March 28, 2018
Villa Aconcagua: Downtime
So here we are at Berta's place. We going to stay here until next week for many reasons. It's the Easter Weekend coming up so we anticipate the roads will be busy and accommodation hard to come by. We are both feeling very flat and run down and in need of some off time. We also have a lot of work to do, work that needs few days of sitting at the keyboard in an environment conducive to deep concentration. Berta's place is as good as place to take this off time as any we could hope to find in the area.
It's not the quietest place. Almost every home in the village seems to have some or other music playing loudly, mostly the rather monotonous stuff that the Chileans learnt from the Germans. We have two different sources of music here - one in the lounge inside and one in the cocina rustica outside. Somehow it doesn't seem to bother us.
The main road to Argentina is just a few hundred meters away and the train line runs close by. The road traffic is a distant hum but when a train goes by it seems as if it runs through the house. Even this doesn't seem to bother us. We just feel comfortable here.
Berta and Alex and their children Diego, Gabriella and Francesca are such kind and warm people and they have taken us in as if we are close relatives of theirs. This afternoon Alex drove me into Los Andes to get some grocery shopping done, walked me around the supermarket and made sure I got everything I was looking for. It's going to be difficult to leave here.
EDIT 1 April 2018: We arrived here on Tuesday expecting to spend one night. Tonight will be our sixth. It has just been so easy to park off and relax in a lovely rural environment with a warm and kind family.
We have used the time to recover from our colds. Leigh is still struggling a bit but Alex produced a concoction of ginger, herbs, spices and lemon that has made her feel a lot better. We have also got a lot of work done. In fact, for the first time in a few months we have reduced our to-do list to the things that we never intend to do. Much of our time has been spent in the cocina rustica outside. Working, cooking and just chilling.
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One of the important things we did do was finalize our flights back to South Africa. We leave in fifteen days time from Santiago so from now on it will be a matter of winding things down.
Diego has finally got our cellphone with a Chilean SIM card working on the internet so we now have a mobile data connection which will help a lot if we need to access information while on the road. We got the card when we first arrived in Puerto Montt but have not really needed it yet but that might change as we approach Santiago.
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