Sunday, July 8, 2007

Juan had told us that he would knock on our door and turn on music at 9 because if we wanted to ride, we needed to be done with breakfast by 10:30. However, he didn’t wake us up until 10:10, so we postponed our starting time a bit. I didn’t take long getting ready as all I did was slide out of my super warm cozy bed and slip off my sweatpants and put on my jeans and fleece from the day before. I like layers! We ate breakfast which was more of the same delicious food.

It was really cold so some of the people didn’t want to go horseback riding. It was also sleeting. I did not have a waterproof jacket, so Nichelle let me borrow her rain jacket because she didn’t want to go riding. Only about half of the people went. We didn’t ride for very long, maybe an hour or so. It was the only time that I can remember wishing that it was time to get off a horse! I rode a different horse, La Pampa. He was fine, a bit boring perhaps. We rode down a road and then down a path and then turned around because it was too cold. We got to canter on the way back for a long time down the road and it was the only time I was not freezing. My feet were numb from not moving.

We got back and warmed up by the fire. My feet were really cold. We had pasta with onions for lunch. It was really good. We got dessert after every lunch and dinner, too. If I had written this earlier, I could have remembered what we actually ate. Oh, well! We got ready to go to the salt flats. It was going to be really cold, but we all wanted to see them. The only person who did not go was Meagan who was still really sick. Everyone was wearing a million layers. A girl named Stacey offered her fleece North Face jacket to me because it wouldn’t fit under her other coat and I wore one of Meagan’s fleece jackets on top of that. I felt stupid for not bringing my winter coat, but I didn’t complain about being cold other than on the bus. We got in two vans and headed to the salt flats. I rode in a van with the two-month students and Stacey. It was about an hour and a half ride there.

We got there about 5. It was weird because it looked like snow, but wasn’t. I would’ve liked to come to the salt flats in the summer because it would be weird to be wearing a tank top and shorts and be standing on what appears to be snow. The closest thing I can equate the salt flats to is standing on a big frozen lake. Everything was white as far as we could see. I took pictures, but they do not capture the beauty and the awesomeness of them. Luckily, the salt flats were dry because I guess sometimes people have to get their feet wet to see them from where we were and it was way too cold for that! They built a huge fire. Unfortunately, it was cloudy and there was not a pretty sunset. The other group got some really cool pictures of the silhouettes of them against the sunset. We had drinks (wine, whisky, Coke, or hot tea) and dulce de leche on bread. I had four pieces of bread with dulce de leche and a cup of hot tea. We waited for the sun to set. People started complaining about it being cold and boring out there. If you stood next to the fire, it wasn’t bad at all. Unfortunately, the cold meant that we all had to stand together by the fire to stay warm and so that meant everyone had to listen to some not-so-uplifting conversations. A while later, one of the guys who works at the estancia offered us some pot to smoke and the majority of the group got really excited. It was my first time to be at a pot-smoking party and was really an experience I could have lived without!

By the time we left, it was pitch black (it had been for about an hour) and it was starting to sleet again. We dumped the rest of the wood on the fire (there is nothing out there to catch on fire) and left. The ride back took much, much longer than the ride there… probably about 2.5 hours! It was snowing and it felt like Christmas. On the way to the salt flats, the hubcap of the van in front of us fell off and we stopped and got it. They fixed it at a gas station we stopped at and it fell off again on the way back home. The paved road seemed to last forever! We finally turned off onto the dirt road. We had some excitement when our van stopped accelerating and eventually stopped. Victor (the driver) flashed his lights at the other van and then the lights went out. The other van saw us and turned around. The lights came back on and then the engine started. We continued on our way.

When we got back, we had empanadas around the fire. There were two kinds: sweet and salty. I liked the sweet ones better. I think I ate four or five! After the empanadas, I don’t really remember what we did. Oh, I took a shower, a hot shower! Although the air outside was cold, the shower was hot! I borrowed someone’s blow dryer and dried my hair for almost a half hour, but, of course, it still wasn’t dry. I went outside and took a picture of the snow that was now covering the ground. It was the first time it had snowed there in 15 years! Some people were out playing in the snow. We didn’t get an alfajor on our beds that night. I exchanged my outer layers and went to bed with damp hair.