Home » Argentina » Trip to Villa Pehuenia-Neuquén-Argentina

This is the result of a short vacation time, escaping from Buenos Aires, to a lovely place called Villa Pehuenia, still in the Patagonia, over the Andes mountains.

Trip to Villa Pehuenia-Neuquén-Argentina

Trucoto
2004-02-28 16:51:55

Displayed times (last time: )

This is the result of a short vacation time, escaping from Buenos Aires, to a lovely place called Villa Pehuenia, still in the Patagonia, over the Andes mountains. I have good friends there, who are devoted to tourism, trying to make their way there in spite of the Kafka-esque obstacles they find with the local government and the local people. I have learned many things from this journey, things that must be lived to be learned. First of all, the place where I was going to stay lacked the most elemental things from city life: electricity, water, and gas. The first one was not a real problem: the most important issues (light and refrigerator) could be substituted with batteries and the natural cold outside, respectively. As for water, there was a lake near the house, and every morning we had to go down and get full buckets to fill the tank for the house. Walking through a steep slope with a heavy bucket in each hand is not a pleasant feeling, but it's good to realize how many things we take for granted in the city. We used gas bottles for the kitchen and wood for heating. To chop trunks is not an easy task, and soon learned about new ways of using my arms. Every bit of heat in the house cost muscles and sweat. They say work purifies body and soul, and I must admit that is true.

Villa Pehuenia

Villa Pehuenia is a really small village (about 300 people live there, mostly aboriginals), almost seventy kilometers or forty three miles from the nearest important town, at the foot of a volcano called Batea Mahuida. The volcano is used for skiing, and that's the thing that attracts more tourists to a town where white people live almost entirely from tourism. I say white people because they are the minority; the aboriginals -they call themselves Mapuches, more information here and here- would call us "huincas", or white demons. The Mapuches own the land because they were there in theory before the Spaniards (in fact they were chased from ...

Pages: [1] 2 3 4 5