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.
