Hey Mom! A Bike!

Day: 161

So two of the German girls, Christina and Agatha, live here in Argentina. Camilla is Agatha’s cousin who is down for a month visiting and Chris is traveling alone before he starts his career in mechanical engineering next month in Germany. The reason I say all this is because now I have a couple of Spanish speaking tour guides for the next few days, also it was their idea to plan a trip today to rent mountain bikes and ride the 25 kilometers around the lake. Now any readers who have been around a while know that I enjoy bikes and 25 kilometers (15 miles) is nothing for me. Needless to say, I don’t think the ladies realized what 25 kilometers on a mountain bike over a bumpy dirt road is. It can be challenging for someone who isn’t in bike riding shape. I think the best part of all this (which included some whining and the girls pushing their bikes up hills) is that a few hours before they were giving me shit because:

“You Americans can’t ride bikes! Don’t you all just drive big cars?”

Anyways it was a pretty exciting day for me, we went into the mountains to this little Swiss colony (Colonia Suizz in Spanish) and rented our bikes from a woman who also sold tea, coffee and homemade cakes. The ride was amazing other than one wrong turn which took us back to the main road where we had to continue up 10 kilometers on a street with no shoulder and crazy Argentine bus drivers who would pass you with scant centimeters between you and them. Slightly scary.

I could give you a play by play of the rest of the day, but I’ve been writing for an hour now trying to catch up on the last couple of days so lets just say it ended as any day in Argentina should; With a steak and a bottle of wine.