Argentina Day 13

We arrived EARLY in the morning, and didn’t sleep as we had hoped on the bus. We were tired. And I left  my jacket on the bus, so we had to wait for the bus to go up to Puerto Madryn and come back to drop off my jacket. Matias was supposed to pick us up in the terminal so that we could go to his place and sleep the morning, but he slept in. After 1.5-2 hours, the jacket was back, and we went to the hotel to drop off our bags. We lucked out big-time—they let us check in at 8:30 AM! Hooray! We went and slept for a while to get rested up for this new city. When we woke up, we ran to the store to get our normal groceries—bottled water, snacks—and then walked around centro looking for lunch. We found a yummy hot dog place I had heaten at on my mission and indulged in a fancy hot dog. For whatever reason, hotdogs are very popular in Trelew.

After lunch, we went over to the huge Dinosaur museum that opened right before I got there on my mission. It was pretty cool. They had a limited amount of fossils and bones that were actually found in that area. The highlight was easily the Argentinasaurus, the world’s biggest dinosaur (of course it is). They had a few leg bones, and it was indeed very large.

We decided to roam around centro and explore a bit, so we walked from Centro down to the Centenario church. It was a pretty long walk, but well worth it—we found that there were lots of people. I guess the youth were having a speech competition. I was peeking in the window and saw Matias, and he came out and chatted with us for a while. He had slept in, but all was well. Then, Noelia Azocar walked out. She didn’t recognize me, even though I said Hola to her. She sat down and then I approached her and said hola… noelia? And then she realized it was me and Hayley and jumped up and hugged us. It just so happened that Gabriel was coming to pick her up, so we went with them back to their place. Upon arriving and saying hey to the kids, we decided to go to Playa Union. Unfortunately, it was getting a bit dark by the time we arrived, but it was still fun to go to that beach with them. When we got back, we decided to do an Asado, so we went out and bought all the stuff we needed and got it on the grill. That family is a lot of fun, and has a lot of energy. They had been going through a rough time, and told me that it always seems that I show up whenever they are having a rough time. I told them no more rough times because I don’t know when I’ll be back! But we had a great asado and really enjoyed our time with them. We arranged for a FHE on Monday, and they were happy to shuttle us back to our hotel. We spent a lot of time with the Azocars, but it was well worth it- they are some of my favorite people in Argentina.  

 This girl, Noelia, was convinced that every day was her birthday. We literally heard "pero..... es mi cumple" 100 times per day from her. She was hilarious.