Christmas in Bariloche

Christmas was naturally a little different this year. 8,000 miles from home, we'd had very little in the way of a build up, we were in a country where they don't really celebrate Christmas Day, (preferring Christmas Eve), and not a turkey in sight.  However, we did have our great mate Jarrod over from the 18th December, which gave us a real connection with home, and also it rained incessantly, which by all accounts made it feel very British indeed, especially this year. 

Plus we were on a budget, so no extravagant 2 metre Christmas tree, we found a delightful little tinsel tree, and managed to make some great decorations with the boys, whilst cutting down some fir and holly branches from the garden to adorn our cosy little log cabin. 

Jules and the boys with Jarrod in our Christmassy cabin

We'd decided by about 21st December that because we'd missed all the usual school and social Christmas gatherings that help engender the Christmas spirit, and because our Macbook only had 2 Christmas songs on iTunes, we'd need to invest in new Christmas Music. I confess to not having read the blurb very carefully, so our first iTunes purchase had 45 songs, for £3.99, the most recent of which was a warbly crooner with a Christmas hymn from about 1934. We threw caution to the wind and invested a further £9.99 to get the bunch of familiar ones which just about every retailer in Britain has on continuous loop play from early October.  But we hadn't heard any since last Christmas, (including Last Christmas), so it was like (another) old friend joining us.  

We had a Skype call with my parents on Christmas Eve, which really gave our Christmas a boost, and then headed out for an alpine meal in the evening, the highlight of which was a very messy and not entirely unseasonal Chocolate fondu. Needless to say the boys adored it.

Frankie:  Yum yum in my tum!
Louis: Wow, that can't be good for you!

The boys were unsurprisingly up early on Christmas Day, delighted that Santa had soldiered all that way with a Lego toy for each to make. Fortunately they had managed to build these by Boxing Day in order for Jarrod to very kindly take them back to England for safe-keeping. (Santa has elves to do all his packing for him, otherwise he'd have realised that there was no way the Lego would fit in our rucksacks!)

Thanks for coming all that way, Santa!

After a few more presents, some champagna (they aren't allowed to call it Champagne here) and a few more aborted Skype attempts to Jules family - the high winds overnight had unfortunately taken down Internet in the entire area - we headed off on foot to a nearby hotel where we'd booked lunch for Christmas Day. The place was practically empty, but on the plus side, it meant that the cinema room they had was free, so we finally managed to watch Top Gun together, which the boys were really looking forward to, as indeed were Louis and Frankie. Not on a par with "The Snowman" for Christmas spirit, but a lot of fun. 

Four bottles of Malbec wine and a sumptuous meal of roast lamb later and Jules and Jarrod tell me that since I was asleep on the sofa, they decided to see how much fruit they could arrange on my head.  Fortunately there are no good photos of this occurrence, and I am sure no-one would believe that I could fall asleep on such an occasion anyway.

We did miss family and friends especially as our Christmas was so short, and we've promised the boys we'll be starting extra early next year, so look out for invites to November gatherings!