Semana Santa

Semana Santa is a big holiday in South America celebrating the days leading up to easter. There were tons of people vacationing around Bariloche and out and about. On Thursday we headed up to Cerro Catedral, the biggest ski area in Argentina which is just a short ways from our house. We rode the chairlifts to the top (it was a chilly day!) and hiked around the lunar scape of rocks around the top and took in the view. It is a huge area and we all talked about coming back to ski here someday. Toby´s dream is for our next sabbatical to be all winter just as this one is all summer since he is bummed to have missed a precious ski season!!

Friday was beautiful and warm again and we took the buses out to Peninsula Llao Llao and hiked up Cerro Llao, a small treed peak that looks over the arm of Nahuel Huapi that heads into Chile. Photo above is us on the top looking towards Chile. The kids are always much better on days when we get out and about so after their spanish class we motivated them out there and they had a great time. When Toby got bored we described James Bond movies to him which kept him endlessly entertained. The kids new favorite game they invented is Toby and Cassidy world, which seems to involve describing what the world would look like if it was all made of candy!!

We also made a great new friend over the holiday, her name is Punky Brewster! She is a wild kitten who now is living the good life with lots of attention and table scraps at our house. She is a tiny little calico who appeared in our yard on probably the luckiest day of her little life. Fortunately our landlady loves her too or it would be very hard to leave her behind!! Here she is with Cassidy in our back yard.

They dont do easter baskets here so the kids and I made baskets out of wine boxes (appropriately!) and filled them with real grass. They also dont dye easter eggs so we spent the week leading up to easter experimenting with various natural dyes. Eventually crayons ended up working the best. Fortunately we are in the hub of fine chocolate and the easter bunny had lots of treats to choose from. The Pascuas Conejo obliged us with full baskets and eggs hidden in the house (safe from Punky). Then in the Meyer tradition we had to re-hide them over and over again outside after breakfast!