Day 75: Pucón, this and that...

Yesterday I took the bus from Bariloche to Pucón. That was very interesting. In hindsight I've got to say that probably everybody has heard of Bariloche but there are certainly more beautiful places. At least places which are smaller but just as beautiful. Most of the people I talked to told me to visit San Martin de los Andes. Didn't work out because I was so unnerved by Bariloche and a little under pressure to decide what to do next. But on the way to Pucón we passed Villa La Angostura. It's very touristy as well but much smaller and rather beautiful as well. Should you happen to travel in this area think about visiting this place rather than Bariloche.

All of a sudden we stopped and nothing happend for some time... Accident? Construction site? What's going on? Something which is a thing of the past in Europe... Border controls! It took us an hour to leave Argentina because the whole bus had to get out to get our passports stamped. Mine is getting fuller all the time. Then we reached the border crossing in Chile. There all luggage unloaded and a sniffer dog was brought along. We had to wait outside as the bus was searched. After an hour we went on... What can I say? Schengen (that's the European treaty obsoleting border checks within the union) rocks :-)

I'm rather fed up with hostels and only spoke very little Spanish. So now I booked a place via airbnb.com. Now I'm staying in the appartment of Maria and her fiancé David. It isn't cheap but much better than a hostel. The two own an appartment in Pucón in a new building. Nosy as I am I asked them how much they had to pay for the appartment. It has 78 square meters and if I understood correctly they payed about €200,000 in a tourist village with 6000 people. Wow, in local currency that's even more staggering, that's $1,500,00 Pesos. The exchange rate to the Euro is 1:750! All of a sudden I'm running around with $200,000 in my wallet! And I thought that I was rich in Argentina. However, today I've only got $150,000 left in my wallet. Life is not cheap in Chile either.

Also I'm challenged by the banking system in connection with time zones and changing exchange rates. In the evening of 26. of December I went to a Bank to get some cash with my debit card to pay for my hostel. However, as this was not enough I went to the same ATM on the 27. All of a sudden I get a message that I don't have sufficient funds! WHAAAATTTT, they must be joking!!! So I used my credit card, all good.

Then yesterday I arrived in Puón went to the ATM and same story, no money! WHAAAT!!! They must be crazy! So I wrote an email to my bank. They told me that the daily limit was €200.- and that they had raised it for me. What, daily limit? Didn't they read my email? Everything was fine on the the 26. and on the 27. nothing worked! Right, in Argentina. However, if you look closely then both transactions were on the 27th in Germany. Here it was the 26. but in Germany shortly after midnight of the 27. Figure that out... And because I was used to always withdraw the maximum of €150.- in Argentina I tried the same here, $200.000. However, that's a little more than €265.- which is above my daily limit of €200.--- So everything is fine, poor brain of mine.

So where did I branch off? Right, Maria and David, they both only speak Spanish more or less. At least their English is worse than my Spanish, perfect! Finally I've got to use my Spanish. This wouldn't be a Problem if I weren't such a lazy bas...

We went out to a bar to meet some friends of theirs. There we had some excellent food, "El Camino" right next to the casino. As it appears they are crazy about dice games. At least it was so last night. Take a guess as to the game they played? You'll never guess :-D

It was the game they played on the "Dutchman" in the movie "Pirates of the Carribian" :-D That was a lot of fun.

Now I've got to see what I can do here. It's raining all day to day, so....