Advertisement
Published: September 18th 2012
Edit Blog Post
If the same thing happened everyday, life would be monotonous. Variety truly is the spice of life and we are so glad that we can experience different places, cultures and people as we travel. Our holiday so far has consisted of plenty of sunshine and high temperatures as well as diving to the depths of the sea. The contrast then had to be cold and mountainous. Today we flew to the Andes for a spot of skiing.As we are late in the ski season we had chosen Bariloche. This is a little town in the south of Argentina and the ski season is supposed to last until the end of October. The town itself is famous for chocolate, St. Bernard dogs and ice cream. All good reasons to go to visit in our opinion.
We took a taxi to the domestic airport which was less than 1/2 hour from the hotel. On the way we passed people walking their dogs. Unlike Australia, most people seemed to have about five dogs each. We assumed they were dog walkers walking other peoples dogs whilst they were at work. At the parks there were groups of dogs tied to trees as well as
loads running around. It was definitely the time of day to be out and about with our canine pals.
There wasn't a lot to do at the airport so we had a coffee and waited for our plane. Once we landed we called the lady who was checking us in to the apartment we had rented and jumped in a remise. This is a car and driver with a fixed rate, rather than a taxi and a meter. The drive took about 20 minutes and was quite pretty along the lake front.
The apartment was a 2 bedroomed place in town. We had rented it through a hostel but it turned out they had sold it to an English girl who lives in the town. It was up 3 flights of stairs and there was no lift. We heaved our bags up stopping aflter each flight and wondering what the heck weighed so much- probably all Harriet's shoes. The apartment was really spacious and had amazing views over the lake.
Even though our bags were heavy, it wasn't because of ski gear. We had decided to leave it at home and rent or buy here in order
A submarino
Hot milk and a bar of chocolate to save space. There were loads of places in the town to rent but the gear looked pretty poor. We wandered around the town and eventually bought stuff that we will have to take home.The town is not so well maintained but is in amazingly beautiful surroundings. It sits on the lake and looks over to the mountains which seem to go all the way around. The civic centre was architecturally designed and is made of stone and wood. It has a swiss feel but with an Argentinian twist - its covered in graffiti. The main street consists of tourist shops, ski gear places and chocolate shops with ice cream parlours thrown in. We went to a cafe that was recommended in the information book in the apartment and ordered hot chocolate. It was delicious and even Fiona, who doesn't eat chocolate, liked it. Harriet discovered the submarino, which is a hot milk served with a chocolate bar. You melt the chocolate in the milk to make your hot chocolate. That was a big hit.
We had also figured out from the information pack that we could get a bus to the ski field about every hour. We couldn't
be bothered waiting for the bus and it seemed to be quite slow so we rented a car. There are over 70 car rental places in Bariloche which is a little overwhelming. We chose one because it was open rather than for any other reason and hired a car for the week. The lady was really helpful and showed us all sorts of trips we could do and which days were best to do them.
Once we had the car we were able to buy groceries and head home to cook. Driving in Argentina is going to take some getting used to. Several of the junctions have no lights and the rule is first one there goes first. It's hard to decide who was there first though. They don't wait for traffic when turning either. It's too hard to understand and therefore too hard to explain. You just go with the flow and hope you don't hit anyone and that no one hits you! That's definitely one way to keep life interesting.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.072s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 11; qc: 28; dbt: 0.0331s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb