After a pleasant 23 hour bus ride I arrived to Bariloche in the afternoon ( 15th March). The hostel (TangoInn) seemed very nice with Jacuzzi –which i didn’t take advantage of. The first day in a new place is always a bit hard. Sometimes you don’t feel like meeting new people and telling them your story over and over again. But once you do it, there will always be some nice people who give you good tips for your future destinations.
The first 2 people I met were ok however I couldn’t really talk to them as they were pro travellers (the girl from London has been travelling for years, the Aussie guy has been travelling for 13 months) and they were fairly big-headed about it. But after I met Tal (from Israel) and turned out we are in a very similar position both with regards to travels and private life, we decided to spend the next day together.
Let me give you a bit of overview on Bariloche. This nice little city is in the middle of Nahual Huapi National park. The city itself is famous for its chocolate and meat of course. Backpacker’s call it a party town..I cannot comment on this as I didn’t go out. From Bariloche you can go to the mountains doing 1 or more days of trekking. So on Thursday we went to the Lago P. Moreno Oeste (Lake) which was surrounded by a 30km road. (Circuito Chico) We hired mountain bikes and cycled around the lake. Beyond the picturesque view all over, you can have different side attractions, like turning to a side road you can lock your bike and do an hour trekking to a Mirador (viewpoint) or to a very nice cost part of the lake. During this trip I found the absolute perfect place if I ever wanted to get away in the future from my everyday life and just enjoy the stunning view, silence and the eco house for 2 weeks. Check this out:
We returned to Bariloche exhausted but satisfied. It was great doing some physical activity after Buenos Aires. I had an early night.
The day after we planned with Tal our next days as it turned out to be great hanging out with her, and then we went to Lago Gutierrez, did some kayaking on the lake and hiking to a view-point. Since we had a few heavy days ahead us we didn’t celebrate St. Patrick’s day, instead I chatted to Angie and Phil (Swiss couple who were half way on their year trip and they gave me very good tips for my next destinations. Angie made me a really nice bracelet. She learnt the technique in Central America..I think I should do the same considering my love towards jewelleries :).
Early rise in the morning..destination: Pampa Linda (Nahual Huapi National park ). We arrived at 11am, built the tent in a camp where the season was just over so all facilities were unavailable. (yes, what you are thinking is true: we didn’t shower for days…:P and we were the only people in the camping) The first thing we did was a half day horse riding given that there was a range, 2 guys were living there looking after the horses hoping that many people jump on the occasion like we did. Riding the horse just reminded me of Babolna (the city I lived for a while in Hungary- famous for its Arabic horses). I never got the opportunity to ride the horse as freely as I did here..crossing rivers, forests, riding fast on green fields…my biggest dream has come true. Oh yes and the destination with the horses was the Black glacier. We got to the bottom and were watching the glacier to fall…i wouldn’t even dare thinking about seeing a glacier live when I was sitting in my geography class at high school..studying about the Andes..I took a short video on this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTzjDMWXBqs&feature=youtu.be
It was fairly cold in the tent..around 6-7 degrees…i wasn’t quite geared for this temperature but I survived. I have to add that at some point during the night we heard human steps approaching to our tent so we freaked out and slept with a tiny knife each in our hands..we wouldn’t have been able to kill a mouse with those knives but it gave us certain security J Turned out in the morning the human steps might have been only horses or cows eating pleasantly the grass just steps away from the tent.
Next day we hiked 15km-s (about 5 hours) up to the glacier. The aim was to reach the Otto Meiling Refugio and if we have the stamina go back to our tent, but the weather was so cloudy that just before the Refugio we decided to turn back because it was very dangerous to continue..Even the last km was very mad from us to do considering that Tal was on a tour (with guides) on a similar mountain in Pucon (Chile) about a month ago with similar weather conditions where 2 people fell off the rocks and died…..
We returned to Pampa Linda just after sunset absolutely knackered..8 hours hiking..no wonder.
The last day we went on a short hike as we had to get back early to Bariloche and we planned to do this hitchhiking. However there is a rule on the roads here, people can only leave Pampa Linda before 9am or after 4pm. In-between cars can only come up to Pampa Linda as the roads are so narrow and dangerous that 2 cars don’t fit on it next to each other.
So we found an Irish family who was heading down with their caravan at 4 and we asked them if we could hop on and get a ride down, they agreed. Very nice family and it impressed me how great the idea is for a family to travel in a caravan…great spirit!
Once we arrived to the main road we had to hitchhike again because they went to El Bolson (opposite direction to Bariloche). After 1 minute on the road, a Pickup stopped and we hopped on.
I enjoyed the ride as you can see on the picture:)
Once we arrived to Bariloche I had a few things to arrange, such as buying bus ticket for the next day (time to say bye to Bariloche and move on to the South), return sleeping bag, collect my bags from the hostel, do some food shopping for the 26 hour bus ride and go to the famous El Boliche de Alberto restaurant to try this:
I am on the bus to El Calafate now..for about 9 hours..I cannot wait to see the famous Perito Moreno, Fitz Roy and Torres el Paine.
Hey Guys…I miss you…Keep those emails coming as I have no time to follow your everyday lives on Facebook but i always find time to reply to a personal email. x
alizroundtheworld 