Nachooo

Bariloche is pretty famous for its nightlife and we planned on checking out this well known Irish pub called Wilkenney's but ended up hanging out at the hostel instead. Free dinner was sausage, vegetables and potatoes. Nothing gourmet but for being included in the room price no one was complaining. The hostel has done an excellent job of recreating the feel of a real ski lodge type bar/restaurant with pool tables, a sitting area and a full bar. Of course, the house mix was blasting all night, which is now an ongoing joke because every single hostel in Patagonia plays the same music- Sublime, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Ziggy Marley, any other reggae you can think of and usually a splash of the 80's classics.

After dinner I heard some frustrating news from home but did my best not to let it bother me and to enjoy the last leg of my trip. That turned out to be pretty easy. Everyone here is so friendly, not worrying about anything other than what's going on in front of them and making sure the people around them have a good time. That was the case with the bartender, a hilarious ski bum type named Nacho. Big baggy ski pants (he's the only skier I found) longish black hair and a white knit cap was his signature look. We learned that he only manages the bar once a week, has no idea how to bar tend and only does it because he likes to drink and he likes to get drunk with others. Hahahhh, I don't think there was a second he didn't have a Fernet and Coke in his hand the whole night. We helped him broaden his bartending skills by ordering Long Island's, which he proceeded to google and then custom create for us. Oh- I also got into a pretty serious slap fight with Nacho across the bar. He dared me to hit him so of course, I did and then told me he couldn't feel it sooo things escalated from there. Hahah, anyone who saw that sight must have been so confused - I was leaning across the bar hitting the drunk bartender as hard as possible as his girlfriend smoked a cigarette observing the whole thing. So funny. Overall, it was a really fun night. We hung out and met a bunch of nice people from Tazmania, England, Scotland and Peru.

Yesterday we had a pretty epic adventure on Route 40 in the Andes and ended up making it home to the hostel an hour too late for the free dinner. Nacho, the nicest Argentine in the country, personally made us a huge pot of amazing spaghetti with some amazing homemade tomato vegetable sauce. We later learned he used to run a kitchen but it was too fast paced and intense for him. Hahah, that's probably an understatement. Nacho moves in slow motion and is drunk or high 95% of the time we've hung out with him. Picturing him in a restaurant kitchen is pretty ridiculous.

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