The Beauty of the Lake District, Chocolate Galore - What could be better?!

Oct 2, 2009

Justin and I were wide awake for the first part of our bus trip. We were so excited about our purchases, about Bariloche, and about sitting at the very front of the bus. We were tempted to open our olive oil but decided to use it when the timing was better. There was a movie playing but since the TV was so far in front, it was hurting our necks just looking at the screen. One of the men sitting in the front row with us changed seats, and sat further back to watch the movie while the other one was sleeping. They were playing, ‘The Terminal’ starring Tom Hanks and Catherine Zeta-Jones but the whole thing was in Spanish so I wasn’t too sure what was going on. As we were talking about our plans in Bariloche, we heard a big BANG! What the heck was that? It sounded as if a glass jar from the above compartment had fallen and shattered on the floor. Looking around, we had thought someone had dropped something fragile on the floor but we were terribly mistaken. The man sleeping at the front of the bus with us woke up with a puzzled look and his hands out as if he had spilt something. What had actually happened was that something (we’re guessing a bird) hit the panoramic window in front of him and although the glass didn’t shatter, a baseball sized impact was made, and some of the glass had shattered towards him. The poor man looked so confused but he seemed alright and went back to sleep. We looked at the empty seat where his friend was sitting (lucky, he had moved to a different seat!) and saw lots of bits and pieces of glass everywhere. Fortunately for Justin and I, we were further away from the impact to be affected but we were pretty shaken up. So maybe the panoramic view weren’t the best seats after all. We tried not to think the worst of it and continued talking away.

The tall double decker bus endured some scratches afterwards. Some of the trees had low branches, which scraped the side windows and the top of the bus as we drove past. It sounded like a nails on a chalkboard and I freaked out a little, thinking that something else was going to hit the glass. But nothing did so we were good. All of a sudden, the bus started to slow down and we could see a lot of cars in front of us stopped their cars and had their hazard signals on. What could possibly be going on now? A car had hit a bull on the road and it was a lose-lose situation. We saw the poor bull lying on the side of the road, dead, while the car that had ended its life was brutally damaged. So we’re an hour into our bus ride and we’ve already experienced a bunch. I was almost too scared to sleep but being the paranoid self that I was, I knew it was a coincidence that all of these things were happening. Hopefully our next long bus rides would a little more uneventful.

Riding on the 20 hour bus ride to Bariloche and I eventually fell into a deep sleep. Justin, on the other hand, can never get to sleep on any mode of transportation so Justin was yet again sleep deprived. We saw a sign saying that Bariloche was 290 km away, so we would be arriving in a few more hours. At one point, we had stopped at a cross walk and saw cute little boys walking across. Then, they started looking at us with scrunched up faces and made hand gestures that indicated something smelled bad. A little confused, we realized later that it was probably because we had taken our shoes off and sat with our feet on the front railing and they could see the back of our smelly (and dirty looking) socks through the window. Damn, panoramic view!

As we got closer to the Lake District, we could see beautiful blue-green lakes with snow capped mountains all around us. The scenery was unreal and we couldn’t wait to see what Bariloche had in store for us. By the way, Bariloche was known as the Chocolate capital of Argentina so we were pretty happy about that.

We arrived about 5:30PM and took the bus to our hostel, Marcopolo Hostel Inn. It was an awesome hostel with great staff. One of the staff members, Nacho (not sure of the spelling), was super cool and he made us feel at home. Even though we were in a 4 bedroom dorm, we were the only ones there for the duration of our stay. Perfect for me considering I spread my stuff all over the other bunk beds to sort my things out.

Ever since retrieving my bag from the bus, it had a sour odour. I crossed my fingers, hoped and prayed that the wine bottles in my bags didn’t leak but the reality was that our beloved grape juice (only 1 bottle!) and the ‘moscato’ taste-a-like bottles broke in my pack and all of my belongings were drenched in white wine. I was so upset but it could’ve been worse. I could’ve had red wine spill all over my stuff so I was pretty lucky. I was smart enough to put the red wines in Ziploc bags, and it didn’t even break! So, I had to re-wash all of my clothes, and had to wear the same thing for 3 days before I got my laundry back! Eek.

We did some research on the internet for the next part of our trip. We originally wanted to go to El Calafate to see the Perito Moreno Glaciers and do the minitrek and then go to Puerto Natales to do a day excursion in Torres del Paine, and then make our way over to the Southernmost cities in the world. Not expecting the activities to be that expensive, we quickly learned from word of mouth and internet research that it was indeed quite expensive to get to El Calafate, do the minitrek, bus to Puerto Natales and do a trek in Torres del Paine. It also left us with very little time in Punta Arenas and Ushuaia. Feeling quite pressed for time, we made the decision to skip El Calafate and Puerto Natales (we will be back someday!) and head straight to Punta Arenas. A little sad that we were missing out on the most impressive glacier in the world, and one of the most beautiful sights of South America, we (and our budget) were happy with the decision.

It was dinner time and we had delicious spaghetti at our hostel….FOR FREE! Our stay at Marcopolo Inn included complementary breakfasts and dinners! How awesome is that? And the best part was that we met some awesome people. Garrett from the California and James from Ireland. They were kind of on the same boat as us with the whole ‘where to go next?’ It was one of the first times during our trip that Justin and I had conversations in English with other people so it was a nice break from conversing and trying to understand broken Spanglish. We had an early night and went to bed.

Oct 3, 2009

I was too lazy to get up, but Justin went out for a run in the morning. He came back telling me that there was a chocolate museum, some chocolate and gelato stores and that he was craving chocolate! Hehe, but he also said that the scenery was gorgeous. The sun hitting the snow on the mountains made it sparkle and the water was emerald green. To my disappointment, he didn’t bring a camera with him so the image was only etched in his memory but when we set out for the day I sort of saw what he was talking about (the clouds rolled in so it didn’t have the same effect).

We headed straight for the bus terminal to book our bus to Punta Arenas. Still a little unsure of our decision, we were trying to find more information on bus routes to El Calafate. There was only 1 out of 20 bus lines that went there and we kept going back to the same girl asking various questions. “What time does the bus leave Bariloche on what day? What time does it arrive in El Calafate? Pardon me, it’s a 36 hour bus ride? How much does it cost? Is that in pesos or dollars?” The poor girl was very patient with us and just smile the whole time. At one point, Justin wanted to ask several questions but meshed them into 1 big question and made an impressive-sounding long question in Spanish that took what seemed like 2 minutes to ask. The girl’s smiley expression gradually turned into a ‘umm, I’m-sorry-but-I-have-no-idea-what-you-just-said’ puzzled look. Slightly embarrassed, he finally got his question answered and we decided that we would take the bus to Punta Arenas instead.

As we were walking back towards town, we couldn’t help but notice all of the chocolate stores. Bariloche was known for its delicious chocolates and we weren’t about to miss out on this! We walked into our first chocolate store and bought mint chocolate and white chocolate with dulce de leche. It was delicious and we thought we struck gold and found the best chocolate place when we tasted them. Chocolate store count: 1.

Hungry, per usual, we set off in search of a delish place to eat. Actually looking for a different chocolate store (supposedly the best chocolate store in Bariloche), we came across a cute little place where we started with bread and olive oil, a very large garden salad. Justin ordered a giant steak and I got the special, which consisted of mashed potatoes and roast beef with carrots and bacon inside of it. (A little hard to describe but delicious!)

We took some nice pics of the city and headed back to the hostel. Although siesta was a nice idea, it was a pain in the rear or any traveler, but Justin and I started adjusting to it and actually took a much needed 3 hour nap. Maybe siesta wasn’t so bad after all. By the time we woke up, my clothes were washed and I got to change out of my smelly clothes! Yay for laundry.

It was dinner time, and we got mashed potatoes and chicken. It was pretty good but we were still full from lunch so we ate really really slowly. We sat down with Garrett and James and their 2 dorm mates from France. We also found out that Garrett and James were taking the same bus route as us (not quite to Punta Arenas but to Rio Gallegos). It was nice to know that we’ll have good company for our almost 3 day bus ride!

We went on a night excursion to the ATM and couldn’t resist going into a different chocolate store. There we bought a huge assortment of chocolate from white chocolate to peanut butter and so forth. We could hardly wait to eat our delicious chocolate and started tasting them as soon as we walked out of the door. Chocolate store count: 2.

We got invited to Garrett and James’ dorm for drinks so taking one of the mini red wine bottles from Mendoza, we were set for the night. Justin and I stayed in a 4 bedroom dorm whereas the guys stayed in a 6 bedroom dorm. When Justin and I walked into their room, we heard their voices but couldn’t find them? Where were they? When walking into their dorn, there were stairs on the right side leading up to a loft. This room was massive in comparison to ours and it was very cool to see. One of the guys from France had his guitar out and we sang (or at least we tried to) Wonderwall, Californication, Karma Police and songs from Radiohead. We talked for a long time and got to know them really well. Garrett looked at his watch and mentioned that it was 1:30AM, while I started to yawn and replied that it was probably time for bed. He corrected me and said that it was time to go to the bar. “Excuse me?” “Actually, it’s too early for the bar since no one really goes out til sometime after 3:00AM.” “WHAT?” I was quite astonished, and I was definitely getting to old for this but Justin and I hadn’t been out since we being in South America so we thought we might as well go too… even though we were sleepy.

We walked around town looking for certain bars and surprisingly, there were a lot of people out. However, I would’ve guessed that the age ranged from 12 year olds to 16 year olds. They were all really young looking and us foreigners in our 20s didn’t quite fit in with the young looking crowd. We walked along really nice streets that Justin and I never walked along and it was a pleasant surprise to see that there was a better view of the water than what we had found earlier! Our day for tomorrow was set! We eventually settled into Malabar. It was a stand up, very crowded little space that was a nice place for the guys to drink some beer. Eventually, Garrett, Justin and I went back to the hostel, but James and the Frenchies stayed until 6:00AM! Living la vida loca!

Oct 4, 2009

Checking out of our hostel, we took full advantage of the few hours we had before catching our bus at 5:00PM. The chocolate museum was something we were quite interested in. We’re not the biggest fans of museums but a chocolate museum sounded glorious so we were pretty excited for yet another potential taste testing tour. When we got there, we learned that the English tour was actually at a later time, which didn’t provide us with enough time to make it to our bus on time. It was a bit of a bummer but somehow we lucked out and got to taste their “hot chocolate” (literally thick melted chocolate) and some chocolate samples. And the best part? We didn’t even pay a penny. On the other side of the museum, there was a chocolate store and we decided to splurge on some assortments. Chocolate store count: 3.

We walked along the shoreline and saw amazing views of the mountains and water. The day was absolutely gorgeous. The sun was shining, the water was clear, the chocolate stores didn’t close for siesta… we couldn’t have asked for a more perfect day. We took some awesome scenic shots and of course Justin used the ‘sepia’ setting a lot to give that ‘back in the day’ look. He also preferred to use the wide screen setting. (You will most likely see a lot of them in our photos).

We finally came across the Civic Center Plaza of Bariloche, which was a community center. It was so pretty. The only unfortunate thing was that the statues had graffiti on them. Not the intricate fun type graffiti, but vandalism graffiti. We’d seen a lot of that in Chile and Argentine and we didn’t quite know why people would do that. It was ashame. Anyway, in the plaza there were Saint Bernard dogs. Two massively giant parents and two baby pups. They were so adorable and made the center look for touristy but very attractive. The owner of the dogs said that we could take pictures with the dogs so I clicked away but what she meant was that she would take the picture with Justin and me in it for a fee. It seemed really expensive but luckily, I wasn’t charged for taking pictures of the dogs by themselves!

Trying to get away from the tourist trap, we walked along Bartolome Mitre where we discovered even more chocolate stores. Surprise, surprise. We had heard that the best chocolate stores in Bariloche were called ‘Mamuschka’ ‘Fenoglio’ and ‘Rapa Nui’. We already bought chocolate at Fenoglio (it was the one by the chocolate museum) so we were in search of Mamuschka and Rapa Nui.

A building we past reminded us of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate factory with intricate purle and gold designs. Justin talked about his dream of having his own Willy Wonka factory and taste testing all of his chocolates. Nice dream, Jus. Anyway, we barely saw the sign that said Rapa Nui on it, we were so distracted! Getting a little excited we walked in and bought a huge thing of white chocolate and some mint chocolate for Justin. Justin was taste testing the mint chocolate in every chocolate store we went to, to determine which store was truly the best one. Chocolate store count: 4.

According to Lonely Planet, Mamuschka was simply the best chocolate store. I liked the name of the store so I was on a mission to find this place. We were not leaving Bariloche until I found this chocolate place! A red building with jumbo Russian nesting dolls on display caught my eye and sure enough, it was Mamuschka! At last, my quest had been complete! I was giddy as a school girl. I jumped, gasped, and practically screamed I was so excited. Justin gave me the ‘what-are-you-doing?/you-are-embarrassing-me!’ look but I was too excited that I ran across the street and into the store. I must’ve left hand marks on the glass as I saw all sorts of chocolates. Animal shaped chocolates, 3D chocolates in forms of cellphones, monkeys, and anything cute. They also had a lot of beautifully coloured Russian nesting dolls and as I was looking at them, I saw a bright flash behind me. I turned around to see what it was and all I saw was Justin holding the camera at me. Our G10 camera’s flash worked again! Justin and I were so excited about it that we had what seemed like one of the happiest days on our trip. The G had a mind of its own and the flash didn’t work for over a month. I almost got the top portion of the camera to be replaced because, it was apparently broken. Well, now, it worked and I was so glad that I didn’t fork out $230 to repair the camera! Obviously, we bought more chocolate at Mamuschka and Justin got his mint chocolate. Chocolate store count: 5.

It was siesta time, and literally, there was nothing open except for the main grocery store and a little cafeteria. We had the most delicious burger consisting of egg and ham and felt pretty good after getting some food into our stomachs. We had some time left before we had to be at the bus terminal so we went into the grocery store to buy food for our long bus journey to Punta Arenas.

We ended up being seated with the panoramic view on the 2nd floor of the double decker again, leaving beautiful Patagonia and on our way, getting closer to the bottom of the world!

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