Southern Exposure

Monday, April 13

After the drama of the night before, we felt no guilt sleeping in until 9:30. We lounged a bit in our super comfy beds before heading downstairs to see the house for the first time in daylight. Fernando and Adela have a beautiful home, very modern and tastefully decorated with so many windows it gets great natural light.

In the absence of our hosts who were at work, the pets were happy to have us around. Their dog, Rovi, was what Sebastian had cleverly called a Peruvian Shepherd. It had all of the markings of a German Shepherd, but was short with a barrel shaped body. She was a nice dog that had been a stray when the family accidentally hit her with the car and then nursed her back to health. They also had two cats, Mumi, a Siamese, and another Mau like cat, whose name escapes me. The two cats had an interesting relationship. Mumi ruled the indoor territory, swatting at the other cat if it got more attention, and we were told the other cat beat up on Mumi once they were outside.

Inna took the opportunity of having a kitchen available to us to make us a delicious egg breakfast. The eggs were superb and were fresh from the hen house at the estancia. As we were finishing up, a friend of Fernando’s with good mechanic skills came over to look at the chain. With the extra links I had, he was able to hammer together a master link on the chain, although despite my attempts to make sure they were all there, he only used 3 out of 4 o-rings. It was so nice of Fernando to arrange for this repair and so nice of his friend to donate his skills and time to us. I wasn’t feeling 100% about the chain, but we only needed the bike to get to the airport. Given that they have both failed on us, these chains are going in the trash when we are stateside.

Knowing that we had reached the end of the road, I think our adrenaline cut off and we both could have slept all day. While we didn’t do this, we accomplished about as much as if we had. I managed to do a little bit of blog writing and Inna enjoyed the sunny afternoon by the pool. We were feeling a bit sheepish about our slacking when Fernando and Adela came home from work.

Adela cooked us another delicious dinner and then we had more flavor heaven Argentine ice cream. Their company was a pleasure, as always. After our exhausting day of doing nearly nothing, we went to bed. The next day was to be a “work” day, dedicated to lining up shipping for the bikes on our first foray into Buenos Aires.