Estancia

So I get on the bus for my Estancia (ranch) visit today, and the first thing the guide says is, "you're the only person on this tour who requested an English guide. My English is terrible, are you sure you can't just speak Spanish?" he did all this IN SPANISH.

me: "I'm sorry, I don't understand Spanish."

Here is an example of how the tour went:

Guide: Spanish Spanish Spanish cow Spanish Spanish ranch Spanish Spanish lunch Spanish.... *glances at me* the ranch has many animals for visit.

Ug. The instructions for the zip line were also in Spanish. I did it anyway.

During the folk music show, which was incredible, the lead singer asked how many people (in a group of 250)spoke English. I was one of two... So he skipped the English translations of the music.

However, it is so lovely here and I saw a wild flamingo, a peacock, rode horses around the Estancia, and saw some horse racing, which was awesome.

There's an older man who speaks English and Spanish been escorting me around, but he seems very kind, he's not too weird and he spent most of his day translating for me. When we went into the gift shop, which was all leather goods he pointed everything out, "soft leather. Beautiful." Sometimes he was looking at me, not the leather, but I always pretended be meant the leather.

To my amusement, he warned me about interacting with the guide who is young and good looking, but very short. He was like, be careful interacting with these guides, especially the ones without children. I was like uh huh, I know exactly what you're trying to say.

All in all great day.

I tried argentine pizza, which I didn't like at all. The crust is so thick it looks like a slice of pie, and they put about an inch of cheese on top. It was a lot.

When I got back to the hostel, there was a fluent English speaker there who just got back from Patagonia! He helped me replan my entire trip after informing me that my big hike, torres del Paine, is experiencing its biggest season yet and all the campsites are booked up. I can do one overnight there, but that's a far cry from the 10 days I planned. Oh well.Read more