Bariloche

As we drove into Bariloche, we were in awe of the beauty of this city.  It is situated at the bottom of a number of mountains, nestled up against a large lake.  We approached the city from the other side of the lake, so as we got closer and closer we were treated to some fantastic scenery.  As we stepped off of the bus at the main bus station we immediately noticed the drastic weather difference.  It was cold and very windy.  Not at all like the 30 degrees we were used to in Buenos Aires.  As true Canadians, we sucked it up and dug into our packs for our sweaters, long pants, socks, and shoes.   After being in Canada just a week or two ago in the midst of winter we were used to the cold, but a little disappointed that we had to bundle up again so soon.  In anticipation of a warm summer season in Argentina, we only packed one long-sleeve shirt each, so either we were going to have to do some shopping or we’d have to wear the same shirt every day for the foreseeable future.  So we hiked down the road a little ways and found our hostel that we had booked ahead of time.  It was easy to find because the town was quite small and we knew that the bus station was just down the road from our hostel. 

The town of Bariloche is very much a tourist town.  It seems to exist to support the skiing and snowboarding during the winter and the trekking during the summer.  The town is very similar to a typical mountain village that you would find near the ski-hills.  There were countless shops that sold hiking gear and a lot of expensive restaurants and hotels.  We quickly realized that staying in this town would put quite a dent in our budget.  The hostel we stayed at was twice as much as a similar hostel in Buenos Aires.

We were a little tired after our long trip, so we went out for a quick dinner, and then went for a nap at around 4:00.  We must have really been exhausted because neither of us woke up until 3:00am the next morning.  We decided to sleep for a bit more and then get up early.  So we got up sometime before 7, had breakfast at the hostel. 

Every hostel seems to have the exact same breakfast. Buns, jam or dulche de leche, coffee, and if you’re lucky they might have croissants.   Not the most nutritious breakfast, but we’re getting used to it.  Some eggs or fruit would be awesome, but so far no hostels have provided that.  The dulche de leche is really good.  It is very common everywhere we’ve been.  It is basically a milky caramel that they use to flavor almost all their sweets.  It’s in ice cream, cookies, pies, candies, and they use it as a spread on sandwiches. We’ve really enjoyed the dulche de leche ice cream.

The next day we needed to find another place to stay.  The hostel that we were at on our first night was unavailable, so we had to find somewhere else to stay.  We looked online for an hour or two, and not finding anything, we  decided to take a city bus to the center of the town to the area where there were a number of hostels.  We jumped on the bus and started towards town.  The bus became fuller and fuller until it was completely packed.  There must have been over 150 people on that one bus.  We couldn’t move an inch, and we could barely see out the window.  We had no way of finding out where we were so we ended up driving by the bus stop without realizing it.  After a few minutes later we realized our mistake, but there wasn’t anything we could do about it. There was no way we were able to get anywhere close to the doors to get off.  We had our big packs with us so there was no way we could get our bags and ourselves past the squished crowd to the doors.  We decided to stay on the bus as it had to turn around sometime.  The bus was driving along the lake and we could see some pretty amazing scenery so we just looked at it as a scenic bus tour through the beautiful city of Bariloche. After an hour or so of driving the bus made it back to the center of the town, and we got off.  Another interesting bus ride.  I think this is beginning to become a constant theme on our trip.

The problems didn’t end there.  We still needed to find a place to stay.  We walked to hostel after hostel and they were all booked up or extremely expensive.  We kept walking and walking and getting more and more frustrated . Apart from ski season, this is apparently the busiest time of year in Bariloche, so pretty much everything was booked up and the prices were more than double that what we were expecting.  We finally decided to check how much a hotel would be for the night.  Hotels are typically at least double or triple the cost of a hostel, so we doubted that we’d find something within our budget.  We walked into the cheapest looking hotel we could see and asked for a room.  They gave us a price that wasn’t too bad – it was cheap for Bariloche, but still a lot more than what we really wanted to pay.  We decided to bite the bullet and just go for it.  The room wasn’t any nicer than your average hostel room, but it would do.

By then the day was already more than half over so we decided to spend the rest of it exploring the rest of the town.  We found right away that Chocolate is Bariloche’s specialty.  They had chocolate shops everywhere.  Huge stores filled with all kinds of chocolates.  Joh was smiling from ear to ear as we browsed and checked out all our chocolate options.  Our preference is usually for the really dark stuff, but they mostly had milk chocolate and it was still really good. 

We had a nice dinner a pub, and made some plans for a hike the following day.  We got some directions, and stocked up at the grocer with lots of snacks and water.  The next morning we got up bright and early to leave for our hike.  We went out to get the early bus, but missed it due to being at the wrong bus stop, so we had to wait another hour for the next bus. We should have known there’d be another bus mishap.  So finally we arrived late to the mountain to start our hike. 

We had initially planned to hike all the way from the bottom to the top and back down again, but because of our late start we wouldn’t have enough time.  So we cheated and took the chairlift up most of the way.  The mountain we were at was Cerro Catheral.  During their winter it is a big busy ski resort.  At the top of the chairlift there were hundreds of tourists, so we were a little disappointed, but we took off up to the top of the mountain, and at the first difficult slope pretty much all the tourists gave up and turned around.  We however, were not going to be stopped.  We got up the slope with only a little difficulty and then made our way up to the top.  What a view.  From the top you could see the entire town of Bariloche, a number of lakes, and more huge mountains.  We took some photos and hiked further along the mountain ridge for another hour or so.  The mountain was quite wide, so the top part stretched on for quite a while.  We stopped for a nice lunch at a refuge on the peak and then headed back down.  Our plan was to hike all the way down, and from the top it looked like quite a hike.  After walking down for a ways, we realized that it goes quick.  We were at the base in less than two hours.   I think we probably could have done the whole thing even if we had started late.  Oh well. There will be other mountains.  Besides, we both pretty tired and we had some pretty serious blisters anyways so it was probably best that we were done early.  I had a nice cold refreshing Stella cerveza at a café at the base of the mountain, and I gotta say, it was probably the best tasting beer ever.

That night we went out in Bariloche for a nice steak and had a really good bottle of wine.  Not a bad way to end the day. 

So that brings us to today (Saturday).  This morning, we woke in our hotel and started making plans about where to go next.  We thought it would be best to leave Bariloche so that we wouldn’t go broke.  We were planning on working our way farther south towards El Chalten and finally Tierra del Fuego, the southern tip of South America.  We went out to check out bus tickets, but they were really expensive.  We also looked at the prices of the hostels down south and quickly realized that to continue down south for the next week or two would end up costing us a few thousand dollars – and then we’d  still need to get a flight back up to northern Argentina, which would cost us even more.  We would also need to buy some winter coats and some more warm clothes – which also aren’t cheap here.   We needed to  think about this.  We had a lengthy discussion on whether or not it would be worth it to continue south. There were places that we did want to see, but it was difficult to justify the cost.  We debated whether or not we’d regret skipping it.  At the end, we decided that there are plenty of other places that we’d like to see too.  We won’t be able to go everywhere, and sometimes we will have to make decisions like this in order to see more latter on.  By skipping this we might be able to add somewhere else later on. Maybe New Zealand or something like that.  

Anyways, so now we’re on a bus back up north.  We’re going to Mendoza.  From what we know about it, it’s the main wine region of Argentina, and there are more mountains and beautiful national parks there that we can explore. It’s also warmer there, so we can ditch the jackets and sweaters, which will be nice.  It’s also a lot less expensive, so hopefully we can spend some more time there.

We’re excited about Mendoza. It should be really nice.  We enjoyed our time in Bariloche, and it would have been nice to spend more time there but it’s time to keep moving.

We hope everything is well with you all back home.  It’s great to hear from you.  We love reading your comments. Keep them coming...  

Joh will post some pictures of Bariloche soon...