A walk in the park.

Day 5

Chile only has long life milk for sale and this affects the quality of their ice creams and chocolates.  We drove into Mendoza with hopes of Artisan ice creams and chocolates made with fresh milk.  Our first port of call was the Parque San Martin were we attempted to have lunch by the lagoon but the gale force winds sent us scampering for shelter in our camper van.

We needed to stretch our legs and rugged up for an expedition around the lake.  The girls were running along this little retaining wall. Indiana tried to pass Truce and fell off the path and used a lamp post as emergency brakes.  She had a three centimetre cut just below her hairline bleeding very nicely.  Talluah pinched the cut shut and pressed a frozen burger patty on Indy’s forehead to slow down the blood flow.  I think this is the first time someone has had brain freeze from a frozen burger.

At the park’s information office I put on my best Spanish accent.

Mi hija cae y cortar aqui.  ¿Dondé esta el mas cercano hospital?

With the magic of the internet I’ll change the subtitles to English.

My daughter fell and cut here (pointing to forehead).  Where is the nearest hospital?

“How many people?” asks the man at the information desk.

Just one.  My daughter.  Is there some sort of limit on the number of people allowed to be hurt in one day?

“This one is nearby,” says Mr Information and shows me a camping brochure.

No.  Hospital.  Horsepetal.  Hospetarl.  Hospitál.  Perhaps my accent was off.  Later I realised that he thought I was saying hospedaje which is a type of hotel here.

He showed us two hospitals on our tourist map and we ended up in downtown Mendoza and decided that even if we did find the hospital this is not where we wanted to be.  We went to the central hospital and after doing two laps to find the entrance parked and went in.

Ignore the one-legged homeless man sleeping in the doorway.  The receptionist managed to look up from his YouTube viewing long enough to tell us they don’t treat children there.  An English speaking doctor came out and told us where the children’s hospital was but not before looking at the cut.  Even though they don’t treat children he felt the need to see if the cut had sealed or not.  I don’t know what his plan was if he made it start bleeding again.  Luckily it remained closed.  Talluah was ready to punch him.  She had just spent an hour compressing the cut only to have a curious doctor try to pry it open while Indy winced.  Off we went to the Children’s hospital.

We were shocked with the central hospital but the children’s hospital was another eye opener.  Talluah and I both whispered to the girls as we walked in “Don’t touch anything and try not to breathe”.  Talluah went to reception and was given a number.  We were 40^th in line.  We looked at the cut.  It had sealed up nicely and we decided that we would let nature look after this one and kept a band aide on it.  Unfortunately, all this hospital running around meant that we missed out on ice cream and chocolates but we did enjoy some great Argentinean steaks.

It’s been several days since Indiana’s fall and the cut seems to be healing on it’s own.  We’re keeping a close eye on it and when she’s older she can pull her fringe back and show her South American battle scar.