Barreal

Barreal

We left Mendoza after spending almost the entire morning with our friends across the street, our landlords and their family. We were excited to go, but Payton seemed to want to stay. She had also made some great friends. To drive to Barreal we had two routes to chose from and the one we picked seemed like the best option. This is what is was: Drive 1 hour south and then drive west climbing nearly 7500 ft to peak well over 10,000 ft on a seasonal road. Doesn’t sound bad, right?! Well, let’s say that this seasonal road is a creek/river bed that is etched across the mountain canyons with formed ice and sand pits throughout the road. It would be a great 4x4 adventure. However in the Kangoo driving in 1^st gear for a portion of the way and not knowing if we would make some of the inclines was a little nerve racking.

We arrived in Barreal, (which is famous far its car sailing on perfect sand flats) upbeat and ready to have a wonderful stay. The westerly view from this tiny (1000 population) town is amazing with snow capped Andes mountains as far as the eye can see. We arrived at our destination hotel, only to be astonished (really an understatement)!!! There was no availability at the hotel in this small town. We initially laughed because this has never happened to us before and since there were no cars in the parking lot, we were mystified. We thought we were being rejected because of our nationality. We left this particular posada (which was written up in many magazines and newspapers including the LA times) for the second best hotel in town. Let me remind you, this is a very small town. We were once again surprised to find out that they also had no availability. What was going on you ask… Apparently, there was a motorcycle expedition that booked the only nice hotels in town for this particular week. We ended up at a hostel, Jen said this is “as low as she goes” for accommodations. None of us walked around barefoot and I was the only one that showered. It was a place to stay and it included homemade toast for breakfast and coffee cooked the old fashion way (aluminum pot on a wood burning stove). Yippie Kiah!

There is only one restaurant in this town that is worth eating at, so we were told, and we showed up at opening hour only to find out that it was reserved for the night. By this time we were pissed. The motorcycle group took our nice Posada we wanted and the second hotel and now they are taking food from us. I DON’T THINK SO. After a lengthy, but nice conversation with the owners in Spanglish we came up with the important information of the reservation being at 10:00pm. Since it was 8:00pm we simply sat down and told them that we would be in bed by 10:00pm and that we would like to order. The owner/waitress laughed and started serving us German beer.

After all this amazing fun, we find out that it was the wrong time of year for car sailing. Basically, our trip here was a big out of the way MISTAKE!