Patagonia Lake District
Trip Start
Sep 03, 2005
1
15
50
Trip End
Ongoing
Bariloche,
Argentina
Saturday, November 5, 2005
Bariloche is a ´chocolate box´ style town, with wooden challet type buildings, St Bernards in the main square with kegs of Brandy around their neck, a lake surrounded by snow capped mountains, if everyone wasn´t speaking Spanish you could think you were in Austria.
We took a cable car to a viewpoint on top of a mountain, the scenery was spectacular, beautiful lakes and mountains, I actually felt quite homesick as there were so many similarities to home.
01 Glacier
One difference though when I saw what looked like a hanglider soaring just below us, as it got closer I realised it was a condor, the first I had ever seen. It was magnificent, an incredible wing span and I was close enough to see the white collar around its neck, its flight seemed effortless as it flew off into the mountains. Army who I am travelling with is from Australia and she had never touched snow before so she was able to on the mountain.In the evening we went to a restaurant that our guide Ida rated as one of the best steak restaurants in Argentina. So much for being a non red meat eater when I left the UK, I had 3 huge pieces of the rarest sweetest and juciest tasting meat I had ever had in my life, it was delicious! The restaurant owner was there and Ida and I had our photo taken with him next to the big open fire that the meat was cooked on, just before the photo was taken he pulled out a piece of beef from the cooler that was almost the size of half a cow, just to make the picture more authentic... Vegetarians beware of Argentina, it can bring out the animal in you!! The great food was accompanied by fine Argentinean wine, very cheap and incredibly good.
The evening was finished by sampling Raspberry Beer and Chilli Beer, although a great fan of Chilli and Beer the combination was not one that I would reccomend...the firey heat of the chilli made you want to drink more which just made it worse!
On our second day in Bariloche we drove into the stunning National park and went on a 2 hr hike to see a glacier. The walk was beautiful in the spring sunshine, pretty flowers and shady forests, bamboo and snow. The glacier was amazing, hanging from the mountain, ice blue. Every so often you could hear a sound like thunder which was caused when a piece of the glacier broke off and crashed to the ground. We also saw two more Condors circling high overhead, our guide told us that they didn´t eat in this area it seemed they came here as they enjoyed the flying conditions (or possibly just the views as it is so gorgeous!!) After the walk we were taken to the ´Black Glacier´which is said to be one of the dirtiest in the world caused by it picking up the dark sediment from the surrounding rocks.
