Monico Family Travels

……in San Antonio de Arecco…..but we went anyway……. for no logical reason: the hostel we had booked was significantly less comfortable than our lovely home in Las Palmas, there was 100% certainty of rain (the torrential kind with keep-you-awake thunder), and all the outside events had been postponed till next weekend.

After an extreme expectation setting effort by Jimbob, I was genuinely impressed by the cleanliness and friendliness of our hostel, (and he was initially relieved when they kindly put an extra mattress in our ‘girls’ room so he didn’t have to bunk up in the mixed dorm……but less so next morning when 6 nubile Aussie lasses trooped down from said dorm to breakfast in their pjs).  We met some other interesting travellers there, including an older lady who was traveling with her sister (the dusty ‘in a box’ type) which led to some interesting explanations and speculations!

The rain held off for the afternoon so we took a walk around town and enjoyed an exhibition of top quality Gaucho artisan work.  Highly skilful craftspeople had produced some brutal bits and spurs, some beautiful knives, bridles, and belts and as for the boots – I want me a  pair (made-to-measure of course)!

Our evening plan had been to join the gaucho bonfire and dancing, but having walked over a mile to the outskirts of town to find that there wasn’t even a sniff of it starting by 10pm, we surrendered to our English bodyclocks, and bailed to bed (the spritely older lady let us know at breakfast the next day that it really started ‘kicking’ at around 1:30am).

Tenacious to the end, the following morning we we went to Parque de Criollo where the Gaucho displays and games should have been staged.  There were a few hopefuls like us lingering around, and a few gauchos hanging around on their horses.  Turns out gauchos are pretty accomplished at hanging around, and they out-hung most of the hopefuls, but we hoisted the girls into a tree (from whence we could no longer hear their moaning), and stuck it out until the gauchos decided to put on a very fine display of traditional skills (begrudgingly credited with ‘worth the wait’!).

Before heading home we enjoyed some local brew and empanadas.  We went to a general store which was purported to have been converted into a cafe, but which more closely resembled something out of a cupboard at Hogwarts.  

On the way home it rained A LOT.  And its been raining ever since, A LOT.  We have become highly adept at both bucket placement and speed-mopping which are certainly good life skills to bring home from our adventure!