Hostel Achalay San Carlos de Bariloche

Went back to Bariloche to meet Carla who i met in Buenos Aires. Had this great idea to go mountain biking on the Llao Llao circuit which is 35kms long. So we hired bikes with dodgy gears that would keep changing when you were peddling. Started off easy rushing down hills and going up slight slopes then came the mountains and I think we ...

... very old. After having enough biking we came back to town and walked through town and looked at a few shops. Marie bought me a nice biking top from the gear shop that we got the bikes from, I really like it and it´s going to get a ton of use back in the states. Later on we ate dinner at the hostel and goit a few bottles of wine...Marie and I spend a deal of time talking to this two younger guys who are job finders in Buenos Aires and were giving us some ...

... the lake of Nahuel Huapi, surrounded by alpine trees, mountains, pristine waters... i reckon we should work for the Bariloche ...

... by a random stranger wanting to know whether we would like to rent a 4x4 with her and two friends and drive up through Chile, with the final destination in Bariloche, Argentina. Jools and I looked at one another...and no words passed between us...but it was written in our eyes...we were up for it. 9 days, 2000kmand 3 new friends later, we are sitting in Bariloche exhausted after the most intense and amazing road trip. After the initial excitement following the ...

... in my opinion, we most definitely took full advantage of bariloche. in the three nights and four days we were there, we did LOTS of hiking, rented a car with our buddies from seattle, ate, cooked and enjoyed the town. the first full day, we took a long public bus ride to the base of Cerro Lopez. we braced ourselves for a full day of hiking. normally, people hike up to the refugio about 1000 meters up and hike down the next day. NOT US. we ...

... Lakes Route. After our BA experience, we need the rest! When we check out of the Art Suites, we give them our return flight information of when we return to BA and also depart for the US. Since we are arriving on Christmas Eve and departing on Christmas day, Angelina suggests that they make the taxi transfers for us in advance; evidently it can be difficult on a holiday to find taxis. We are appreciative of their local knowledge and their ...

... day and night. The town as it is today was actually established by German & Austrian settlers enticed to come and develop the area - ever more evident by the abundance of chocolate shops (and chocolate museum!) and German style wooden housing in the centre of town (think Aspen meets Austria). Of course, head a few streets from the town centre and the reminder we´re still in an impoverished country is still apparent where the main part of the population ...

... that looked more like a bird, leprechauns, stars, dots, and mustaches. There was also loud playing of U2 by the DJ and teaching of Irish dancing to the non-Irish among us (i.e. everybody except John, Emma, Ed and I). The Argentinian twist to the evening involved much of the other music played and the bobbing for apples (usually linked to Halloween) in a giant bucket of sangria! Hope ye all had a fantastic St. Patrick´s Day wherever ye spent it. I´m glad to have spent it in Bariloche.

... trip up to a little refugio and camp-site at 2050m (Otto Meiling). A good portion of the way this provides awesome views of one of Monte Tronador's numerous glaciers which terminates under the influence of gravity at an enormous sheer cliff. For much of the day, blue skies were eerily contradicted by the roar of thunder - this is Tronador's glaciers breaking up. Its Spanish name means 'thunderer', and the Mapuche name translates the same ...

... from hell to go with our bus from hell. They insisted on playing their music full blast all day and night and even when the movies were on, so we couldn't hear a thing and the subtitles were in Spanish. It was good practice for the Spanish though as the drivers did not speak a word of English. A girl 4 rows back from us complained about the volume of the music whilst the movie was on, so you can imagine what it was like for us. Also what we hadn ...