travel

Las Lenas Day 2

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The wind picked up during the night so the first couple of runs of the day were a little wind packed.

Magnus doing the classic “did I hit a rock?” check.
We soon found a face that looked good with soft snow, a quick 30 minutes hike up and off we go!



We like leaving our stamp in the snow, as you can see, there where still plenty of mountain to rip up!
After lunch we though that this was a good peak to hike.
We took the lift as high up as we could get, signed off our lives on a document and off we went to the words of “Loco gringos” echoing in our heads.
It is always comforting when you walk by one of these signs:
As always, we are well prepared with plenty of water and snacks for the hike… or not. But we made it to the top, the hike itself was not so hard, but the altitude and the thin air make me feel like I have a lung capacity of a 70 year old that’s been smoking all her life.
We made it to the top, the view was stunning, as usual with snow covered mountains!
The Andes
Magnus was the first one to click in the skis and throw himself out.


Johan was next.


And then Geico
He made a small tumble, but was soon back on his feet.

After this amazing run it was time to call it a day, we had planned to head down south to a different mountain to ski on tomorrow. We only had one last long run in the groomed tracks to get down to the car. My legs were so tired I had to make plenty of stops, when your legs are tired, there are two ways to get down: you either go super slow, making many 180 turns, or you just keep your head up and make a straight line down the mountain without doing any turns. The later is only recommended if you know the mountain well, or if it is fairly empty so you don’t have to be a responsible skier and be aware of co-skiers. I did a combination of both. During one of my many stops, Magnus came up me to asking “Man, can you feel the burn in your thighs?” -I was to tired to even come down in position to get the burns in my thighs! But I made it down safe and in one piece.
We were 4 people with luggage and equipment in one small SUV, it was a little tricky to fit everything in.
But since we are the Tetris generation, we managed to squeeze everything in and still have room for 4 people.
Or 3.5 at least. We only had an 8 or so hours trip ahead of us, so it didn’t matter if one of us only could get one cheek down, as long as the driver was comfortable!
Good Bye Las Lenas, you were awesome to us!
We had a fairly long trip ahead of us. We had planned according to the maps, that it would take us approximately 9 hours to get down to San Martin from Las Lenas on Ruta 40. If we were lucky enough, we would get there before midnight, and if anything came up along the way, we would only be a couple of hours away and we could to the last leg tomorrow morning and still have plenty of time to ski the next day.
But who knew that Ruta 40, a decent size highway in Argentina only had one lane? Once you got behind a truck, you had to stay there for a while before you got a chance to pass.
Or that a little later, the road would turn into a dirt road that was so bumpy you thought the car would shake apart if you went faster than 40km/h?
So, it took us a little longer than planned, I managed to fall asleep in the back seat and woke up in a town in the middle of nowhere where we decided to stay over the night. I have no idea where.

Las Lenas

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Traveling on long distance buses in South America is like travel business class on any airline, super comfy, and you get a little meal as well! It was a little chill on the bus this time, but there were plenty of room so we got some good sleep in before arriving in Las Lenas and hitting the mountain.
My two friends from Sweden picked us up from the bus, we jumped in the car as they had heard that you could park at the hotel a couple of minutes up the mountain for free, rather than paying the 60 pesos down at the regular parking lot.
We were all geared up and ready to go when a car pulled up and started to questioning our choice of parking spot… were we hotel guests? Did we have a room? We off course played dumb and did not understand any Spanish at the time, when the gentlemen in the car tried to explain in English, we played even more dumb and did not understand any English. After a while Magnus just said “Amigos” and pointed at the hotel which seemed to work as they gave up, said it was ok for us to park there and drove off. Yay, we were ready for some fresh snow after 50 hours of traveling!

But wait, we forgot about lift tickets… Magnus and Johan already had theirs as they got to Las Lenas a couple of days earlier, but me and Danny still had to buy ours, the problem though was that we were now at the hotel, and we had to buy ticket from the office two lifts away.
In proper el touristo manners we sneaked by the first ticket controller, and I sneaked by the second as well as she looked away, but for geico it was a no no, he could not even use his gieco charm to explain he was only one lift away from the ticket office.
Not a big deal, the rest of us just got the ticket for him and a few minutes later we were all ready to go.
Magnus and Johan thought it was a great idea to do a hike for the very first run, me and Danny was swearing and hating and regret that we even showed up in Argentina! Hello – first run… we’ve been traveling 50 hours straight, comes fresh of the bus and you guys want to do a hike! Didn’t we just buy lift tickets?


After 30 minutes of hiking straight up, Johan said this is good, we all agreed! But then he started to hike again, he is like a mountain goat!

The rest of us had enough though and stopped where we were letting him hike up the rest by himself.
Me at the in-run, waiting to do the first turn of the season!

Which ended like this…


I ate it in the very first turn 🙁 So much snow though that it didn’t hurt. A lot of people laugh when they see a ski or two up in the air, but it is a technique to master to fall correctly… you want to get the ski’s up as soon as possible to prevent to get all tangled up, break a leg or loose a ski in waist deep powder that if you are lucky will find two ours later. Got myself organized and managed to stay on my feet for the rest of the run. 30 minutes up and 30 seconds down, but it is so worth it!

Johan blazing down the mountain.


The Las Lenas ski resort surrounded by the Andes.


Happy geico after a good run!

We checked out the other side of the mountain after lunch, the lift took us up to the peak, but we traversed over to where the snow seemed better, we just had to cross some rocky patches.

Lots of snow!


After ski beer at the hotel, since I was the first one to fall, I had to buy the first beer.

We’d heard there were a supermarket somewhere closed by, so after the beer, we all jumped in the car, hunting for the market. We had a feeling it was located behind a gate so when the gate opened for a car, we sneaked in behind. This was a high alert signal for a security guard who came running towards us, waiving his arms and gave us time out gestures. Someone from the backseat shouted FLOOR IT! But Magnus, the designated driver would not listen and politely stopped. Here we go again… Spanish? No habla! English? What’s that? Supermarcado, supermarcado! – That didn’t work either, so it was just for us to turn around with the tail behind our legs.
We stayed at a newly opened hostel in the small village of Los Molles, some 20 minutes down from the mountain. Breakfast and dinner cooked by a japanese chef was included. It was only us 4 staying at the hostel, and it was nice to catch up with old friends I only see once every or every other year over a bottle of wine after a good day at the mountain.

Made it to Buenos Aires

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We made it to Buenos Aires 6 or so hours later than scheduled, it is always exciting to see if my bags made it or not. Since our flight were delayed, and we had a few hours in connection, I had a strong feeling they would make it this time.

The bags made it, we are in Argentina! Unfortunately super delayed so we missed the connection flight that were supposed to take us to Mendoza. Not much to do than to see if there was a later flight we could take. We were supposed to get into Mendoza around lunch time but would be fine as long as we would make it to 2:30am when our scheduled bus was supposed to leave.
The first thing we saw as we stepped out from customs was a McDonalds, awesome!
Since we already knew in Atlanta that we were gonna be 6 hours late coming in to Buenos Aires, we checked with Delta to see if they could book us on the next flight, they said there were only one flight a day going to Mendoza, so we had to wait for 24h or, check once we got to BA if there was another airline serving the route.
I thought Heathrow was the most unorganized airport in the world, but this was before I’d been to Buenos Aires international Airport. We went to the information desk, whom sent us to the domestic terminal to speak to Aerolineas Argentina, since they are partners with Delta it was no problem to get on the next flight out to Mendoza, leaving the same day, but 7 hours later and from a different airport. No problem, we would make it in time for our late night bus!
Aerolineas Argentina said we were on the plane, but since the ticket was issued by Delta, we had to go back to the international terminal to get our actual boarding pass.
Back to the international terminal we got sent to the Delta office, whom seemed closed, but a Delta employee pointed us to the Delta help desk which was on the other side of the terminal. Once we got to the help desk it was closed, we asked Air France help desk which was next door (and partners with Delta) and got informed the help desk opens 3 hours before the next flight leaves. Great, the Delta help desk would open up after our flight already left, but from a different airport, and the Air France staff could not help us. We walked back across the terminal with all our gear to the Delta office which now was open. They were very friendly, gave us a confirmation and arranged for a taxi to take us to the other airport.

Once at the other airport we had about 6 hours to kill, we took a stroll around Buenos Aires, had lunch and got back to the airport in time to check out what was on the menu. Any yes, the prices are in pesos and not in US$.

We finally made it to Mendoza, with plenty of margin for our bus to leave, so I bought a deck of cards. It turns out, an Argentinian deck of cards only have 48 cards, 4 x 1 to12. We asked if this was normal and, “yeah yeah, that’s normal” when we asked what games they play with the 48 cards, there was a long silence followed by “I don’t know”.
They know how to drink in style in South America, with 1 liter bottles of beers!

The bus arrived at 2:30pm and we are ready for a 6hour ride, heading south to Las Lenas.

On My Way to Argentina

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Got up early in the morning to catch a 10:15am plane to Argentina. Got to the airport at 7:15am only to find out our plane was a couple of hours delayed. Not much to do than to go get breakfast.

We made it to Atlanta a little delayed, we had plenty of time for our connection and started to wonder around the airport.
Only to find out our next plane was even more delayed, we were about 5 hours delayed by now, but why worry about tight connections in Argentina, when there’s airport bars in Atlanta?

Heading Back Home

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Heading back to LA after a great long weekend. When we had about 1oo miles left before hitting Los Angeles we saw snow covered mountains! My most favorite thing in the world! Now, who want to go skiing?

Back home and safe, some 20 hours in the car and 1110.2 miles later (1786.7 km).
We killed some bugs along the way…

Grand Canyon

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We got up early again to get ready for another 250 miles in the car. We checked the outside temperature in Lake Havasu.

86F (30C) at 7:30am!
After just a few miles of driving, we thought we’d reached the end of the world!
It wasnt the end of the world, but Seligman, an a small town along the historic Route 66.

An old western town, the whole town is kind of like a museum with old store fronts built up for the tourists.

Some original junk as well, here’s an old horse carriage.

I believe this is a replica, I dont think they had those kind of tires back in the days.

Not the original jail, but where the original jail used to be.
We all went potty before continuing.
A few hours later we made it to Grand Canyon, here’s a few selected photos.







It was kind of cool, but I was not as impressed as I thought I would be. I can look at snow covered mountains all day long for days and days and I can never get enough of it, but got a little bored with Grand Canyon after a while. I think next time I visit I have to hike down the canyon, that will probably blow me away. Instead of just looking down on it, feel like being a part of it would probably do.

It was off course still extremely cool, and I got super fascinated when I read about how it was formed; I thought the Colorado River once was this deep and wide and as the climate on earth changes the water in the river gets absorbed leaving a “tiny” stream of water down at the river bed. I had no idea that the river have always been as wide and deep, and the canyon is formed by gravity pulling the water down towards sea level.

Memorial Day Weekend Roadtrip

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Since Memorial Day weekend is a long weekend, we decided to take a road trip! Final destination is the Grand Canyon. We got up before the sunrise to get an early start, and the first stop was the gas station.

Who is excited?
Grand Canyon is pretty far from Los Angeles, so the plan was to stop in Lake Havasu to break up the driving a little. Google told us to take I95 south, which we did and ended up here.
We all quickly agreed that this was probably not the right town, so we turned around and continued on I40 instead. We eventually reached our first destination, Lake Havasu! It was super hot and everybody and his cousin was here to party over the weekend.
They all had their boats in shore, playing really loud and obnoxious music. Whoever got the biggest boat and can play the loudest music wins! It’s just as if Los Angeles had moved some 300 miles east for the weekend. Same crowd, same botox and same waxed chests. Leogra’s comment of the day; “Where’s all the chest hair? Maybe I should take my shirt off to show them what a real man looks like”
Every now and again they took the boats out for a spin on the lake. It was pretty crowded out there!
It did not take us very long before we wanted to shoot ourselves rather than listen to one more beat of that loud music, so we found a quiet spot at the end of the beach that served bears and burgers, perfect for lunch!
Besides the meat market by the channel, London Bridge is one of the major attractions in Lake Havasu. It was actually the original London Bridge that was sold, dismantled, shipped over to America and assembled here again. Why oh why? – Someone just thought it was a good idea.

I thought Lake Havasu would be the perfect place to order an umbrella drink. Well, it was not… The place we went to did not have an umbrella so we had to improvise.

It also tasted as artificial as it looked, so I only had a couple of sips before changing it out for a beer.

Happy New Year!

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Had a chill day today, went to an outlet and got reminded of how expensive it is in Sweden!
Got back home and had to snap a photo of the sunset.

New Years Eve

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We started off the day with some sledge riding.

The hill was not so steep, but the kids loved it anyway!

It was not as cold so it was more pleasant to hang out with Musse today.

Back inside to celebrate a late Christmas and the New Years Eve.

It is COLD!

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I woke up this morning and the thermometer showed -22.1 C, which is -7.8 F!

With 4 kids between the age of 2 and 5 you dont really have a choice but to keep them occupied and pretend it is not cold at all when they are complaining.
They proudly showed me their new horse, Musse the Welsh Mountain Stallion.

This is my parents place, where I grew up;

I had to run some errands in the “big city” and when I got back home, the kids had decorated the Christmas Tree, we are celebrating Christmas tomorrow, one week after everyone else.