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Christmas at the estancia really started on Christmas Eve, which is the important day here in Argentina.

As Papa Noel was flying around the world delivering presents, we were erecting our Christmas tree that Fred Johnson sent to me before we left Buenos Aires. The girls and I had a ball putting it together. Of course, it called for craft glue to attach the ornaments and the snow drifts to the tree. Surprisingly enough, I don’t travel with my hot glue gun, so we improvised and used some athletic adhesive tape. We grew quite fond of this little tree, although the girls were somewhat concerned about presents fitting under it!

We took our tree to Christmas Eve dinner, which featured suckling pig (pictured below on the parilla — Zoe had a heart attack because she saw them butterflying the pigs whole). We had singers entertaining us during the meal, they lit off some fireworks afterwords, and then, past midnight, the Argentinian kids opened their presents. Everyone young and old partied into the night.

We, on the other hand, went to bed. When we got up in the morning, the Zs were delighted to discover that Santa was able to locate us. He used the Christmas socks that Fred sent us as stockings and there were presents around our little foam tree. It was a lovely, simple Christmas that we all enjoyed. (And a big thanks to Fred Johnson for all of our Christmas accoutrement).

Yes, more family traveling disasters as we ventured from northwestern Uruguay to the Sierra mountains of Argentina (southwest of Cordoba).

We started for Montevideo on the Saturday before Christmas, leaving Punta del Diablo at 11:15 a.m. (pictured here at the bus stop). The car that we were counting on to help schlep our bags into town wasn’t available, so we had to sprint, in the sun, over dirt/sand roads, with our suitcases to make it to the bus stop on time! The bus trip to Montevideo was long and hot, but generally uneventful, thank God!

Sunday, at mid-day, we took a boat from Montevideo to Buenos Aires, Argentina. In BA (which felt like home) we had a 7 hour layover, during which we had to run a zillion frantic Christmas and travel errands. At 10:30 pm on Sunday, our overnight bus left Buenos Aires for Cordoba, where we arrived at about 7:30 a.m. in the morning on Monday.

After an hour at the Cordoba bus station, we were preparing to depart for Nono, Argentina when Zelda somehow managed to fall into a giant grease slick, getting herself and her bag covered with a thick coating of engine oil (about 2 minutes before our bus left). We boarded the micro (small bus) and began our journey on a long winding road that climbed up through the clouds into rocky terrain. Really beautiful. Unfortunately, the bumpy ride with cloudy visibility whilst sitting in the back of the bus on twisting switchbacks caused Zelda to get sick, really sick. (Luckily, all of Zelda’s childhood illnesses involved massive amounts of vomiting, so she’s pretty nonchalant about the whole thing…and rather neat as well! Poor bean.)

Upon our arrival in Nono (Zelda sporting a combination of grease and vomit), we took a local taxi over rocky roads, gravel, through a creek, and after about 20 or 25 minutes, we arrived at our final destination: the estancia La Lejania. (It only took 51 hours of traveling from Punta del Diablo.)

What is the first thing that we did at the estancia? I’m afraid that we accidentally locked Ian in the cabaña. He had to escape out a window with a pretty big drop off. Needless to say, he wasn’t too pleased.

[And apologies for the posting blackout, we were without Internet access this past week.]

It is our last night in Punta del Diablo, the town that made the Lonely Planet Top Ten Places to Visit in 2008. We have had a lovely time decompressing; enjoying the slow pace and empty beaches. And, as an added bonus, Zoe said that she had her best birthday ever (of course she says that every year).

Should you decide to visit, we have our own guidebook observations below.

• Pack some warm layers. The wind really howls and it’s cold at night.
• Don’t expect a super fine white sandy beach with clear water, a la Mexico or the Carribean. The sand is nice, but can get a little bit rocky as you enter the water. And the waves–a pounding Atlantic surf that is cool when you first submerge yourself. (Kind of reminds me of Oregon a bit, actually.)
• The town is spread out, so if you rent a cabin, make sure that you are close to the grocery store and the beach, otherwise you might be doing more walking than you anticipated.
• Make sure that your rental accommodations come with sheets and towels. (Something we learned the hard way!)
• Even though we didn’t stay at the El Diablo Tranquilo Hostel, we would recommend them highly. We ate at their restaurant nearly every night, we rented their surf boards, they made an awesome birthday cake for Zoe’s birthday, and they let us buy some WIFI time. Top notch organization.

Photos courtesy of Tom and his morning sunrise walk!

It still isn’t high season here in Punta del Diablo, Uruguay…the locals tell us that high season starts directly after Christmas and goes until about mid-February.

One waiter likened the busy season to the scene in Ibiza, only with a lot of South American visitors mixed in with the European tourists. (Not so many Americans.) Now, in mid-December, it’s still pretty deserted and the beaches and restaurants are empty; which is exactly what we wanted.

The town itself is basically built on the dunes, with the types of roads you would expect…sand and dirt! There are neighborhood dogs to keep us company on our walks…all pretty clean, happy and well behaved. There are beautiful moon rises to light our way home after eating out late (of course). There is a howling wind that keeps our temperature down, but makes us more susceptible to sun burn because we never feel hot! There is a fabulous restaurant serving us some of the best food we’ve had in South America. Oh yah! There are people from all over the world, young and old. There are a zillion stars in the sky. There are large busy anthills in the dunes.

And there is plenty of room on the beach to complete Crossfit workouts (Tom pictured above) — I know…we’re crazy!

Uruguayans are serious about their mate drinking–they take it with them everywhere.

The mate-on-the-go form executed throughout the country is characterized by tucking the thermos under the arm, and then holding the cup and sipping straw in the same hand. (It’s an advanced maneuver, one that Ian is trying to perfect.)

This one-armed technique allows you to have all of your mate necessities at hand, while still leaving an arm free. For instance, at the bus station, with all of the bags that weren’t heavy (that means all suitcases except for ours), the bus driver clutched his mate accoutrement in one hand and loaded bags with the other. You’ve gotta be impressed by that.

Unfortunately, Ian doesn’t really have the right cup for this mobile mate consumption, so we often hear, “ahhh, I burned my hand,” as we walk around Punta del Diablo.

Apologies for the break in posting over the weekend. We traveled to Punta del Diablo and the free WIFI places in this small fishing village are down, so that meant no posting!

(After a momentary freak out, we were ready to embrace a week free of the Internet…until we discovered a hostel that would let us buy some WIFI time!)

Back to the story. Just as we were “manning up” to living without the Internet, we realized that we were going to be embracing a week free of towels and sheets as well. (In truth, this is more “manning up” than I intended on this version of our journey.)

The bleeping dirtwad who owns the cabaña we are renting in town left us with no sheets or towels! When we hiked into town to call him (he lives in Montevideo), he said, “nothing I can do, I do not provide these.” Basically, their trick was to make the beds with attractive and colorful bed spreads to cover the mattresses and pillows so they appeared to be properly made (with linens). It wasn’t until we actually went to get in the bed that we realized there were no sheets or pillowcases. (Do not rent a cabin called “Lo Maximo” from Eduardo in Punta del Diablo.)

We learned about the lack of towels after washing Zelda’s scraped knee (which Ian captured beautifully in the photo above).

We currently have a two-stage solution to post-shower drying. Stage 1: We wipe ourselves semi-dry with cleaning/dish rags that we found at a local market. (Man do these rags slough off a lot of fuzz, and they are a bit water repellent…) Stage 2: We whip out my teeny tiny hair dryer and blow dry our bodies.

These two stages get us to a slightly tacky/sticky state, which is when we know it’s time to get dressed!

As analogies go, I know this is a little confusing, but stick with me!

A person tastes rabbit for the first time and says, “hmmm, that tastes like chicken.” Chicken is the meat onto which everyone projects new carnivorous experiences. As we were taking our four hour bus trip on Saturday through Uruguay toward the Brazilian border and Punta del Diablo, I often looked at the landscape and thought, “hmmmm, that reminds me of California.”

That’s when I realized that California is to travel what chicken is to new meat experiences. The golden state, which I spent most of my childhood driving through or across, has a lot of land mass with such varied terrain that it can be analogous to nearly any spot in the world.

So, that means that California is the chicken of traveling…at least for me.

What a charming city. We spent most of our time in Ciudad Vieja, which is the historic part of Montevideo (and has a little bit of that Lord of the Rings decayed antiquity theme — there are ramparts falling into the sea, gates to the city, towers…)

Ciudad Vieja has a pedestrian walkway that runs through the middle of it that is closed to traffic. From this walkway, if you look to the left or right, you can see water. The old city is pretty impressive in that it’s built on a point that is surrounded by water on three sides. There are many beautifully restored buildings here, a robust police presence due to the large amount of tourists, shops, the inevitable McDonald’s (with the tag line “me encanta”) and a nice street market. Stray but a block or two off of the pedestrian walkway though, and you feel as if you are in a different city; the streets are sparsely populated and the buildings dilapidated.

Being in Montevideo made me come to a realization about Buenos Aires — buses are killing BA. They are ridiculously and unnecessarily loud, the street noise they generate drowns out everything else, even the conversation of the person standing next to you on the sidewalk. And, they spew noxious black exhaust that hangs over the city like a pall. By contrast, Montevideo seemed insanely quiet and and the air was crisp and clear — lovely.

One note, when you are located on a point of land surrounded by water on three sides, it’s freaking windy!!

We arrived in Montevideo yesterday on the BuqueBus boat in typical Offermann-Reeves fashion: one child with a high fever, two children with motion sickness, and too many bags (although we are getting much better about over-packing).

It went downhill from there. We couldn’t find a place to get local pesos; the cab line was an hour long; there were problems finding a taxi into which we could all stuff ourselves; our cab driver freaked out about the neighborhood of our hotel and warned us twice to be careful that someone didn’t steal our bags off of the sidewalk; Zoe had dry heaves last night; the shower in our room leaked onto the entire bathroom floor today, through the wall, onto and into the carpet, over the edge of the mezzanine and downstairs (“Mom, there is water dripping downstairs!”); Zoe’s fever got worse…you get the picture.

(Of course, we still think the glass is 3/4 full because we’re not in the Tiki Lounge!)

The good news: no one stole our bags off of the sidewalk, there is a lovely complimentary breakfast at the hotel, we were moved to new rooms that don’t leak (and they’re actually nicer), Zoe is a bit perkier tonight, and Montevideo is a charming city surrounded by water…more on that last one tomorrow!

Here are two images from our arrival.

The first image is the “we are so exhausted why the hell do you want to take our picture” that Ian forced upon us. On a positive note, this pic does do a good job of illustrating the amount of bleeping luggage that we had!

(May I make a plug for Eagle Creek luggage? We could strap two 50 pound bags together and the girls were able to drag 100 pounds of luggage around the airport. The luggage is amazing, if you are taking a long trip, we would highly recommend it.)

The second is a picture of the van (that I refuse to name accurately as a shuttle bus) that was needed to carry us all with our bags!! (Did I mention that we brought Ian’s Turkish drum?)