Wednesday, March 11th 2015
We thought that by taking an early bus we might actually accomplish something here today, but that wasn't the case. We walked straight to the hostel (Hostel La Angostura) from the bus station and had lunch: the veggie burger and empanadas from the bakery and a sampling of the cookies, crackers and sweet bread. All of it was really good!
We found a guide book on the book shelf here for Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay. After lunch Jeff was flipping through it and stumbled upon some information about Paraguay requiring visas. The book is a few years old, so in order to figure out more we did some internet research. This took up a lot of time and we still are really certain of what the deal is, but we read a few travel blogs from other people that give us a general idea. We have to apply for a visa before we get to the border (possibly in a town we hadn't planned on goin to), we have to supply proof of income (credit card or bank statement), we have to provide passport sized photos, proof of onward travel (plane ticket) and pay a sum of money in US dollars somewhere between $65 and $160. This really stinks! We hope it's the lower number.
Once we felt confident we knew enough about the visa situation, we decided to get out of the hostel for awhile and go buy bus tickets and food. Only to find out it was siesta time! Geez, we always do this! We were able to buy one bus ticket, for a ride we will take on Sunday between San Martin de Los Andes and Mendoza, but would have to come back later to get the ticket from here to San Martin. While we waited we went and looked for sunscreen and had to settle for terribly poisonous awful sunscreen, no natural sunscreen around here. On the bus ride in I had spotted a Mamuschka chocolate shop, so we stopped in there to have a few chocolates and to get a souvineer tin that I saw in the window of the Bariloche store this morning. I also spotted a produce store from the bus, so we went there as well and got fresh local strawberries and salad fixing. On the walk back we were able to get our bus ticket out of town.
Once back at the hostel, I spent a few hours catching up on blogging. Luckily I was able to use a real computer to type! I got pretty far behind with blogs during the trek in Torres Del Paine, because I wasn't able to make an entry each day, since I had to conserve my phone battery for 8 days of photo taking and no charging the whole time. I did a good job, the phone was at 1% battery power at the end of the trek! I was also behind because we've had a string of hostels with lousy Internet. Now I am all caught up again.
After a long while at the computer, I saved my work and we had dinner. Veggie patties from the produce store in Bariloche, on whole grain rolls from the whole grain bakery in Bariloche, with tomato, onion and avocado and a salad of lettuce, tomato, carrot, cucumber, bell pepper and avocado. It was a fantastic dinner and we were left feeling ultra satisfied!
We spent the rest of the night going over plans for the next few days. It's looking like tomorrow might not be so nice out. It was way too hot today, got up to 34!!
Our hostel is very popular. Last time we were in this town, we came to this hostel, but it was full and we had to go elsewhere. It's in a nice log cabin and has a pretty yard and front deck surrounded by rose bushes. The house next door had some of the best monkey puzzle tree specimens we have seen! For 200 pesos ($16) we are staying in a 5 bed dorm. When we walked into the room, it appeared to be a 4 bed dorm, and we didn't understand why the lady told us 5. A little while later we noticed their was a little shelf in the vaulted ceiling where a 5th bed was tucked away! I immediately claimed this bed! Other than the loft bed, there is nothing particularly special about this hostel. And 200 pesos is a little high for low season prices. As we travel North it will be getting cheaper for us, we can expect to find 100 peso dorms! For this we are excited!
Thursday, March 12th 2015
Hostel breakfast today was nice (white) bakery rolls and homemade peach and plum jam, plus of course dulce de leche (caramel spread). We supplemented it with lots of fruit, bananas, kiwi and blueberries. We are in a town that is skipped over by most international travelers, so the hostel is predominantly Argentineans. It is strange for us to watch them at breakfast and see them spread caramel sauce all over their roll and struggle to finish just the one roll, many of them don't finish it!
We managed to get out of there pretty quickly and went into town to rent bicycles. For 150 pesos ($12) the bikes were ours for the day. I even got a bike with a basket! Utilizing the basket we carried a new load of produce from the vegetable store back to our hostel, then set out again. We rode about an hour North on the highway (15km) to Lago Espejo (Mirror Lake). This is supposed to be the warmest lake in the area for swimming, but it was a little windy when we arrived, so we just had a picnic instead. We had peanut butter, apple and avocado sandwiches on our nice whole grain bakery bread. Sadly we finished our last jar of peanut butter, with no hopes of getting more in sight!
On the ride back I encountered a blackberry bush. Jeff was a little way ahead of me and didn't see me stop. Eventually he figured it out and came back. He usually gets annoyed when I stop for berries, as this is a frequent occurrence on our hikes in Alaska (or anywhere there are edible plants!), but I had found the mother load, and he gladly joined me! Once we had each enjoyed numerous handfuls, we filled our empty peanut butter jar with more for later enjoyment.
Before returning to town we stopped at another lake which we thought might be a little more sheltered from the wind, Lago Correntoso. The beach turned out to be just as windy and the view was looking smoky. It turns out it wasn't smoke at all, but fine volcanic ash particles blowing around from a previous volcanic eruption, I guess it gets stirred up every time it gets real windy.
<Río Correntoso, worlds shortest river.>
Lago Correntoso is connected to the main lake Nahuel Huapi (same lake as Bariloche) by the shortest river in the world, Río Correntoso. We decided it would be fun to swim in the shortest river in the world, so we spent about a half hour swimming below the bridge over the river. Whenever we swim, the locals look at us like we're nuts, other than wading they don't seem to go in much! After we got we went up on the bridge to admire the view and saw lots of signs saying no swimming and no jumping off the bridge! Oops! There were also a number of memorial plaques, like the type you see on graves, of children. Kids that died jumping off the bridge? We don't know...
After the swim we decided it was time to go back to town. We were almost back when we made a spontaneous stop at a tea house (Casa de Té Margarita) that I had seen on Tripadvisor as the #1 eating establishment in Villa La Angostura. Once inside we couldn't resist trying some of the wonderful cake offerings: carrot cake and Black Forest! They were so incredibly good that we decided we would go back tomorrow. We even went as far as trying to move our bus ticket to a later departure, but they wanted to charge us 30% for it, which we weren't having!
For dinner we had coleslaw, mashed potatoes and corn on the cob. We also tried a "fancy" 60 peso (less than $5) bottle of wine, but it didn't taste any better to us than the 89¢ box! The wine we got is a Patagonian wine called Postales del Fin Del Mundo (Postcards from the end of the world). I swear I've seen that brand in the US. It would be interesting to see what it sells for back home.
I found the free food cupboard in the hostel after dinner and acquired about 4 lbs of brown rice, a head of garlic, two onions and a carrot!
Friday, March 13th 2015
We were ready for breakfast right at 8 when it starts, so that we could be hungry again to go eat at the tea house before our 1 pm bus to San Martin de Los Andes. We had thought we might go for a walk to a lake (Laguna Verde) in the mean time, but we ended up just staying at the hostel. I was able to get caught up with blogging, which was real nice.
After a 15 minute walk, we arrived to the tea house at 11:30. It seemed much closer by bicycle! We had originally thought we would have a full tea service complete with cake and bread and all kinds of other delicacies but we worried we might not have time, so we settled for a pot of tea a loaded waffle (2 layers of waffle, chocolate chips, berries, chocolate sauce and chocolate frosting!) and a decadent brownie with an alfajor cookie layer. We also took some cookies to go and a loaf of whole grain bread. One of the owners was our server and recommended a few places to eat in San Martin. We will dream of one day returning to the Case de Té Margarita!
We got to the bus station with about 10 minutes to spare, but the bus was late! Then people had to get off of it and get luggage and new luggage had to be loaded, so it was 1:30 by the time we left! We could have had full tea service!
The drive was not far, maybe about 70 miles, but it's on a winding road that is famous for nice scenery. It's called the 7 lakes route. You pass by 7 lakes as well as rivers and mountains that are all the remains of what was once a heavily glaciated area. The road used to be dirt the whole way, and it was when we were here two years ago, but now it's paved most of the way. There was some construction going on today, but it appeared they might finish the road soon.
In San Martin we are staying at Hostel Ladera Norte (for 160 pesos). They have the best stocked kitchen of any hostel we have found so far! They have a blender, it's the first time we have seen one of those and I want to make smoothies real bad! They also had a nice free bin in which I found split peas and two nice tomatoes, so I made us split pea soup out of entirely free items! I used the garlic, onions and carrots I got yesterday, the dry split peas and tomatoes and some spices from this hostel. It turned out very good. I love making soup, it's so easy and most of the time comes out nice!
We haven't done much else since arriving, just dropped our laundry off to be washed. And we have been trying to decide what we will do tomorrow.
Saturday, March 14th 2015
We thought we might take a boat across the lake today and go hiking or rent a car and drive to Parque Nacional Lanin, but since we didn't make any arrangements yesterday, we ended up doing nothing. It turned out to be good that we hadn't made plans because one of my contacts broke! I wear hard contacts, and they are not easily replaceable, and I don't see as well with my glasses, so I was quite worried about how the rest of the trip would go and what I could do about it! I figured there wouldn't be much hope today since it's Saturday. I decided my best be would be to wait until Monday and see if I could somehow get another contact in Mendoza. I have only broken a contact once before, and that was 7 years ago! I'm not really sure how this one broke. I was cleaning it just like normal in my hand, like I always do in the morning before putting it in my eye, but it felt kind of weird, so I took a closer looked, and it had cracked in half.
We figured we better get out of the hostel for awhile, so I asked the hostel owner where we could find a produce shop (Verdulería). He made a mark on our map for us and we set out to find the place. It turned out to be a very nice store, not as good as the one in Bariloche, but better than the grocery store. We got broccoli, green beans, stuff for salad and fruit. From now on we will shop at produce stores, they make me so happy!
We dropped off our produce and decided to go to the grocery store too, to get me some baking soda to wash my hair. The grocery store we usually shop at is called La Anonima. There is usually at least one in every town we have been to. San Martin is very upscale though, it's a ski resort town, filled with all kinds of fancy houses and vacation rentals. So the grocery store is the fanciest we have seen. As a result everything was orderly and in stock! I was able to find the plain soy milk, that I haven't seen since El Bolsón and also the (milk free) Cadbury Dark Chocolate that we bought one time in El Chaltén and also the vegan whole grain Cachafaz cookies we also found once in El Chaltén! So I am quite pleased!
After shopping we went out for a late lunch at a German style brewery called El Regional. It was recommended to us by the owner of the tea house in Villa La Angostura and it is also rated #1 on tripadvisor. We had nice stout beers, french fries, papas bravas (angry potatoes! french fry cubes with spicy seasoning) empanadas and veggie strudel. A cat came to visit us and lounged in Jeff's lap while we waited for the food. We learned the cats name is Elvis, and although he lives in the house next door, he spends his days in the restaurant eating scraps. He was cross eyed.
After lunch we were stuffed and went to lay in the park beneath the shady branches of the monkey puzzle trees. Every town has at least one public square park. They are usually decorated with nice trees and flowers and a fountain or statue of a prominent historical figure. Laying in the grass in a common pastime. While we had our rest I read to Jeff from one of our recent blog entries, the one about Torres del Paine, cause he never has any idea what I've written about until they are posted!
On our way back to the hostel we picked up our laundry, which only cost 50 pesos, $4! Much cheaper than Puerto Natales! It was hard to find a place last night that could wash our clothes in just one day and have them back to us today, and all the laundry places are closed on Sunday, so that was another reason we couldn't be out sightseeing all day, we needed our clothes back! I wish that self service coin laundries existed here.
While we were walking around earlier we spotted an optometrist (during siesta time), and discovered it would be open from 5:30 to 9! We of course went back and it turned out to be very easy for me to get contacts! Luckily I knew my prescription, and all I had to do was go to the counter and ask for them! I got a pair of Bausch & Lomb one month contacts for 160 pesos, or about $12.50!! I am so delighted! Now I don't have to worry anymore and can just visit the eye doctor for more contacts when I go home. (:
The rest of the evening was spent lounging at the hostel. Me catching up on blog posts, and Jeff reading. We were too full from lunch for any dinner!
Sunday, March 15th 2015
This morning we got to have a green smoothie with our breakfast!! The hostel actually has a blender, and not just one blender, but two!! We have yet to encounter a blender, we are lucky count ourselves lucky if a hostel has a good spatula, so a blender is just out of this world! We also ate a bunch of fruit mixed with the hostel corn flakes and our soy milk. What a joy it was to have cereal! We squirreled away our allotted bread and croissants for taking on the bus.
The bus left at 12:30 and we were really excited to have gotten the front row on the second level again, our favorite seats!! It unfortunately turned out that they were some of the worst seats in the bus, as it was a 7 hour ride and we couldn't see the TV to watch the movies (the screen was directly above our heads) and the AC was broken and it was 95 degrees in the bus most of the way, with added heat from the sun coming in the front windows! We are now off the bus and having a layover in a middle of nowhere town called Neuquén. In another hour we will board another bus for an overnight ride to Mendoza. We will be on the full cama or bed bus, so we should sleep well! Mendoza is the wine growing capital of Argentina and also the nearest big city to Mt Aconcagua (tallest mountain in the Western Hemisphere) so we plan to rent a car and do some hiking around Aconcagua and maybe do some sort of wine and horseback riding tour in town.
You certainly are having such wonderful experiences. Do you ever get tired of traveling?
ReplyDeleteThe food pictures are yummy. They make me hungry.
Yes, actually we do get tired of it! We have been ready to go home since the end of the O trek, but we continue to have fun and make the most of it. We are looking forward to resting when we get back to New Jersey and also look forward to being able to sleep in and not do anything and not feel like we are wasting a day!
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