Made it to Argentina!

Thursday January 17, 2008

Not a good day. I can’t remember the last time I was this sick. I woke up this morning feeling ill to my stomach. And then surprise. Diarrhea. Then throwing up. Awful. I was sick all day long, couldn’t hold anything down.

Marcia went in the morning to get her passport papers taken care of at the embassy. Unfortunately she, too, was very sick with diarrhea all day. We all made it to the airport, but Marcia and I kept having to run to the bathroom. Being on the plane, feeling like I was going to throw up at any minute, was not very fun. The flight from Santiago to Bariloche was only 2 hours but seemed to go on forever. Maria and Mom were telling me about the fabulous view out the window, over the Andes. I couldn’t even bear to look out the window. We flew over the volcano that just erupted 2 weeks ago and it was still smoking (so they said, if I were to look out the window, I myself would’ve erupted.) I made it all the way until landing and when we were walking out of the plane I had to grab one of the little bags that they put with the magazines and make use of it. Looking back now, it’s pretty funny because in all the times that I’ve been on a plane, I never thought that I would have to use one of those little throw up bags. I know we’ve all thought it, who that poor soul would be who would have to use it, how embarrassing. Well, that was me! Ha! At the time I was just happy to be back on the ground. I am so weak that I can’t even lift my own luggage.

Maria and Michael met us at the airport. They brought 2 vehicles – Michael’s crusty and dusty Nissan Patrol that he has to jump every time to start it or give it a push down a hill to pop it into gear, and Maria Luisa’s Nissan small truck thing. I don’t think they make you smog check vehicles down here. Every car has a lovely black smoke trail following behind. But then, nobody drives very fast to get anywhere anyways, so maybe they just don’t worry about it. You don’t have to have kids in car seats. And most taillights are out.

They drove us through Bariloche, a nice working town on the side of a HUGE lake called Nahuel Huapi. Because of the European influence, there are many chocolate stores, no doubt I will indulge when I’m feeling better.

Frannie and Marcia stayed the night in a 5 star hotel – Swiss Chalet style – the Llao Llao, (pronounced Jao Jao), very famous here. The rest of us stayed in a quaint hotel. We were all supposed to go to a fancy dinner at the Llao Llao but I couldn’t even think about food, let alone go very far from the bathroom. So I stayed in our hotel room and everyone else went to dinner. I was fine with this because it was nice just to lay down and rest but then I started running a temp. Not fun.