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For this second part of the trip, I choose to book a very basic hotel. The idea is to spend time outdoors, hiking and enjoying beautiful beaches. The hotel I book is a fairly typical small hotel on the beach, which has the bare minimum. There are tiles everywhere and the rooms are very simply furnished.
We have a great first week of vacation in BsAs, but a torrential downpour starts as we leave the city like controlled weather. It is summer and the rainy season, but the showers usually only last an hour. When I arrive at the the hotel, I realize that we are the only guests there. All the other families have canceled their stay due to the weather. For us, it is impossible: the reservation made online does not allow us to be reimbursed in the event of cancellation.
“No electricity before 6 p.m.”
The trip turns into a disaster. During our entire week of vacation, it rains non-stop. We check the forecast every hour, hoping that the weather will improve. It’s a waste of time. The sky is black and doesn’t show any clearing, any ray of sunshine.
Outside, the temperature has also cooled down and it is 17 degrees. It is cold and everything is damp. We left for Argentina with only summer clothes in our suitcase. We find ourselves wearing the jogging pants and sweater intended for the plane every day – our only covering clothes – without being able to do the washing.
There is also no electricity in the hotel before 6pm. As the weather is bad, it is very dark. To read, I have to turn on the flashlight on my phone. For wifi, you also have to wait until 6pm. The rain seems to overflow the sewers and there are smells of drains in the children’s bathroom.
“We watch the days go by”
We watch the days go by and they all look the same. Every morning, I wake up almost with a start, eager to know if it’s still raining outside. But every morning I hear the same sound of the rain falling, which I can’t stand anymore. The only common area of the hotel is a very small terrace, with the bare minimum, completely open to the sea. This is where we spend our moments of life, without anything to do and with the rain pouring down.
Due to the weather and the lack of tourists, the two beach huts that sell food are closed. Fortunately, the hotel owners ask one of them to reopen. To get there, the rain ponchos that we had bought in advance are not enough. We are forced to borrow the hotel umbrellas to cross the beach. We end up eating churrasco, a Argentinian specialty, at every meal because of the supply difficulties.
Despite the rain, we try one day to go out by boat – we give up on the idea of going hiking because there is so much mud everywhere. The outing is a failure. We can’t see anything on the boat. When we arrive in the main town of the island, the spectacle is just as sinister.
“A stay that brought us much closer together”
To keep ourselves busy, the seven of us spend the day in a room, with our flashlights, squeezed into a double bed. That’s how we keep each other company, tell stories or play games to pass the time. I resign myself to the fact that we won’t see these landscapes that would be idyllic without the rain and we put things into perspective.
Ultimately, I remember this vacation as a trip that brought us much closer together. The general atmosphere was pretty good throughout the week. We managed to stay positive despite the few moments of tension that we all experience at some point. I tell myself that I’m lucky to have great children – they didn’t complain about the vacation. Today, we laugh about it. When we went to the Dominican Republic this summer, as soon as it started to rain, the children exclaimed: “It’s the curse of Argentina!”
