Highlights of the Last Few Days
We had two days left in Rincon Del Socorro. One afternoon we had an opportunity to see the organic gardens where most of the vegetables came from. It was beautifully laid out and organized.
We talked to several of the workers and were impressed with their knowledge of organic gardening. As I had mentioned the food was very good but after I saw the garden, I wondered why there was not more of a variety of vegetables at the meals.
The last morning we were taken to see a few of the neighboring farms, the area church and the cemetery. As we were riding along, we came upon a huge flock of vultures eating what looked like a dead cow. It was pretty gruesome! Moving right along….. We saw where Gauchos lived and actually met one as he was riding his horse. We came upon the church which was open so we had a look inside. There were seats for about 20 people or less. It was a tiny building and pretty well taken care of.
Not all the farms had electricity. In fact, we watched while a new telephone pole was raised by a group of workers. They dug a very deep hole and with muscle power lifted up the pole and walked it into the hole. I actually took a video of how they did it. They do not use any cement so you can see the poles at several different angles. However, I guess it gets the job done. The cemetery was set in a huge field but there were few grave sites A lot of the graves had mommentos. One poignant grave had a faded blue crib next to it. Afterwards, we got back into the 4-wheel drive and returned to the lodge. It was an interesting trip and allowed us a peek into the lives of the local farmers.
We rested and ran around taking last minute photos of the ranch. It was such a lovely place. So many birds and animals dotted the landscape.
The next morning we left around 7am as it took over an hour to get to Mercedes where we would take a small plane to Buenos Aires. The driver said he didn’t speak a lot of English and proceeded to talk in Spanish for the next hour and a half. I understood most of what he had to say and interjected the right answers and comments from time to time. He had a lot of opinions about the country and politics. He also talked a lot about his sons and his hopes and wishes for them. He had a guest book that he showed me so I entered a few sentences about his good driving and entertaining personality. We finally arrived at the tiny airport. Barb discovered she had a problem with her carry-on. The handle would not go down. One of the mechanics at the airport offered to fix it for her. He worked on it for about 40 minutes and got it down but it still work very well. I ended up having to carry it on to and off the plane. The plane was a bit late but it finally arrived. The flight was 2 hours long and when we arrived we were met by a customs person outside of the airport. That seemed a bit strange but he took our information and we went into the airport.
Barb was escorted off while I worried about the luggage. Once inside, I looked for a cart but couldn’t find one. The airport was extremely crowded. I got Barb to stand by the luggage while I finally found a cart and loaded it up. We walked out and were once again met by Dario. He had waited quite a while for us and was just going to leave when we showed up. He told me if I gave the driver a tip, we wouldn’t be charged any extra for making trip to the first hotel to pick up our belongings. So that was fine with me. We picked up our things and went across town to Casa Sur Art, a very nice boutique hotel situated in the desirable Recoleta neighborhood.
Since we arrived in the early afternoon, we had the rest of the
day to enjoy ourselves. I had made arrangements to have tea or something stronger with Denise at 6pm. I went downstairs to meet her as Barb wasn’t ready yet. Denise arrived a bit late but we had fun catching up and talking about our trip. Barb arrived soon after and we decided to go to a local bar for a drink.
Denise led the way and we ended up in a cafe/bar. Barb and I had a glass of wine, Denise had some kind of cocktail that tasted like medicine. She sent it back and they doctored it up and it was just as bad or worse. Anyways, we enjoyed talking about our experiences and then got into a lot of political discussion as Denise was very aware of American politics and knew a lot about what was going on. She had lived in the states near Washington D.C. so paid a lot of attention to the issues. She did mention that she was a liberal but we had already figured that out. She had a date and so we parted but made plans to go with her to the antique market on Sunday.
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