April 5,
Happy Easter!

We awoke by 0700. It was our connection day. We had already connected with my mother. So we got around leisurely, having our Javas and breakfast of oatmeal with Nutella and dried nut & fruit mix. We did a much needed load of laundry. Then we connected with our church back home. When we finished we did another load of laundry.

Around 1430 we set out for a drive and take in the fall color changes. We thought about going to Los Alerces National Park. (Alerces is the name for the Patagonian Cypress trees). We arrived but we changed our minds, as we would need to pay for the park and it was already late in the day. So instead we went to the next town called Trevelin. We spotted a vineyard and attempted a tasting, but no one came to assist us. Maybe they were closed because of Easter?? Anyway, we went on into the town, which was a Welch settlement, established in 1891. (The founder John Daniel Evans set up the first flour mill here. Trefelin is the Welsh word for “mill town”, according to Wikipedia.) We drove through checking for a place to eat, but failed. We took in the ambience of the town, and decided to come back, maybe tomorrow and check it out. As we were leaving town, we gave a local lady a lift to Esquel. She did not speak English but used her translation app on her phone and we had a little “conversation” that way. She was going to Esquel for a job. We let her out on the main road, and then went back to our place.

We settled in and made supper of scrambled eggs with red pepper and onion. We also pan-seared the rib-eye steak; and had the Italian salad- both were leftovers from dinner last night. Then we did a video call with my sister, and later an attempted video call with Jeff’s sister and her husband. But they were driving somewhere and it was a bad connection, so we will talk with them Wednesday.

      April 6,

We got up around 0700. I had a crazy bad dream last night, I awoke thinking I had yelled out for “Help!” But Jeff said I just whimpered. Anyway, I felt like I did not sleep well after that. We got up and around having our Javas and breakfast of scrambled eggs on a baguette type bread. I don’t have much coffee left. So I will have to get more. Jeff cleaned our CPAPs as I sewed some.

Around 1130, we set out. We explored some of the town of Esquel. First was to get me some replacement coffee! Jeff had researched a place, so we found it, Club E Cafe de Especialidad.
I used google translate to communicate with the lady. I found a coffee that I thought might be good and ordered a small cup. I liked it and we had a bag of beans coarse ground. It was a Brazilian coffee and was pricey as in 26,000 ARS, which is $18.76. Then we went across the street to a tourist information place, the ladies only spoke Spanish. I received an area map only.

Anyway, we next saw a chocolate shop. Then another. Jeff remembered that there we had a 10% discount at one shop through our Hertz car rental. We found the shop, Braese Chocolates. We went in and they had some dark chocolate – even some samples. We tried some of them and bought a couple of different bars. The shop also had some other items, including Gooseberry Jam! But they only had bigger jars. We paid 12,600 ARS, or $9.10. We went into a couple of other specialty chocolate shops. Finally we found a smaller jar of Gooseberry jam and bought it for 10,000 ARS, or $7.22.

Now we went out of town and drove back toward Trevelin. We went to Casadas Nant y Fall, a waterfall just further south of the Trevelin. We are actually close to the border with Chile, as in less than 30 km (18.6 miles) away. We arrived at the falls around 1400, had a carne empanada each and shared a chocolate chip scone with a grapefruit juice drink. Then we paid 24,500 ARS, $17.68 for our entrance and our lunch. We did the easy walkway to the falls. There are three different cascade areas: the first was a single fall; the second was two level fall; and the third was a very tall fall but was broken up by hitting a rock. We could not see the bottom of this fall. We then hiked to an elevated viewpoint of the whole valley. Stunning vista views toward the Andes. We hiked back passing by many wild dog rose bushes covered in rose hips! We have seen people on the side of the road picking these, which we thought were berries. There are that many rose hips.

We next went to a different vineyard, but they did not seem to just have a tasting available. Jeff bought me a crocheted tulip flower. They supposedly grow these in the spring…that would be nice to see. We left and pretty much went back to our place, stopping to pick a lady hitching with her three year old daughter. She spoke enough English that we conversed some. We let her out at the Bus station in Esquel and then we went to a local fruit & veggies place. We got our stuff and finally got back home. We had baked potatoes, Greek salad and bread for supper with a Malbec. It’s been a couple of nice days touring the countryside.