San Carlos de Bariloche

So we arrive at Bariloche again with no hostel reservation thinking that it would be easy being that is a bigger city. Well not so much. We eventually found a nice little room at grandma's house. At first we thought that it would do for the night and after looking at our options we decided that grandmas house was a wonderful place. Plus how could anyone say no to a cute old lady like herself. Well to describe this place, it's another pretty bigger city that doesn't need a lot of devoted time unless you can't handle the wilderness and it's not snow season. We chilled out and tried some famous chocolate "Mamuska" (very good but still isn't as good and Chris Elbows chocolate in Kansas City) there is an entire street dedicated to artisans chocolate shops. Dad you would love this place. And we got to watch hordes of people buying tons of boxed chocolates for Valentines Day. Kent and I both agreed that Valentine's Day is a little overrated now that we are married. Ha people keep telling us that changes after 10 years of marriage. I don't know the polls are still out, all you long time married folk will have to let us know on that one.

We went to a highly recommended restaurant that brought out our food literally, no kidding, 4 minutes after we ordered. That's fine dinning in Argentina. But they did a have a free Tango show going on and Kent got to strut his stuff with the lovely lady.

Also Bariloche is supposedly where the St Bernard's are popular and people stand around in the main square whoring there dogs and puppies out for pictures. They are beautiful dogs but Kent and I, being the dog lovers we are, decided not to support this type of behavior. So we reserved our puppy dog talk and faces as we walked by, that was very difficult for me to do.

This lovely place is also the crossroads for the final decision on how you will travel further south to Calafate. There is a lot of nothing after this for a long time. You have three options: 1) fly to Calafate being the most expensive but the fastest 2)Take a bus east across the country to the coast then down to Rio Gallegos and then back west across the country 26 hours to Calafate. This being cheap and the most common way 3)Take a bus straight down Route 40 which is supposidly famous but a gravel road and with no service almost 3/4 of the way but cheap. So which number feels lucky............ well we went with #3. So tune in later for the adventures of that one. Until then enjoy the 2 pictures we took in Bariloche. Chau for now.

Route de Siete Lagos to Villa La Angostura

This drive is so beautiful, and is the only way anyone should travel to get to Bariloche. If I were to do this trip again I would plan to get on and off the bus at all the different lakes. Each of them have great camp sites and beautful scenery, and it seems easy to do. You just have to have an up to date bus schedule so you know when the buses will pass buy and you just flag them down. You can also stay in these little hostals along the way that look great as well, but it is advised that you check availablitiy before you get there. So next time we will camp for sure, who would like to come with?

All the little lakes surrounded by the mountains, it is just so beautiful, make sure not to fall asleep on this one. After 3 hours of the great scenery we arrived to a small mountain town called Villa la Angostura. Smaller than San Martin, but very nice! It is in the Southern part of the province Neuquen and on Lago Nahuel Huapi(a huge lake). It has been built up for the tourist but still remains very cute. This whole area is a popular get away not only for foreigners but all South Americans. We met a lot of Argentines and Chileans on vacation. We could only find a place to stay for one night so this was a short stay but a nice one. We stayed in a popular hostal that was desinged to house many backpackers, not like the last one. So Kent and I had to sleep in seperate rooms because they did not have mixed dorms. So the newlyweds slept seperately for the first time in our married lives. Ha!

The next day we walked to the peninsula (3 km) planning to take a boat out the the end and then hike back through what is called ¨Bosque de Arrayanes¨. It´s a national park with these really cool trees that are old and one of a kind. We ran into this family from Chile that need two more people to complete this boat trip that was going to be cheaper than taking the bigger traditional boat out there. Not really knowing what we were getting ourselves into we said sure and gave them some money, hey they seemed like nice people. We followed them and then two girls from Buenos Aries who were also on our boat, bought us all of our Park entrance tickets for $13 dollars cheaper. (If you are Argentine everything down here is much cheaper to get into parks, museums, lakes, ect.) So, so far so good! We boarded the small boat and began our 45 min ride out to the end of the peninsula. It was very nice, we passed some ski resorts and a couple of nice ranches and then arrived to the distination. The good thing about doing this is that we didn´t arrive with all the hords of tourist on the big boat so it wasn´t as crowded while we were walking around. Big Plus! The trees were cool some of the oldest were around 500 years old. Wow! Then we started hiking back (13km). Taking pictures of huge bees feeding off the nectar of these pretty flowers. It was pretty funny to watch Kent get really close and then all of a sudden scream and start running. Later I found out that Larry (his dad) is badly allergic to bee stings and Kent was never tested, so there is a possibility he is as well. I asked him if he thought that what he was doing was a good idea. No reply of course just another scream as I watched him run by me. I said wow I learn something new every day about my husband.

After three hours we arrived back and the pier had some lunch and couldn´t find a taxi or a bus so we had to walk another 3 km back to the hostal. We ended up catching a bus as 6pm towards the next stop, Bariloche. Chau Angostura!

The voyage to the end of the world part one: San Martin de los Andes

So the travels started off with a 19 hour bus ride from Buenos Aires, by far the longest either of us have experience. I highly not doing it unless you have to. Though we did manange to keep ourselves busy with sleep, movies, and cards. I also managed to buy tickets early enough so we got the front two seats in the top of the bus. So you have windows surrounding you and it feels like you are flying. Its a good spot for car sick people like Kent! We got served all of our meals on the bus and even wine and champaigne. Anyway we arrived in the afternoon to this beautiful mountain town, a lot like Aspen but with a huge lake ¨Lago Lacar¨, very cute and relaxing. With now where to stay yet, we finally found only after 4 tries ¨Hostal Seqouia¨. Yes there was a huge Seqouia tree out front and it had a double room just for us for $30 US a night. Very cute and it is not right on main street so it wasn´t so touristy. We dropped off our bags and off we went to explore.

We ended up stopping off and buying some chocholate and walking to the small beach that was over crowded with all the locals. It was Sunday so all the families were out relaxing and trying to stay cool in the 96 degree weather. So we sat down one little open spot that we could find under a tree and realized that buying chocholate was not the greatest ideas, as we licked the runny chocholate off the side of the bag. It was very good. If you don´t know this already the ¨lake district¨ is know for all the artasenal chocholate stores.

We went to have a beer at a cafe and met our first friend! Great guy named Steve from S.M. who is a spanish/english teacher at the school. Kent practice speaking spanish with him as I practice listening and understanding! Then he invited us back to his house for a glass of wine. So we went. He was very interested in our travels and showed us a lot of things to do in the area and just reasured us on a lot of our plans. We told him to look us up if he got to the states and we would return the kind wine at our bar. We told him where we were going to ¨La Tasca¨ for dinner and he said he knew the owner and that he would call them for us. Great food for a pretty good price. Everyone knows everyone in this town. It felt a lot like home here, with the people, the friendlyness, and the laid back attitude. It is a definate stop if you get to Patagonia.

Monday the next day we took an hour hike to this ¨mirador¨ look out point of the lake. A litte further through a small village there was a rocky beach with only a few people and the clearest water I have ever seen for a lake. We chilled out for a couple of hours went swimming and got some sun. Don´t forget sandals for this place because the rocks are hotter than hell. That night was a chil night with a pizza and a bottle of wine at our cute little hostal.

Tuesday we went to a Canopy zip line for some flying lessons. It was great we took a cab out to the middle of nowhere, and at one point the cab just turned off the road onto this dirt path and started driving straight. It didn´t even look like a road. Kent and I looked at each other and we both had a look on our faces like ¨where the hell are we going¨? We got there and there were a total of 10 lines the longest one being 250 meters. We were going through trees and flying pretty fast. Our guide cuka (a Rich B. look alike, no joke Rich I thought you were hanging out with us) was great he spoke the little english that he knew and told us about the trees and environment here. It was lot of fun and something different for both Kent and I. Andrew and Mason if you ever do open a Zip line in Colorado I want to work for you!

At about 5:30 we said our goodbyes to San Martin and we were off on ¨Route de Siete Lagos¨ to Villa La Angostura.