1-1-20 - Welcome to El Calafate!
/We are heading down south to the small town of El Calafate in the Patagonia region of Argentina to enjoy some natural beauty. El Calafate serves as a gateway to the region with multiple options for exploring Patagonia from there. We can immediately tell the small size of the airport as the 2 baggage claim machines, the taxi window, the bus window, the tour desk window and bathroom are all in a room the size of an Airbnb living room.
We arrive at Hotel Amado in the early afternoon. We never quite know what to expect from the hotel when arrive somewhere since Kyle doesn’t remember the specific hotel as he booked it months before and has booked numerous ones since. We are pleasantly surprise that the hotel is right smack in the center of El Calafate. The rooms are basic but the location is more important. After dumping our luggage in the room, we set out to find a lunch spot.
We walk through the town but every restaurant we attempt is closed due to New Year’s Day and its afternoon in between lunch and dinner. We finally find a restaurant that is both open and can take seven people. We enjoy red meat, empanadas and (yes) pizza. We make it our one big meal of the day and enjoy playing the Get Gabbin app that makes mealtime chats super fun. The kids are particularly into would you rather and this app has some particularly good ones. Before we know it, it’s been three hours before the bill is paid and we are ready to go. Yes, Argentina has its own pace when it comes to restaurant service but we are not complaining today as we have nothing else planned and most stuff in town is closed.
We go back to the hotel for our own siesta after the stressful travel morning and long lunch. We rally from our naps and are all excited for a stop at the Polar Bar across the street from the hotel. The bar is made from ice inside a refrigerated unit. We pay and the guy gives us a thick, full-lined poncho and gloves and lets us in.
It’s the first time we’ve been to a polar bar and what scene. There are ice sculptures, ice thrones, ice couches, a polar bear (fake of course) and a long ice bar. Everything is made entirely of ice including the bar glasses. Cheaper that way when they fall and break. The thermometer flashes -9 degrees C (15 degrees F). There is party music blasting away on the speakers and the entire room is bathed in lights that flash from red to green to blue over and over again.
Once we enter, we have 30 mins to dance, drink (sodas for the kids), sing and photo-snap and selfie away. Upon entering, Kyle notes, “it’s right about now that I’m really regretting wearing shorts.” Corey concurs as they both thought that they would be provided ski pants. We get some great pictures and dance away to keep warm. There are about 10 other tourists doing the same. Everyone looks dismayed when the attendant opens the door and says our time is up.
The kids are tired and settle for leftover pizza from lunch freeing Kyle and Leanne for date night. Kyle wants to sit outside so we walk up and down the Main Street but find no open tables. By now it’s 9:30pm and prime dinner time in Argentina.
After 30 minutes of wandering, we find a place with a few tables outside. Several dogs surround the outdoor tables but there’s at least one open for us. We sit down for our romantic date night and Kyle opens up the conversation saying how it was great how into the would you rather game the kids were and how good the questions were. He says, “sometimes the game can have questions like would you rather get hit by a bus or drown.”
“Is there a third option?” the guy at the table next to us pipes in. He’s an older gentleman dining alone so the intrusion was welcomed by us. His table was so close to ours that he might as well have been on our date anyhow.
His name is Alex and he is from Sydney traveling solo around Argentina. It turns out he has an absolutely fascinating life story. His parents were Russian and became refugees in Germany after WWII ended. Alex was born in Germany while his parents tried to get out. They moved to Sydney, Australia when he was four. This is now becoming a common theme. The Airbnb owner in Sydney was from Riga, Latvia while it was still under Soviet rule. She applied for three visas to the US, UK and Australia and was going to go which ever came through first which was Australia. In Sydney also, our Uber driver was from NW India by Pakistan and had the same story. It’s interesting to think about how someone’s life would have been different if the US or UK came through.
We tell Alex about the Sydney Airbnb owner and he says, “really, my mother grew up in Riga.” You got to be kidding me. Connecting the dots on this trip in another unexpected way. His mother actually wrote and published a book on her war time experiences.
We talk about travel and it turned out that Alex never had kids and is single so he has spent most of his time traveling the world. Kyle asks how many countries he’s been too and he says, “you know, I just counted them last year and it’s around 75.” Great, another one who has way more countries than us,” Kyle whispers to Leanne. Alex goes on to raise an interesting point we’d never thought of. He says that he wasn’t sure how to count countries that have changed especially with the fall of communism. He used the example of going to Yugoslavia (during communism) and then going back to one of the countries post communism such as Serbia, does that count as two countries or one?
Two and half hours later, we conclude our group date dinner and wish Alex safe travels. Leanne turns to Kyle and says “you still owe me a date night!”
