We left the big city for Mar del Plata on Saturday. I was expecting Mar del Plata to be a small beach side resort similar to Rehoboth. I was stunned to see the reality of another big city. And apparently all of the people who left Buenos Aires were there. Sunday the beach in Mar del Plata was packed, you couldn't tell where the sand ended and the water began because there were so many people. Oscar and I tend to be not so crowd oriented, so we were off in search of calmer waters. In our guide book we read about a beach called Chapadmalal, and set off to find it. While there were still a lot of people at this beach, you could at least pull up a parcel of sand and sit. The water was very refreshing, which was great given it was above 95 degrees! We had stopped in town for a sandwich, some cokes and chips and enjoyed our lunch in the sand.
On Monday Mar del Plata was a bit less crowded, we are guessing because the weekenders had returned to the bigger city, Buenos Aires. We did venture to the beach outside our hotel. Because we didn't bring anything with us we were able to swim in the water together, which as nice. Then we hung out on the rocks to dry a bit. Monday's day trip was to Balcarce, a town most famous as the birth place of Juan Manuel Fangio, a 1960s Formula One Race car driver. There is a large museum with all of his cars. My father would have loved this place, and frankly it was pretty interesting. I couldn't really read anything there, but the cars were pretty cool to check out. Many of them you could open the doors and look inside, much less hands off than in the US. I started to feel a bit sick so we ventured on to find some food. And again, our time to get hungry just doesn't mesh with the Argentines, no kitchens were open, though we were able to get a sandwich.