings were spent in small cafes or the Irish pub, or eating very large steaks. The highlight was a great evening in a small restaurant eating Waterbuffalo steak with mashed pumpkin and spinach, drinking great red wine for not very much at all. It was another dose of food extasy and an example of things to come. It is apparently in the lonely planet too…. So if you are headed that way, perhaps look it up on Thorn Tree or in the book. We had a fantastic lunch on the lake, set in the brillant sunshine, watching people rowing and sailing while we ate our lunch made up of meats, cheeses for jen, olives and crackers and a bottle of very nice Malbec. Needless to say, we had a few fans, wagging their tails and looking reproachfully at our meat selection. They didn’t like the crackers…
The town is nestled in a valley and home to some outstanding skiing, we decided against skiing here as we thought there had to be a reason to return in the future, perhaps one august for some great powder skiing…. We shall see. There are a number of Austrian and Swiss run sports shops dotted around the place and a lot of new builds going up, so I presume it is an increasingly popular area for Argentine tourists to come to. The chocolate theme and convivial coffee shop atmosphere prevails, great exports from the Germans and Austrians once more….We really enjoyed the time here, but had to move on to Bariloche, the city of chocolate. MT
No comments:
Post a Comment