Comunidad Mapuche

I left my chord in Bariloche, so no pictures for now, but so far the lake district has treated us well. Weve gotten lost a few times for lack of road signs and correct maps, but we found our way into town and then to the cheapest campsite in the area. It is located in the comunidad mapuche. The Mapuche people are the indiginous people of Argentina so I think we were basically stayed on a reservation. We turned off the gravel road onto a dirt one that almost took out our car several times. We drove past houses with people hanging out in the afternoon sun, sheep, a rooster and its chicks, and beautiful woods. We finally arrived at the lake and parked the car about the steep path that lead to the camp sites and set everything up. It was too late to go swimming, but everyone around us was playing guitar and it was pleasent enough to make a fire and cook an amazing dinner of choripan, caramalized onions and rice. Since we didnt have a metal grate at our disposal we were inspired by Lost and we found a great big cooking rock. We surrounded it with coals and cooked the chori right on it!
After dinner we had drank enough wine to get the courage to join our fellow late night campers on the beach for some song and drink. They had two guitars, and they were from the city. They welcomed us and hoped we knew the words to the English songs they loved, but the only one we knew all the words to was an Alanis song. Chris and I rocked it. Kinda funny. They were so curious about us and asked all kinds of questions. My favorite was when they asked us if we had a group of friends like this that got together every weekend and did fun stuff like sing alongs and asado. I thought about my friends in BA and said of course!! and then got a little sad when I realized I should have answered with the past tense. They are all still there of course doing fun stuff like that, but without us...
Enough sad pants....moving on...
The next day we went for a beautiful hike that almost tore my calves to shreads and then let the delicious cold water of the lake sooth our muscles and clean the dirt off us. Josh and I headed out to a small island close to shore but far away from our beach. We sunned ourselves on a rock and watched the families around us paddle around, jump off rocks, and take in the sun. On the way back I watched as a family piled onto an inflatable matress and paddled towards our beach. Their beautiful brown chubby limps all melted into one as the sun drowned out my vision of them and I turned my eyes toward shore and a game of cribbage.
For dinner we got more cooking rocks and made burgers and filled ourselves to the brim as the family next to ours had already donated their left over asado. I eventually rolled myself to bed and now we are back in town and heading to another lake!