Playa Bonita. The dark land in the center is one of the left most island in the Cerro Otto picture.

Cerro Otto looking just South of West. The inverted U shape on the hillside in the far distance are ski slopes on Catedral Ski area. I don't know how much or how good snow they get in the winter, but this looks to be a pretty sizable resort.

On Cerro Otto.

On Cerro Otto, take by Zoe.

We slept in too late to rally for Easter mass in town. So we hung out the house until mid afternoon, then took the Teleferico (sort of like a two cabled gondola built by the Austrians) to Cerro Otto. Great views of the surrounding area.

This is looking NE from Cerro Otto. Bariloche city center is just visible at the middle of the right side.

This is looking west from Cerro Otto. Just visible at the top left corner is Tranador. We left the battery charger to our good camera at home (doh!) so are using the camera Naomi's Dad gave to Zoe. So these pictures have pretty bad contrast. Anyway, Tranador really looms up behind the rest of the mountains which you just can't sense from this picture. The Andes here are not really all that high (Tranador is only 11k) but they really jump up right out of the high(ish) plains.

If you click on the pictures, they get bigger

View from Cerro Otto looking north over Nahuel Huapi Playa Bonita (our house location) is just to the left of this picture. It's blowing like stink on the Lake today, you can see the lee behind the two islands.

Our rental house is one block from Playa Bonita. Our rental Fiat Punto or whatever is good training for any horse back riding we might do. Like riding a horse, commands are so much a command as a request. Like "hey, it would be nice to accelerate, but if you're not willing that's cool too"

Well we're not exactly starving in Bariloche. The produce is like southen Europe, not always perfect looking, but tastes like the best of San Francisco's Farmers Market.

Baked goods are like northern Europe. Apparently the Germans who settled here brought their cook books!

I think produce cost about $6 total, the wine $10 and the trip to the bakery about $5.

2009 US NATIONALS -- DAY 1

Crewing for the nationals was Emily East, Mike Bishop, Sarah McNaboe and Jen Scaring.

R1 -- Moderate flood. Breeze over current on the downwind leg paid big...almost!

R2 -- Emily started. Race to the beach paid. Breeze on the way down.

R3 -- Sarah started. Jib broke 3/4th of way up last beat, had to finish with main only!