Bariloche (02/26 & 02/27)

Saturday, February 26th 2016

Breakfast at our hostel this morning consisted of cake, thin slices of hard French bread, with really sugary jam, butter and dulce de leche (caramel) for toppings and corn flakes with liquid yogurt to pour over top. In addition to these items, tea, coffee, hot chocolate powder and hot milk were available. We had corn flakes mixed with hot chocolate powder and lots of blackberries that we picked yesterday. The hot chocolate powder down here is just cocoa powder and powdered sugar, it's really good. We also had a few slices of the French bread, but it never seems as satisfying as the wonderful dense traditional Chilean bread rolls. 

After breakfast we moved from the Tango Inn Hostel near the bus station to their downtown location. Our main goal today was to have our hiking uniforms washed. Luckily we were able to just turn the laundry in at the front desk of our hostel to be picked up later in the day. It was a cold and windy day in town and our only clean clothes were shorts, so we ended up wearing shorts with long underwear pants underneath. My long underwear are pink and my shorts are black with teal stripes, paired with my blue and yellow smiley face shirt, red jacket, striped socks and Teva sandals, I was looking good!

We did lots of errands today. Acquiring pesos was the first thing we needed to do. We prefer to change dollars if we can get a good rate, and avoid ATM fees. Also in the past ATMs had withdrawal limits of 1000 pesos, and with the current exchange rate, that's only about $65!! We went to several banks and were told they didn't change dollars, and that only the exchange houses did. The exchange houses are out to make a profit though, so they don't offer the official rates that the banks are supposed to. We really don't understand since we changed money in a bank in El Calafate. Mitre Street is the one in town with exchange houses and also the street we used to go to the get black market rates for dollars. We were surprised as we walked down the street, there were still guys standing on corners and outside of the stores offering cambio or money change to passing tourists. We continued past them and got in a very long line at the exchange house. While I waited Jeff went in to check the rate. It was 15.1. Moments later some random man walked up and offered us 15.2! We figured it was better than standing in line, so we followed him to the curb where he set his stuff down on the roof of a parked car. He called the spot his office, then carried on changing our $200 dollars for us. I guess since the currency is so unstable here people want their saving to be in US dollars and prefer to get a better rate by changing their pesos directly with tourists than with the exchange houses. It was a mutually beneficial transaction.

Once we had pesos we went to a watch repair shop to get me a new battery for my watch. It had died during the Cochamó hike. I'm in the habit of checking my watch so frequently, that whenever it dies, I feel disabled until the battery is replaced. I was surprised how easy it was to find a watch/clock store (relojería), we just happened to see one on the way to change money. The battery only cost 60 pesos ($4), that's cheaper than the Asian watch man at the swap meet in San Diego!

After the watch battery was taken care of we went to investigate a few of the chocolate stores that Bariloche is known for. An Australian couple that we met at our campsite in Cochamó told us that one of them had real raspberries dipped in chocolate and that they were heavenly. We went to the two most popular store, Rapa Nui and Mamushka, but did not find the raspberries. We did find that both stores now sell really nice dark chocolate bars that they didn't have in previous years. We decided we would go back and stock up on some for our camping trip when we do our grocery shopping tomorrow. We took advantage of our time in the chocolate store and got several truffles and other chocolate covered delights to sample. I asked at Mamushka if they had any chocolates with peanut butter and was rudely informed that they don't work with peanuts! Argentinians really don't like peanut butter!

After chocolates we continued being Señor Turista and went out for ice cream at Jauja. Jauja is said to have the best ice cream in all of Argentina. The type of ice cream that is enjoyed down here is Italian style gelato, since many Argentineans have Italian roots. It is quite good, with many unique flavors made with regional fruits and berries, like red currant, gooseberry, Calafate berry etc. Jeff got an almond flavor and a peanut butter flavor (we were pretty amazed that was an option), and I got pineapple-ginger and blueberry.

After ice cream we acquired some groceries to make lunch at our hostel. We got a bag of brown rice from the free shelf at the previous hostel and decided we'd have beans and veggies to go with it. Again we experienced the apocalypse mentality of shopping in the grocery store in Argentina, the store was overly crowded, looked ransacked and took an extremely long time to check out, so long that I let Jeff go back to the hotel while I waited. We had a delicious lunch of rice and beans with roasted eggplants from the prepared foods section and small salads of lettuce, tomato and onion, also from the prepared foods counter. There are many restaurants in Bariloche we like to eat in , but we also really enjoy eating healthy cheap foods in our hostels when we have access to a kitchen! It's always so hard to choose between the two.

Also on our list of things to do was to check in with the mountaineering club and get a map for our upcoming trek and ask about the trail. We had initially planned to take a bus to Pampa Linda, a small settlement that sits at the base of Tronador volcano and do a hike called Paso de Las Nubes (Pass of the Clouds). The trail goes over a low pass on the eastern side of the volcano. I recently found out we could hike to Pampa Linda through Nahuel Huapi National Park in 5 days and managed to convince Jeff that it was a good idea, so now this is what we will do! It will be 5 days hiking over mountains and through valleys to Pampa Linda, then 3 more days hiking over Paso de Las Nubes. At the end of the Paso de las Nubes hike we will have the option to continue back into Chile, which is what we will do!

There is a produce place here in town that we love. It has the best produce in all of Argentina, that we have found anyway! We tried to go there to buy produce for lunch, but sadly we arrived during siesta time, so we went back later to get supplies for dinner. They have lots of prepared salads and precut veggies, so we got a nice salad with lettuces, corn, tomatoes and cabbage and a stir fry mix, with quite a variety of veggies, including pea pods, egg plant, carrots, onion, corn, broccoli and zucchini. We also got some big beautiful peaches to eat for breakfast tomorrow.

Our remaining errands for the day included going to the whole grain bakery, Lo Integral, for some whole grain bread to have for breakfast, instead of more white bread. And we also went to their health food location that sells peanut butter! They had many other delights like organic soy yogurt which we got some of and soy dulce de leche candies, which we also got two of. There were many other things I would have loved to buy, such as the variety of dried fruits and nuts and veggies patties and seitan, but I limited myself.

Sunday, February 27th 2016

We were very surprised this morning at breakfast that the offerings were much more exciting than our previous hostel, even though they are the same company. I guess our new place is more hotel than hostel. They set up a buffet table with whole grain bread slices, crepes, cake, corn flakes, and a big bowl of fresh fruit! We haven't seen fruit for breakfast in awhile, so that was especially exciting. We got to have bananas, apples and oranges!!

We went back to the produce place again today because yesterday Jeff saw a bag of tortillas chips in there and got it in his head they he wanted chips, guacamole and salsa. Tortilla chips are not a common store item here. We have found them in Chile before, but they are usually imported and expensive! The produce store sells homemade pico de gallo style salsa, which we bought some of, along with the tortilla chips that are made in Argentina. We mashed avocados with white beans, lemon juice and salt and had a fantastic lunch, along with another prepared mixed salad.

Yesterday at the Club Andino, we were informed that we needed to register our trek with the National Park Rangers and that we would need to register again in Pampa Linda for the Paso De Las Nubes portion. We never registered our trek last year, but decided we would do it anyway. We had to fill out an online form (using their computer) with emergency contact info, insurance info if applicable, the places where we would camp each night and also check boxes that we had all necessary survival gear, such as tent, sleeping bag, stove, map, compass, etc. The ranger who approved our registration was rude to us and tried to tell us the weather would be horrible and he hoped we had good gear. He also told us there was no food for resupplying in Pampa Linda. Our guide book said their was a Club Andino campsite in Pampa Linda with a well stocked kiosk, so we went back to the Club Andino to verify. The lady at Club Andino didn't seem to really know for sure, so we decided we had better bring extra food with us from Bariloche.

We changed more money today, this time in a souvenir shop. We went during siesta time and only found one lady offering cambio, at a rate of 15.1. We went back into the Rapa Nui chocolate shop to get chocolate bars for the trek, and also a few more individual chocolates for sampling today. We completed all of our grocery shopping today. We got pasta and pasta sauce, cookies and crackers, dried fruits and nuts, mixed berry jam, canned veggies and beans, oatmeal, bread and potato flakes. 

We also bought a card for the bus and loaded enough pesos onto it to get us to our trailhead tomorrow. The bus card is something we had forgotten about and given away the last time we left here. We will hold on to this one, because I am sure we will be back. The cards are annoying for tourists, but nice for locals I guess and the bus drivers too, since they make the bus system cashless.

While we were walking down the street we ran into Lina, one of the Americans completing the trek from El Chalten to Villa O'Higgins at the same time as us. She is actually from Sweden originally, but now works for Google in San Francisco. We invited her to come to dinner with us later that evening. We had decided to visit a very popular steakhouse called El Boliche de Alberto. It was recommended to us by the same Australian couple that recommended the chocolate dipped raspberries. They said it was so good that they were making a special trip back to Bariloche just to eat there!

Between lunch and dinner I spent some time doing blog typing and uploading photos. Our hotel had a computer for me to use, which makes it so much easier. My phone didn't last long on the Cochamo hike since I was using it as a watch and also for looking at our maps in addition to taking photos, so I wasn't able to do the blog write ups each night like I prefer.

Our dinner out was nice. I had meat for the first time in a year. The previous time was also in Argentina, last year, when I tried a tiny bit of llama. This time I tried lamb, since it's a Patagonian specialty. At this restaurant, the chef comes around and takes your order, then gets busy at the grill. There are only a few options for cuts of meat, and you choose between a full and half portion, a full portion is 1 1/2 pounds! Lina also got lamb, and Jeff had a ribeye, which is his favorite steak. We also got monstrous sides of salad and french fries. I thought I would be more disgusted by eating the meat, but it tasted just the same to me as if I had never stopped eating it. I have never loved plain pieces of meat like streak or chicken breast, to me it's just another part of the meal. I tend to prefer the sides, and this time was no different! Overall it was a nice meal and an interesting place to try.

After dinner Lina treated us to ice cream at Jauja for my birthday. It was nice talking to her. The last time that we saw her was when we arrived to Villa O'Higgins. We camped at a different place than they did. (It was nice to hear how their trip North went compared to ours. The other two Americans she was traveling with have since moved on to Peru.)  They got stuck in Villa O'Higgins for a few days because they didn't know about the private bus that we took out of there. They tried unsuccessfully to hitchhike to Valle Chacabuco from Cochrane. That made us glad that we had decided to do the hike through Reserva Tamango, Valle Chacabuco and Reserva Jeinimeni. They also got stuck in Coyhaique like we did, but they ended up deciding to fly out of there, since the bus situation to the North wasn't looking good either. So in the end they had to skip a little more than we did, but also saw some things we didn't see. It made us feel better about our time along the Carratera Austral and doing the best we could with the bus situation and weather. Sometimes it's out of our control and we must accept that we can't see everything!

Nahuel Huapi Lake in Bariloche with lots of neat lenticular clouds.

A ginormous chocolate bar at Rapa Nui and my silly clean clothes for wearing while laundry was being done

The only organic soy yogurt we have ever found in South America

Nice veggie and rice stir fry we made in the hostel with a veggie mix from the produce stand

Soy dulce de leche candies

Mexican style lunch. We can't wait to eat Mexican food in the US again!!

Main plaza in Bariloche with typical architectural style for the town

Not the best photo with reflection, but this is the main window at Rapa Nui chocolate shop

Huge "rams"of chocolate in the display case at Rapa Nui

The chef at Boliche de Alberto

Calafate berry sheep milk ice cream and mint chocolate chip

Jeff had chocolate and peanut butter