Bariloche

We just spent the last 5 days in San Carlos de Baroliche.  Bariloche is a beautiful town situated on a a very large glacier-carved lake, Nahuel Huapi.  Wikipedia..  We arrived from our long bus journey at around 11.  We were still pretty tired though, since even in the luxury of first class, you're still on a bus moving around while trying to get some sleep.  We checked into our hostel, called “1004” and checked out the amazing views it has.  It is on the top floor of one of the taller buildings in Bariloche and the views are just simply amazing.  While we were there, we took several tours / hikes and the results are in the picture slideshow below.



Overall things are  going very well.  We are really enjoying the sights and sounds.  The hostel we stayed at was a highlight for me.  The staff was very friendly and learned our names and helped us out with tours and rentals.  Most of the guests there spoke English, but very few were Americans.  We found mostly European, Canadian and Australians there.  Overall we're less “extreme” than most of the travelers we found there who would talk about what mountain they climbed a couple of days ago or whatever, which for us is a bit out of reach since all the big mountains around here still have snow covering their tops!

As far as our Spanish speaking skills, we have good days and bad days.  A lot of our time in Baroliche we were with only English speakers so we really didn't get a chance to practice.  Suzanne and I can talk among ourselves in Spanish and understand each other, but its not quite the same as hearing a native speak it as fast as they do.  On the good days we're able to have good, long conversations with someone.  Always a bit slow but we're able to communicate and get our ideas across and understand what people are saying.  But some days we're terrible and just freeze when someone says something.  Mostly its because they speak it so quickly and have the Argentinian idiom of saying “sh” whenever you want to use the “ll” sound that my brain get's overwhelmed.  (insert jokes in comments please).  :)

And many of you may know that we lost our little man.  Pause for moment of silence....  He was with us and doing great on our first big hike and as you can see we have many great pictures of him.  At the end of the hike we let him see out the backpack.  Anyway, we finished our hike and were heading to the bus stop and saw the bus coming.  Since the buses are not that frequent we began to run to the stop and that's where we think the little man fell out.  We didn't think about him again until the next day but when it became clear that he was no longer with us we were soo sad!  If I can't keep the little man safe after only a week of travel, how can I keep my future children safe?  :)  Anyway... now we're looking for someone (or something) to replace the little man, but how can anything replace him?  Someone pointed out that we can use this opportunity to get a new little guy, maybe with a South American flair and there are some here but they're like little gnomes with crazy faces and Suzanne says that they scare her...  So anyway, we're on the lookout.

I'm writing this in our new town, Villa la Angostura which is just across that big lake from Bariloche and we're staying in a hostel in the double upstairs and in the morning a rooster does his thing to wake everyone up, which is quite annoying but tonight I plan to try out my earplugs.  That's it for me, we're thinking and praying for all our family and friends and miss you all.

Ciao!
~ Mike

Our time in Buenos Aires was great with Ximena and Andreas teaching us about local phrases and foods.  They took us all around the city and then accompanied us to the bus station.  From there we headed out on our own.  The bus ride was 20 hours to Bariloche but was quite a luxury experience.  I felt like one of the large people in Wall-E that just sat in a chair and had food/entertainment brought to them.  First came tea, then dinner, then coffee, then just before sleep they asked us if we wanted champagne or whiskey.  Nearly asleep I didn't even understand the question at first.  In hindsight part of the reason I didn't sleep that well (the seat laid down to a full 180 degrees) was the fact that I said yes to the coffee around 10PM at night.  So lesson learned that even though coffee almost always sounds good to me I need to show more self control and not drink espresso before bed.

The drive was very beautiful and Bariloche and the Lake region is truly a special place.  The size of the lakes are truly amazing.  We went on a boat ride for a day to one region, Puerto Blest.  Going slow on the way there it was about a two hour boat ride.  On the way back going faster it still took 45 minutes to get back to the port and this was by no means doing a complete tour of the lake.  The strangest part for me was that we were one of the only boats on the lake.  I think because it is a national park you either need to be on a national park boat or live on the lake (which there are only a handful of places).  The water was incredibly clear.  Then we arrived in this jungle and then I felt like I was in Jurassic Park.  So I started humming the theme song and imagining what I would do if some dinosaur jumped out from the jungle.  They were describing how this region is so wet whereas the surrounding areas are so dry because of the Andes mountains and the water from the Pacific Ocean.  They said that the air condensed on this side of the mountain just like air condenses on your window in the winter so the moisture is trapped in this region.

Bariloche also happens to be the chocolate capital of Argentina.  Up to this point we had not experienced this aspect.  However, after a more lazy day of exploring the town and painting a watercolor we decided to try out the chocolate.  It seemed very early when we went on our chocolate tasting adventure.  However, that night we realized that the coffee and chocolate were actually consumed at 6PM.  So we didn't sleep that well that night either.  Everyone eats dinner around 10:30PM or 11:00PM so 6PM seems like the middle of the afternoon.  The chocolate was very delicious and we saved some of our box for the rest of the week.

On Wednesday we rented a car and drove the Seven Lakes Drive.  This ended up being a twelve hour adventure as lots of the roads were gravel.  We ate lunch on the beach of one of the lakes and Mike and Koven played with their cameras.  On the return trip we thought we were taking the paved road but ended up taking another gravel road through another national park and seeing these interesting  rock sculptures.  With a half hour to spare we returned the rental car full of gas.  Needless to say we slept well that night.

Now we are in Villa La Angostura and are going to hike to see the ancient los arraynes trees on the peninsula.  ~Suzanne