Check it out!

We are now the proud owners of a website:

http://www.mendoza-hostel.com/

Enrique has one now too:

http://www.eljarillal.com/

Unwell

This is our car, Manuel.

He is a 3 litre, 2.5 ton Ford Falcon - this is the reason he is a he.

Named Manuel because his number plate spells "unwell" to me, but he is Argentinian so I had to change it.

He has very comfy bench seat, and not so comfy suspension, but we're working on that.

He is a beast of a car. 

He runs on LPG (a little slow, but strong and steady) as well as on petrol (he's a 3 litre, 2.5 ton ford falcon, so we try not to do this too often.)

Cleaning, cleaning and more cleaning

I lost track of which day it was yesterday, and when Enrique laughed at me I said, "Every day is like Sunday here." But I was wrong. Everyday is more like Friday - you have to work, but not too hard, and you can stay up late at night. 

Seems the start of summer rains have come. It rained a storm this morning at about 8:00. The far dorm is still leaking, even though Nico fixed the roof, seems we'll have to get a more permanent solution for it. Enrique thinks it will rain tonight and maybe tomorrow and then it will be summer.

I spent the day yesterday cleaning the rest of the house and waxing the floors made of ceramic tiles, the tiles create all the dust in the house and the only way to stop it is to wax them. Lucky it is liquid wax that goes on really easily. Even so, it took me 5 hours to finish up, and the waxing has to be done every two days for a while - until the tiles build up a good layer. I did one more layer today before moving all the furniture back inside. Nico took a photo of me on my hands and knees this morning, so if anyone doesn't believe me I can post it.

It's damn hard work, so I thought I would cheer myself up by taking a few photo's.

This is our cat, Tita - really it is Putita, which means "little bitch", but we don't call her that. She eats anything you put in front of her, from salad to live mice.

And our dog, Toto - yes, from the wizard of OZ - who should really have been called Tonto, which means "stupid" in spanish. He's still just a puppy, maybe he'll get better. The worst thing about him are the ticks he brings home, some of them are full to the the size of jelly beans, and we have to pull them off and squash them. Yuk!

These are the positions these two maintain for the majority of the day, I guess it is Sunday for them every day.

We have two new additions to the family, Nico found two small birds, on the ground, whose nest had been destroyed by the hail the other day. He's feeding them bread soaked in milk and dulce de leche, caramel.

This is the new bathroom that Nico built, we all had a hand in painting it - I did all the white today. It has a nice new shower head that works very well. I am really looking forward to a shower there as soon as the paint dries.

We spent another 3000 pesos on building materials for the new house on Wednesday. I'm slowly working my way towards paying as much as Nico has, the only problem is with getting money out here. It is costing me R30 to withdraw R900. No one seems to allow people to buy pesos with a card here, not even at the airport.

Nico leaves tomorrow night to go an tour around with a friend for a few weeks, he'll be back before christmas. So I'm on my own - sort of, Enrique has offered to help me whenever I need it - and I haven't learned any more spanish since I got here more than a week ago. Bad Nell!

I'm sure I'll be fine. I'll practice shouting and screaming in spanish at the spiders...

Slogging away

Well, as we suspected, Sunday was a complete writeoff for us. We went to Sofi's sister's wedding on Saturday and had a BIG party.

The wedding ceremny started at 18:30, luckily it was only about 30 minutes long. Then we drove to Sofi's parents Bodego, wine farm, and proceded to have drinks and hors d'euvres on the lawn outside. The wine was spectacular, made by the family, and the champagne was equally as good. There were also a lot of Margueritas being served, since it was half a Mexican wedding.

At about 21:00 we were seated at tables on the other side of the buildings, next to the vineyards. There were several courses served, each from another country - mexican, argentinian, chilean, italian, etc. We carried on drinking and eating ourselves into the ground.

Then the party started.

First a waltz, just to get everyone on the dance floor, and then the music didn't stop till after we left at 06:00 Sunday morning. The bride and groom, friends, family, old people, children, everyone stayed up and dancing till into the early hours of the morning.

Man these Argetinians know how to party!

So We didn't do any work on Sunday. I only got out of bed at 15:00.

Yesterday it hailed on us. First they were the size of small marbes, then big marbles, then they were golf balls. It wreaked havok on our poplar trees, stripping branches and leaves. It also made a few holes in the roof of the far dorm room - luckily I cleaned in there already, otherwise it would have been a mudbath.

Aparently it hardly ever hails in this area of town and Enrique says never this big.

We are getting somewhere with the new hostel.

Thought it was about time to show some photos.

This is what it looks like so far. 

The poles mark out the outside of the main house, which Pablo is building. Nico is building the two bedrooms on the one side, and Arlington - yes he is an argentinian - is buiding the kitchen using local stone on the front side.

The path you see here, leading up to the house from the driveway is going to be a set of stairs. I did that all myself, and I have the blisters to show for it. Those little wild thyme bushes are spikey bastards.

I am also getting on with cleaning the old house. It's taking a while because I have to work myself up to do one room. It starts with cleaning all the cobwebs off the ceilings and walls, and I HATE spiders. Funny enough, I don't come across any of them while cleaning, not live one's anyway, but I have killed three large spiders, one small scorpion and several other bugs since I got here - not to mention all the things we find in the pool. The house is very dusty, and I have to sweep each room about three times just to make a dent in it, with time in between for letting the dust settle. It's hot work.

We go into town about once a day, to Nico' disgust, but I am the money man now, and I have to withdraw money slowly - none of the banks or money exchange places will let me buy pesos with my card. I think my bankactually put a stop on my card the other day because I have spent so much on it here in the last few days. Got it sorted out though.

I have also used MS publisher to create a very basic website for our hostel and Enrique's horseback riding business. I have asked Pia, the expert, to see if she can fix them up a bit, and put them on the web. Watch this space for the URL.

A for Away

I have finally arrived in Argentina, and I must say that Nico has done a fantastic job here.
The old house, the temporary hostel, has had the kitchen changed so that it is on the inside of the house and the new bathroom looks great - it just needs a shower-head and it will be up and running.

So far we've had a grand total of three guests. Three Dutch girls stayed here one night after going on a hike with Nico, Enrique and Sofi - it snowed on them up in the mountains...
Hopefully things will pick up a little soon. Enrique brings his horse-riding guests over to our place after their ride for beers and we show them what Mendoza country life is like, hand them a few business cards and hope for the best.

The new house is also coming along nicely. The corner posts for the skeleton of the house are all up and Nico has started building the bedroom walls. The builder, Pablo, was very happy to see me when I arrived on Wednesday - it seems Nico had run out of money and promised him that he would get some when I arrived.

It seems Oswaldo, the property caretaker, has decided to move on. It means we save P$500 a month for his pay, but we now have to do all the watering of the garden ourselves. This is not a small feat, remember we are pretty much in the middle of a desert. We have a constant stream of water to the property, so we just move hosepipes around during the day - Nico is slowly teaching me the watering process, on both properties.

I've started giving the place a good top to bottom clean - it's been boys living here for the last few years, and their idea of clean is not exactly what a hostel should look like. I've managed to do the kitchen and the new bathroom so far. hopefully I wil be able to do the rest of the house early next week, perhaps with a bit of local help. There are a lot of spider webs, and spiders, here that I don't do too well with...

One big piece of news is that we have decided to change the name of the hostel. Seems some of the hostels in town have heard of what's happening up here and are a little upset that we may be taking business away from them. They're angry with Enrique, and we don't want him to lose any business. So the new name of the hostel is:
Los Carolinos

I will leave the url for the blog as is for now, but will change the e-mail address and the url for the hostel website - when I finally get around to doing it.

No photo's for now, will get some time to upload them next week. We're going to Sofi's sister's wedding on Saturday evening, and I think it's pretty much a write-off for Sunday - since these people don't go to bed before 5 when they party.

Opening soon!

I've been receiving an e-mail a week or so from Nico, updating me on progress on the hostel, just haven't had a lot of time to put it up here.

We've secured the existing house for another year and we're in the process of renovating it - changing the kitchena dn bathroom to suit more people.

Here are a few excerpts from e-mails from nico regarding everything:

"the new bathroom is about half done, building it with bricks, me and enrique are doing it together, without builders to see how we go, trying to keep the total cost below 1000 pesos, this includes making a door into the house and closing up the kitchen with a door into the house as well."

"bought a fridge, bike and double mattress at an auction, a good price for all. also bought the ford falcon and paid for the land"

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"steadily getting on witht he bathroom, have bought all the plumbing bits, about to finish the roof, walls are almost done, then its the concrete floor and finishing it off at the end, still don't know what we are going to use for hot water cant find those instant hot shower heads anywhere...
the falcon is going well, you have to get an international drivers license before you get here.
cleaned up the place the other day after finishing off the kitchen, also planted a new lawn, should be ready in a few weeks. So just gotta find some cheap single beds and sheets and finish the bathroom, then we can start having people in.

"doing the bulldozing on friday for the new place, the drive is not nearly good enough to get trucks ect up there yet. then will start with the foundations there in a week or two once this place is done"

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"So another week gone, the bathroom is coming along, but been busy sorting out the top property for the bulldozer, one we tried to get could not get up our drive!!"

"got a builder to do the main house, still waiting for his quote, he suggests we do it in wood rather than bricks it almost half the price, quicker and better insulation summer and winter"

"I strill have to buy a few more single beds and sheets and complete the bathroom then we can start having people over, at the moment when enrique rides he finishes at the hostel for a beer, so people can see the place."

"I have a guitar and hammocks"

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"kitchen is done, built 4 lockers, and lawn is growing well, but bathroom is still not done, the owner of the place came around and said he wanted to change a few things for the bathroom, so waitung for him to supply some tiles and stuff.... so looking like about a week away still,
but have got lots of beds now, so can take people if they really want to.
also been busy with the builder we are gonna use, checking out options on the build... if we do it in brick or stone its gonna take more time, cost more in materials and difficult to insulate, so looked at some houses he had done before using a wooden structure rather than bricks, all the houses in patagonia are built like this, good insulation, cold and hot, qucker to build and cheaper in materials.... also looks cool, see pics attached for the idea of how the walls will look.
still gonna build that stone kitchen and i will build the bedrooms at the back, that should neot come to more than about 3000 pesos or so."

"redid the drive as cars were not able to get up there, the bulldozer was 450 pesos for 2.5 hours, it looks much better now, we can start getting sand and cement and wood up there and start the building!!!"

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The other good news is that Nico's friend is now only arriving on the 30th of November, which means we have a full ten days to do a handover of everything rather than the three hours we had before she changed her plans.

We're also in the process of setting up an official website for the hostel and Enrique's horse Riding business. I will post the URL here when it is ready.

And the word is: GO!

Nico is now in Mendoza and has started the ball rolling on everything.

He has secured us the existing house, across the road, for another year, so we are going to start there. We are going to build onto the bathroom and revamp the kitchen, clean up the rest of the house and build six or seven beds and lockers. 

Then we will start up the hostel - small at first to see how we get along with it.

He has also decided to buy a car from Enrique and Sofi, because a truck is just too damn expensive. They will be buying a truck and we should have some use of it when necessary.

At the same time, we will start building on our property, just the main house at first.

Nico has done some invetigating while he's been there and it turns out it is not going to be as cheap as we first thought - same as with any building project, right? - but it is also not going to cost us the earth.

We chat online when he gets himself in front of a computer back in town. It is a strange feeling knowing that he is there, right now, working on our little project, chatting to Enrique and Sofi on a daily basis,  spending our money...

I cannot express how excited I am about all of this, still a little scared and very nervous, but so very, very excited.