Carilo: Where Dreams Come True

Yeah. It's Monday night. So what? I was out of town last night and couldn't post.

Last week had a lot of potential and it lived up to the hype. Besides the fact that several weeks ago Argentina announced a brand spanking new holiday, it was Thanksgiving week and we had plans to go to the beach with a friend. So instead of working Monday and half of Tuesday, I only worked half of Tuesday for the week, and it was great. We took off for Carilo, a beach destination about four hours south of Buenos Aires. The city is a few square miles, and all of the streets are sand. It has a wonderful beach and several activities that we enjoyed.

In order to fully understand the depth of the comments I made above about the beach vacation living up to the hype, you will need some background. I spent my young childhood in Utah where the only beach activities were some Boy Scout camps on Antelope Island in the Great Salt Lake. Um, we did not swim or collect sea shells. My early life beach memories come from summers spent on the east coast, which included an annual trip to the U.S. Army's famous (have you heard of it?) Fort Story, Virginia: Home of Army Amphibians. Before you go thinking that the U.S. Army has a fortress to guard frogs and salamanders, these are big metal transport vehicles. They rumble down the road into the Atlantic. Coming from an Army family, we had access to the camping grounds and the beach at the Fort.

Now I know you have visions of North Carolina's OBX (Outer Banks for you west coasters), well, the OBX it was not. My memories include hours upon hours at the beach as a young boy where nobody told me that sunscreen might be a good idea. So the second through the fifth day of each Fort Story visit was pretty miserable (not measerable!). Also, the private Ft. Story beach just meant that the Army could leave things there, and we're probably lucky there was no live ordnance there. I just remember swimming in ridiculously cold Atlantic waters, stepping on weird pokey things in the water, being stung by jelly fish, and overall having a terrible time. I'm sure I had fun, but I guess those memories are crowded out by those thoughts, and let's not forget that I'm afraid of sharks. So beaches never held much appeal for me.

But Carilo was different. The kids LOVED it. Upon arrival (after being stopped by Argentine Federal Police, not being able to produce documentation that the car had Argentine insurance, going through an increasingly frustrating conversation with a policeman who had never seen a car with diplomatic plates, explaining that the fact that the car was released from customs was proof that it had the requisite insurance before he let me go because he didn't know what to do), we checked in and headed to the beach because the only thing Claire wanted to do at the beach was look for real sea shells. After our quick walk at dusk (when the beach gets cold), we headed back towards the hotel and I found a seashell. Claire could not stop giggling. She said that it was the best day of her life, and I had made it happen. Score one for dads everywhere.

I should also mention that before being pulled over during the Police's routine checks, we passed some missionaries. After deciding we didn't have room to give them a ride, we passed on by. Then we both remembered the life of a missionary and we flipped a u-turn, hunted them down and gave them some Pop Tarts. I think they were happy. I would have been happy. Be good to missionaries when you see them.

During our trip, another wonderful thing happened. Candace, who has oft-mentioned she hasn't slept through the night for nearly 6 years, slept through the night... allergies and all. It was at amazing. She was so pleased.

On our second day, we drove 90 minutes up to Mundo Marino (Sea World, or better Argentina's version of Sea World). While not as expensive as its Orlando and San Diego counterparts, it was, um, not the same. There was a Shamu-like show, some sort of displays, and some kind of shows. You remember the Hertz commercials: "There's Hertz, and there's 'not exactly'". This was the 'not exactly'. It was, however, a lot cheaper, kept us out all day, and we had a good time with our travel companions. If you consider going while ever in Argentina, it's a nice place to stop and spend some time if it's on your way somewhere, but I will tell you right now, it's not on the way to anything.

The last full day we were there was another victory for dads everywhere. We found some horses, and the 7 year old girl in the family we travelled with talked and talked about riding horses. We found and rode the horses. During the trail ride, she said, "This is the best day of my life."

So in short, not a bad week for us parents. Two declarations of the best days of young girls' lives, a mother who sleeps through the night, several days out of the office, a great road trip getting know more of the foreign country we live in, getting out of any kind of weird traffic ticket from the Argentine authorities, and returning safely.

Hope you all had a Happy Thanksgiving.