WEEKEND TRIP TO VILLA GESELL

Dorien Kuijntjes (24), Dutch intern
Study: Culture and Language Studies, main course: Latina America Studies



After exploring Ramos Mejía for two months I was ready to discover a new place! During eastern weekend we had some extra days off so my lovely colleague (Marianne) and I decided to go to Villa Gesell. As Lonely Planet states: This beachside town is looking a little worn out alongside its newer, more upmarket neighbours, but it’s still a hit with the younger crowd, and has a more bohemian feel than the flashier Pinamar.

Well, a hit is was and we did taste a little bit from the unconventional (bohemian) lifestyle. After a slightly boring bus trip (apparently it is quite common for Argentines to sleep during the trip) we finally arrived after eight hours at a little dusty bus station. We took the very first taxi to our hostel and we were really amazed by the cosiness of this village! There was only one paved main road and a small sandy road that led us to our hostel (surrounded by dunes and pine trees).
After some (more) hours of sleep at the hostel, we took our beach towel, mate and our new bought thermos (like Argentines do, nothing else you need except your mate) and we went out to explore the beaches of Villa Gesell. We were warned by our colleagues that the beaches would be crowded because of the Eastern holidays… Well, the contrary turned out to be the truth! We were almost the one and only visitors of the Atlantic coast of Argentina. We sunbathed a little bit, drank some mate, listened to some music and finally ended at a beach club drinking cocktails and enjoying the sunset.

Once back at the hostel we invited ourselves for a typical Argentine asado (barbeque) with two guys from Rosario. The thing I like most about having an asado is that everybody can join! For this reason we ended up together with almost every guests from the hostel (the hostel is not that big) and we had a very pleasant evening.

The next days flew by and we did a lot of activities with our new friends. By our headmistress we were instructed to make a lot of Argentine friends and we were only aloud to speak Spanish… Well! I can assure you that we did! Together we had a wonderful time in Mar de las Pampas (a little village in the woods near Villa Gesell), we went to the beach, shared some mate and ate a lot of choripan (sandwiches with meat, what else!?).


The last day we had to relax a bit and recover our breath from this huge Argentine immersion! (In fact we wanted to do something we planned ourselves because our friends were very busily and active planners the days before). So… we decided to make a huge walk at the beach to the house of Don Gesell (the most famous and desirable man of Villa Gesell because he founded this village) but of course not without having some stops at different beach houses to have a lunch, coffee or eat some cake with dulce de leche!

All in all we enjoyed our stay at Villa Gesell very much and I would like to recommend the hostel to everybody who is planning to make a trip to Villa Gesell (http://www.ladeseadahostel.com.ar/)! And finally I would like to thank my lovely colleagues, the foundation and in particular Eugenia (because she organised our trip to Villa Gesell while she was very occupied organising things for the Dutch event –you can read about this event in the article named ‘Nederlandse middag groot succes!’-