Project 365, Week 6

Lots of photos this week and even a video! We packed quite a bit into the week, with a trip to La Cumbre, another to Alta Gracia, dinner with friends one night, and Ivan and Tina took the Aerosilla up to the top of Carlos Paz. So let's not waste any time with wordiness. On with the photos!

All that talk about trips and fun stuff and my first photo is the bottles we're recycling. They don't recycle much here but we do what we can. We save these for our friend at the ferreteria (hardware store) because he buys huge containers of pool chemicals and then re-packages them in bottles like these. Obviously we need to stop just collecting and actually take him the bottles (it's been a few months).

On our trip to La Cumbre on Tuesday we stopped at the Eden Hotel in La Falda so we could get some photos of the hotel where Hitler supposedly vacationed (a rumor only, no documented proof) when the hotel was owned by close friends and Nazi supporters, Walter and Ida Eichorn.

The main purpose of our trip was to visit the Paseo de Los Artesanos, a winding dirt road leading into La Cumbre where a colony of artists have built homes, studios and stores. A lot of it was the same old-same old stuff we see in every tourist store in every city, but there were some unusual things too. We found gorgeous items handcrafted from alpaca silver at this place. Striking store front, isn't it?

I talked about the amazing meal we had with friends in Cordoba on Wednesday. Here's Guillermo getting dessert ready and then the final product. Gorgeous and delicious!

I've been working on a couple of small wall quilts with the idea of having a little etsy store to fund my fabric addiction. Here's the first piece I finished for it.

"Friendship is cozy, warming me like fresh, hot tea. Endless refills please."

Overcast skies and rainy weather pushed Ivan and Tina's trip up the mountain to the end of the week. Finally the sun came out long enough for them to take the Aerosilla (ski lift) up.

Even though it was looking a little iffy with the rain on Saturday night we headed to Alta Gracia once again, and this time the clouds blew over and we enjoyed our visit to the Encuentro Anual de Colectividades (Annual International Food and Music Festival). Here's a collage of  the Jesuit enclave that fronts the millpond where they hold the festival. Parts of it date from the 1600s.

We weren't so impressed with the food. Wanting to pace ourselves, we bought one thing at a time and shared it (the theory being that we wouldn't get full too fast). The bagna cauda from the Italian booth was pretty good but the stuffed pork from Poland, not so much. Shish-cabob from France was okay. The line at the German booth was ridiculously long when we were ready to get dessert so we grabbed something from Italy and it was disappointing. Oh well. Like fair food anywhere, there are really great things and not-so-great ones.

The only entertainment we saw before leaving at 11:30 was the Argentine folk dancers. Love their traditional costumes!


Make sure you stop by Sara's and check out the other Project 365 participants.