Cerro Campanario & Circuito Chico

Today we took a break from the eating and took a bus out to Cerro
Campanario and walked the 30 minutes to the top as opposed to getting
the $50 chairlift up. Pablo had warned us it was steep… it was
steep.

I’m not usually one for pretty scenery but it was amazing once we got
to the top. Just looking out at the lakes made me wish I’d done the
parapente today.

Luring small children

We sat eating our healthy lunch of crackers and gomitas when a small
child and his dad came to take photos of the view. We felt so bad for
the dad because he positioned the kid (who was about three years old)
in front of the gorgeous view, went back to take a photo and the kid
just starts pointing at me and my bag of lollies. I held the bag out
to offer him some and felt a little bit like a predator luring small
children with a bag of sweets. He toddled over and I gave him some
lollies to which he said, “Gracias!” So cute!

The hills are alive, with the sound of… meowing

For some reason on the walk down we started singing “Trouble” (one of
the many theme tunes for this trip) then we got on to meowing out
various songs from the Sound Of Music.

Last night the Israeli guy we had drinks with caught us meowing the
Sound Of Music in our room and I tried to explain by saying, “Oh, we
were just singing songs from the Sound Of Music as cats.” He replied
with, “Yeah, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Sounded about
right.

Pro tip: don’t try and negotiate a steep, downhill, sand-covered track
while pissing yourself singing songs from the Sound Of Music as cats.
You will most likely trip and near-injure yourself.

Note: I’m 99.9% sure that Kat and I are the only people who found this amusing!

It’s an easy ride

We walked the 800m to the bike rental place and got shown the route,
signed some forms and got fitted with an orange reflector, helmet and
bike.

Kat’s been wanting to practise her Spanish more so we got the guy to
do it all in Spanish. Thanks to context I got most of what was going
on. Anything I missed I knew Kat could fill me in on later.

We set off on a ride that was meant to be easy bar a small uphill
section. It wasn’t easy.

We ended up walking uphill a lot and I’m sure my legs will be dead
tomorrow. Due to the uphill there was also a lot of downhill. After
seeing a horrifying bike accident on Nat Geo last night I rode the
back brakes the whole way down!

We decided to drop the bikes off 7km short of the end (which was an
option). Apparently the last 7km of the 27km route was uber packed
with traffic so we decided that living was a more attractive option -
heading back on the bus we saw that it was really bus and with no bike
lane we knew the drop off was a good option!

It was only an extra $15 to drop the bike off there and we got a 20%
discount at the start anyway so all in all we spent $95 on the bikes.

Food!

Back at the hostel we cooked up our veges which had sat waiting for us
and then caught up on some geeky stuff. Pablo popped his head into our
room and asked how we’d feel about helping make empanadas tomorrow and
then having an asado the day after… ah, it sounds awesome!!!
Argentina just keeps getting better and better.

28 November 2011