Bariloche

Bariloche is by far the largest town in the lakes district, and for this reason we didn't love it like we did San Martín de Los Andes or Villa La Angostura. Both of those towns are small because there isn't room for them to expand since they are squished between mountains and lakes. This area is surrounded by a lot of flat land with lots of room to expand into, so as a result its quite large and when you are in town it's easy to lose site of the nature around, you can't see the mountains or the lake. In Bariloche there are even more chocolate shops than San Martín and Villa La Angostura combined! There must be 20 of them in a 3 block radius! We bought a few pieces and it's certainly delicious, but expensive! Ooh another neat thing is that all the towns in the lakes district have implemented a plastic bag ban, so all the locals have reusable bags or carry backpacks or duffle bags to the grocery store! I find this so exciting!

Bariloche is extremely popular with both Argentinians and foreigners, so we could only get a reservation at a hostel for 2 nights. This was ok with us as we are ready to move on to some different scenery. We chose to stay at Hostel Pudu which is supposedly run by an Irish couple. They were nowhere to be found. What ultimately sold me on the hostel was the promise (on the website) of homemade scones for breakfast, those were MIA as well! They were replaced with toast and dulce de leche (caramel spread). But we at least had a lake view from our room. The town is also overrun with huge rowdy high school groups on what we presume is their senior trip. So being in town was a little annoying.

The day we arrived we took a bus out to the nearby ski mountain, Cerro Catedral. It's one of the largest ski resorts in South America and was about a half hour away by bus. We gave our legs a rest by buying combination gondola chair lift tickets. It didn't take us all the way to the top, but close. All the silly Argentinians were playing in the dirty old snow pile at the top of the chair lift, but not us! It was only about another 500 ft elevation gain to the summit of almost 7,000 ft. The ride up was cool cause we rode through what looked like jungle up above the tree line to jagged rocks of yellow, orange, black and shades of brown. Cerro Catedral means Cathedral Hill and got the name from one of the rock formations looks like a cathedral spire. We spent a couple of hours at the top marveling at the glorious views of the lakes and the Andes mountain range along the Chilean Border. The most prominent mountain was the dormant volcano Tronador, the same mountain we saw on our hike in Villa La Angostura. It rises to about 12,000 ft (I give estimates since everything is in meters here) and is covered in snow and ice year round. There were tiny succulent plants growing out of the rocks, some with flowers and we spent much time admiring them. I love succulents, especially ones that can grow out of rocks and come back after snow!

I wore shorts because all the rest of my clothes are dirty and ended up getting burned on my legs and a mild case of sun poisoning. I have felt kinda dizzy and nauseated since then. We are very careful with our sun exposure here because it is very strong here, since we are under the hole in the ozone layer. Luckily it's never really hot here and pants and long sleeves don't give me a heat stroke. I also get to look like a real dork and stand out as a tourist in my omni shade hat, which includes a wide brim and back panel for covering the neck. Jeff has a similar hat and sun shirt, we look quite silly! But at least we will remain youthful looking in our old age!

On the ride back from the mountain we missed the bus stop for downtown, because it was not in the same spot we were picked up from. So we ended up at the bus terminal, which is about 5km outside of town. The driver refused to take us back even though he was going that way. So we attempted to take an urban bus back, but it turns out these buses only accept these special bus cards as payment. The line to buy a card was really long so we just walked. It ended up being a pleasant walk and we were happy because it took us past the cool stone cathedral in town and past a lovely German restaurant that we ended up going inside of called Familia De Weiss. It was in a cool log building. They had really good homemade beer, and I got to try venison, which I had never had and its a regional specialty. Jeff got goulash. Both meals came with the best Spätzle I've ever had. We left the restaurant feeling very pleased.

Yesterday we went on a tour taking us closer to Mount Tronador and into Parque Nacional Nahuel Huapi. We paid extra to have an English speaking guide. He did the tour in English and Spanish and was very good. (I could understand him in Spanish! He was from Buenos Aires, maybe they talk more clearly than the Patagonian people that are so hard for me to understand.) We saw some lakes along the way (Lago Mascardi and Lago Guiterriéz) as well as rivers and amazing views of the mountain the closer we got. We went all the way up to the base and got to see this strange jagged black glacier that is colored like so from rock slides falling on it and debris in the air, below it was a murky pool of melt water and above it were even more glaciers, and a wall of ice 300 ft tall. Tronador means thunder mountain, and we could hear the thundering of the ice cracking. We got free time for a short hike to a crescent shaped cliff face called Garganta del Diablo (throat of the devil!) a little higher up on the mountain and got to see probably 10+ water falls coming down the vertical drop offs. The water was coming directly from the glaciers up above and into a crystal clear river filled with boulders. We put our feet in the river for fun and it was so cold we couldn't keep them in more than a few seconds! The forest here was really neat, the guide called it a cold jungle or valdivian forest, which means there is jungle like foliage that can survive the snow in winter. That explains all the bamboo (caña colihue) we've been seeing! He said here China and Japan are the only places where you can find this kind of forest!

We would rather not have to do tours but there is generally no public transportation to the remote places we wish it visit. We really wish we had our own transportation! Argentina is as long as the US is wide and there is so much to see! We ended up buying another guide book, this one is a Footprint Guide for Patagonia and is more detailed than the general South America book I brought with us. The new book sums it up perfectly when it says that unless you have endless time and money, you must accept at the beginning of the trip that you can't see everything. I want to see everything! That's hard to accept! It stays light out until almost 10 and we are up and moving all day long, there aren't enough hours in the day!

We are now on the bus South again, this time to El Bolsón, a hippie settlement in a valley surrounded by mountains, rivers, lakes and lots of recreation. It's about a 2 1/2 hour ride and the bus is full of drunk, rowdy and annoying hippies! We can't wait to get of the bus and away from them and hope they aren't in our hostel. Our home for the next two days is La Casona de Odile, located a few km outside of town. And it should be a relaxing little piece of paradise! (: We had meant to leave earlier today, but buses were sold out until 5pm. So we put our backpacks in the bag check at the bus terminal and went back to the Familia de Weiss restaurant and spent some time lounging in the park. (:

**The app I use to post this blog with my phone doesn't allow me to put captions on the pictures or put them anywhere but at the end of the post. So you'll have to use your imagination and my descriptions to figure out what the pictures are of! Also the glaciers from the second days tour are hard to see in the photos since it was so bright out. Thanks for reading! (: