Recovery Day

I went for breakfast at 9am, but even then I still felt tired. I booked the ‘native experience’ tour for
lunchtime so I had something to do that day. And I booked the normal glacier visit for the next day, the ice trekking was definitely off the cards with the size of my ankle.

11am came around quickly, I only had time to fold my washing and get dressed! A man called Ignus
picked me up and gave me the front seat in an old Land Rover. I discovered I was the only English
speaker on the tour, a little bit disappointing. But the views around the lake as we 4x4ed across the
Patagonia steppe distracted me. Plus, I was finding that Ignus spoke slowly and clearly enough for me to actually understand what he was saying. Well, about 50% of what he said and then he would repeat it in English for me quietly.

By the time we got to the caves, after a quick viewpoint stop, he would just ask me ‘tu entiendes?’ and only repeating in English if I needed clarification. Since most of the conversation was about people, houses and families I actually could follow it fairly well. We saw some original paintings made 4000 years ago out of iron compounds, bone marrow and animal fat. They depicted people, men and women with one pregnant couple shown as bigger or more important. Then there was a series of three pictures that correspond to ones in Australia.

No one knows the meaning, but its something to do with a group of people or animals (they’re shown as dots), a cave or passage without an end, and then either a door or a key. Archaeologists suspect it has something to do with passing into the second life or a new phase of life. There is also negative hands, defined by bone marrow spray and a picture that looks like a baby in a crib. No one really knows because the Spanish wiped out the entire race of people.

There was also a lot of graffiti on the site, they had to close it to the public because people had scratched over the paintings.

Next we went to a big open cave where a cook was preparing our food. We had wine, pumpkin soup,
lamb casserole in a bread bowl and chocolate mousse. Everyone laughed when only I and an older man had seconds. I’ve found most conversations on tours revolves around being hungry then full, being cold and saying ‘que rica’ when you eat. I had a complete brain fart when these two lovely Argentinian girls asked me if I had eaten other Argentinian food. I knew they were saying ‘Argentinian food’ but I couldn’t work out the question.

After this lovely lunch, we drove home. I was back at the hostel around 2.30pm. I watched
two episodes of Casa de la Papel in my room and walked down into town. I needed to find the ATM and supermarket, I couldn’t spend any more money on the expensive hostel food! The town was very
spacious, just one street through town with lots of outdoor and souvenir shops. The vegetables in the
supermarket were really nice!

I came back to the hostel and cooked myself a stirfry. When I entered the room, the older guy from
Buenos Aires was only in his undies. Embarrassed, I went into the toilet for a while to let him get
changed. There were a couple – American and UK but lived in Australia – who had strong Aussie accents.

The kitchen was super clean but lacked basic utensils. I ate and then sat with Luis and Piedra. Piedra said that the older guy from Buenos Aires wanted me to go over and speak with his 14-year-old son to practise English. It was really weird, like a strange date but I did it, asking the boy what they had done today, if they enjoyed the dinner and how long they had in Buenos Aires. I wished them a good night and rejoined my table, the father beamed and gave us the thumbs up.

Piedra said that they were travelling as a family in El Calafate but he was divorced and he was really excited to have his son join him for dinner, it made me feel sorry for him. Later she also said the boy had posted on Whatsapp that he had spoken to a real New Zealander today and it was scary. That made me laugh. We were joined by another Argentinian girl who wanted to drink and play scrabble, but we couldn’t settle on the language to play, so she started with cards. Once again I was feeling super tired and I got some bad news, Hester had died. So I went to bed and talked to Lucy for a bit on messenger.