Bariloche
Trip Start
Sep 20, 2008
1
28
29
Trip End
Sep 2009
Bariloche adn the Lakes district, Argentina
Thursday, April 2, 2009
After the match, we decided to go and have a look at the lake at night. Its a shame, because its really beautiful, but there is no light whatsoever so the view is completely lost. Pacho kept trying to convice us to stay an extra night in San Martin, and that way we would travel down to Bariloche with them. Having this on his mind, they turned up the next day early at the hotel, with all the information about the local camping club, prices and availability
San Martin de Los Andes
. They dropped us off and after promising to meet them for lunch afterwards we were left to set up our palace! MMM...we started walking into town, and soon realized it wasn't the best day to be wandering around, least of all for an obvious British Gringo like Ali. It was a Bank Holiday and not any but the Maldives (Falklands) one... so as you can imagine the English aren't what argentinians are hoping to see. Nonetheless... having looked around and noticing that actually many of the argies were spending their holiday out of town (it was like a ghost town, all the shops shut and all) so we decided it was about time to find a good argentinian steak. We met up again with Pacho and Ximena and found a restaurant that they had recommended to us at the hotel, the night before... The steaks were massive (Pacho had a 500grm steak... mental!!) and a distinctive taste that confirms all the hype! After that we had a wander-around time and after a nice meal of pizza and beer, head back to the palace... promised to be picked up at around 10am the next day to head down to bariloche.
The road trip was stunning! although we didnt do the cross of the lakes by boat... we drove by the side of all of them. It was beautiful!!! turquiose waters, trees, impresive massive mountains and animals..
San Martin de Los Andes
. we couldnt have asked for better to be fair - there were even parts we did with nice weather!! Just before Bariloche we stopped at a town called Villa de Angostura for lunch and a second massive and delicious steak. Another really beautiful little town, full of houses all made in wood and snow caped mountains surrounding it. At last got to Bariloche, and after finding the hotel for the night... we had to say goodbye to Pacho and Xime. We decided to stay in Bariloche three days... and oh surprise surprise it rained the WHOLE time.
It is a really nice town with a massive lake just in the middle of it, all in wood like a typical patagonian town. We quickly found out why it is famous for its chocolates. Even Caro who doesn't like chocolates was going absolutely mad... so we decided to have a walk around all the shops and we soon found ourselves lunching on free samples, filled with cherries, nuts, whiskey and god know what else! Delicious!
Just by the side of our hotel we found the most amazing and beautiful restaurant ever like something straight out of the Hobbit - low ceilings, little windows and a massive circular door, all in wood, with fire place and trees going inside it and coming out the roof. It was bizarre but beautiful!
We basically spent the three days walking around the shops, the weather never getting good enough to justify the money for the natural park just the other side of the river. :( Still spectacular and somewhere to come back to in a summer sun!
After that we went to Rio Gallegos, were we stayed one night and then headed ourselves back to Chile stopping in Puerto Natales... the Torres del Paine stop-off town.
