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We left the *sigh* dreamy utopia of the Algodon and moved into a mediocre hotel in the centre of town with dreams of white-water rafting and careering around in the wild woolly canyons of the Atuel dam, just down the road from San Rafael. Our plans were scuppered though by a change in the weather.Yup, just our luck to be stuck in a desert on the only 2 days they have rain per year. All we could do was peer forlornly out of our shabby window and observe the darkening sky before turning back to our rickety old bed, throwing ourselves down on the cheap nylon quilt and disconsolately turning another page of our books. Bri still hasn't finished colouring his in yet. Boom boom.
As we were becalmed we took the opportunity to go into the bank and complain about an incident that took place just before we left Mendoza when Bri tried to withdraw money from an ATM at the airport. The machine went through all the whirry clicky noises they make just prior to depositing a large sum of money into your hand, only to be left with nothing but a sinking feeling. A notice on the machine told us to ring a telephone number, which we duly did. But perhaps because it was a Sunday there was, typically, no answer.
So into a branch of the bank we marched in high dudgeon, having rung Lloyds in the UK and been told to sort it out this end.We spoke to a couple of people with limited English speaking skills before ending up with their sort of PR person who had obviously been pushed out front to deal with our feeble little sortie. As he umm'ed and ah'ed and explained in faltering English that there was nothing they could do and that we would have to take it up with our bank at home so Bri got increasingly more irate.
'So, what you are saying is, if I don't put in a claim for the money which YOUR machine went through the motions of counting and which I never received, I won't get a refund? he asked, simultaneously over-estimating the poor man's language skills whilst fixing him with a steely glare, before continuing his rant. Without giving him a chance to understand the question, never mind formulate a feeble response Bri continued, in full flow by now 'Therefore what you are telling me is that every time this happens and not reported your bank just keeps the money. Is that right?' he demanded, almost, but not quite adding those immortal words 'We are English you know, we don't put up with this sort of behaviour from foreigners'. Well, of course it was a battle we were never going to win. We listened some more to his pathetic excuses and exited courtesy of the small gusts of steam emitting from Brian's ears.
For the record, the money was quietly credited to our account 2 days later and it only cost us about £2 in transaction and exchange fees. That and possibly a slight loss of dignity in the San Rafael branch of the Banco de La Nacion.
We left San Rafael and headed back north to Maipu, just outside Mendoza.It's an intense wine growing region with lots of bodegas to visit, wines to sample and vineyards to admire. We stayed at Club Tapiz, a boutique hotel that has 3 friendly llamas guarding the swimming pool. They are so friendly that they rush up to you rather enthusiastically, like over-eager schoolgirls at play-time, when you enter their territory.Bri decided they looked so cute he was going to brave feeding them an apple.He was almost nudged to the ground by snorting, toothy woolliness before throwing the fruit to the ground and beating a hasty retreat behind a sunbed, laughing nervously and hastily abandoning his Doctor Doolittle pretensions.
That evening we dined in their smart restaurant, drank a bottle of their finest Torrontes and, after perusing the pillow menu for a few moments, settled into our snuggly double bed, pulled our Egyptian cotton sheets up to our little sun-kissed necks and prepared for a deep and wine-induced sleep.
At 3 a.m. I woke up and as I couldn't go back to sleep I picked up my book and my ever-ready wind up torch and decided to read for a while until I felt sleepier. At 3.40 a.m. I was still wide-awake when the bed started to shake and I turned to Bri ready to poke him in the ribs for interrupting my novel with his annoying 'restless leg syndrome'. The bed shook more ferociously, and the floorboards started to creak and twitch as if we were aboard an old ship on a particularly turbulent night on the High Seas.Bri turned over, wide awake, and I realised it was a bit more than his innocent twitchy limb that was causing all this movement. We stared at each other in disbelieving horror. 'Earthquake' we both gasped. I swung my torch around the room. Everything was moving, particularly the large colonial wooden fan above our bed which was swinging gently back and forth.
Gradually the shaking, rocking and creaking abated and we lay there stunned into silence. Finally we laughed, relieved to still be in one piece and congratulating ourselves on having survived our first ever earthquake.
The next day we had no power in the house due, apparently, to someone having stolen the copper piping from the electrical fixings down the road, so we had no television, an instant source of irritation for Brian as he had been looking forward to a day of indolence and Saturday football watching. At breakfast with the other 5 guests we all talked of our harrowing 'earthquake survival' stories assuming that the quake was limited to the Mendoza region.One guy had a Blackberry and the lead story was some aquarium in Dubai needing 3 divers to fix it after it had sprung a leak.He did later admit that he had been reading headlines from The Sun.
The other guests left and we settled in for a day around the pool.Bri was unable to fully appreciate lying on a sunbed for the day next to a large inviting pool under a clear blue sky, as he was still a little tetchy about the lack of television. He also felt a compelling urge to burden me with his irritation every few minutes, mistaking me for someone who was interested.
At mid-day one of the girls from the hotel came over to tell us that we could watch the television in another part of the hotel, whereupon Bri slowly disengaged himself from his sunbed muttering that half the games would be over but that it was better than nothing. She said that, actually, we might like to watch the CNN coverage of the earthquake in Chile. We were stunned. It was the first we knew that our little tremors were part of a much bigger, stronger and devastating occurrence. We watched the dreadful pictures of collapsed buildings, ripped up roads and dazed people realising how close we had been to one of the largest ever recorded earthquakes.
And there we stood in our dripping wet costumes, wrapped up in big fluffy towels seeing these pictures of horror as outside the sun reflected on our glittering blue swimming pool and the baby birds outside the window screeched for yet more food from their exhausted parents. We were booked on a bus to go to Chile in 2 days. We are very, very lucky.
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