Mud bath

When Heike really wanted a massage but all the appointments were booked, her only option was to arrive before the regular appointments at the massage studio. Surprisingly, it was very easy for her to wake up at 7:30 am. And indeed, she was lucky because the masseuse was already in the studio 1 hour before her first appointment, so Heike could enjoy her well-deserved massage.

Completely relaxed, she then went to a bakery and bought all kinds of delicious things, but not without having a chat about politics with the baker. Argentinians love to talk about politics, you see. When Heike returned to the family, everyone was delighted. Probably more because of the bread rolls and treats she brought. At the breakfast table, Heike revealed a surprise to the family. The family was going to do a mud bath today. She booked this yesterday. The family's excitement was limited.

In the changing room, there was a small rebellion, which was quickly resolved by Christian's bathing shorts. Because Mattis couldn't find his swimming trunks.

When we all had our swimwear on, we positioned ourselves around a large barrel of gray mud. Overzealously, Heike reached into the gray mud and pulled her hand back, screaming this time. The mud was boiling hot. Burns could only be avoided by carefully taking mud from the surface to rub ourselves with. And even that was hot. But that was nothing compared to the pool we were about to get into. Since the pool was already quite full, we had the brilliant idea to go to a free spot. It didn't take long to find out why this spot was still free. Hot boiling water was coming out of the ground there. But we only found that out after Heike almost burned her foot. So we snuggled up to the others. We had to endure it until a friendly employee called us out of the pool. We were relieved after about 20 minutes. Then it was time to shower. It took quite a while to remove all the mud. Full of anticipation, we walked over to another pool, which was much colder. But after about 5 seconds, we were whistled out. We didn't know that after the mud bath, we had to wait for 40 minutes to be able to get into the next pool for about 15 minutes. All of this was meticulously recorded on thousands of slips of paper.

We should have seen it coming, because when Heike booked the mud bath yesterday, it reminded us a lot of our passport control from Chile to Argentina. Here, too, nothing happened without feeling like we had to chop down half a tree so that there was enough paper to put all the stamps on. There were also three little huts with different functions. In the first one, you had to register with your passport number and all personal data that would be protected by data privacy laws in Germany. In Argentina, you often have to provide your passport number for all sorts of things. Since, probably out of protest, we still haven't memorized it, we have become very creative with this. The second hut stamped the paper and in the third hut, you had to pay.

More or less relaxed, we drove to Villa Pehuenia. We arrived there in a good mood in the afternoon. But then it started... We had the agony of choice. This time, almost every accommodation was available. Since this situation was new to us, we couldn't decide on any accommodation. And so we searched for hours for the most beautiful accommodation. That was a big mistake, and we learned from it. It shouldn't happen again, because the searching doesn't do the family any good. In the end, we decided on an accommodation that we had actually seen near the beginning. After all the stress, we wanted to treat ourselves. So we went into town to have dinner. We chose a restaurant in a train. It reminded us of Mandy's in Heidelberg. That's why we felt comfortable there right away.

We had a very delicious meal and then went to our beautiful and clean bungalow, where we felt really comfortable.