A couple of weeks ago now back in mid November, I went to Villa Gesell on the Atlantic coast. The idea was to have a weekend away from Buenos Aires. Things did not quite go as planned; the road signs on the highway were not very helpful. What should have been a 3 and half drive took 5 hours as we missed a turn somewhere. And then we spent another hour looking for a particular hotel in the middle of the night; it turns out the hotel was no longer a hotel. We did eventually settle on a place and for me, it was quite good; the hotel staff were very friendly and one of the staff Andrea spoke very good English; she had actually lived in London for a spell and helped as much as possible to make the most of our time in the Villa. The hotel is called Olas. And it is more of an apartment hotel. The decor was minimal and functional; one of the hotel we saw was so incredibly garish; it would have been kind of surreal to have stayed in the room we saw.
Villa Gesell is a popular destination in the summer; at the time we were there it was fairly quiet. So there was not to many people on the beach. One can imagine how in December the place will be just heaving with people.
One of the amusing things about the place, was all the dogs just roaming about the town. If I was a dog, I think Villa Gesell would be a good place to be. It is not as built up and densely packed as Buenos Aires. I am not the only one who noticed the dogs so did Rob Brucker on his blog. Funny that.
It was quite clear for most of the weekend but the weather was quite chilly at times. We did go horseback riding through the sand dunes and alongside the ocean. It was great. This was the 2nd time I had ever been on a horse; the first time was just for an hour lesson in North London some years ago. We went riding on both Saturday & Sunday. The first horse that I rode was just a bit stubborn; the second one actually did move and it was quite a sensation to be galloping on the beach. One point, there was a brief hail storm while we were riding. The people at the estancia (ranch) were ever so friendly and accomodating. Jorge, one of the people from the ranch, said that between the 2 rides, I had improved greatly. Most of the people at the ranch only spoke Spanish. So it was good chance for me to try to speak Spanish and I did ok.
