Las Leñas

Yesterday was a down day, as Ben, Ben, Mike, Chandler, and I traveled from Buenos Aires to Las Lenas. The day of travel it took to get here was welcomed, as we had burned ourselves our partying hard the last two nights in Buenos Aires. We were lucky that the Bens had a friend named Julian who was local to the city, a contact they had from an earlier trip to ski in Argentina, who showed us around and knew where the best party was. People down here stay up late. Really late. I have sunrise pictures from yesterday morning to prove it. In fact, many pictures are on the way, as I will soon have them loaded onto Ben Padnos´s computer.

Last night, after we got in to our beautiful and brand new resort on the mountain, the 5 of us ate with the elderly and families with small children in the hotel restaurant. It was early for dinner: 8PM. The food was strange (tuna salad maki and a california roll with ham substituted for the foux crab were a couple of the appetizers receiveded with my ¨sushi¨), but a welcome alternative to the steady flow of beef we had pursued since our arrival. After dinner everyone retired to their respective rooms to get to bed early in preparation for the snow. I tuned and waxed my snowboard.

Parting thoughts on Buenos Aires: The city is thriving. Designed like a European metropolis but inhabited by a clearly South American mentality. People are working hard but there are outdoor cafes everywhere to sit and watch the city go by. Drivers are crazy, sliding past each other at high speeds where no lane exists, but somehow the cars are intact and undented, which indicates that the system works well. The city is dirty; even our posh hotel by the water lacked clear air outside. Everything is cheap. We ate at one of the finest steakhouses in the city, and my lomo,equivalentelent of filet mignon, was 18 pesos. That´s $6.25. Finally, people may work hard, but they also party hard. The clubs stay open all night, and the locals go to afterhour parties that start at 7AM. I would come back to this city.

After 11 hours of sleep, it is 8:30 and I´m ready to hit the breakfast and then the slopes. It´s the middle of August, and I get to snowboard for a week. It snowed all last night. I feel pretty lucky.

Here are some pictures: