Blogs from Río Negro, Argentina, South America - page 3

Last week, we celebrated Christmas in San Carlos de Bariloche. The flight over there was quite bumpy - so much so that one of the kids in the row behind us puked all over his sister. The little girl started crying and shouting "HE DID THAT ON PURPOSE!". The mother tried to explain that the brother didn't do it on purpose, but that he got sick from the bumpy flight, after which the girl shouted: "HE COULD'VE OPENED THE WINDOW!". LOL. Made us forget all about the bumps... :-) Bariloche is situated in the Northern part of Patagonia and is sort of like the Swiss Alps. At least, that's what the Argentinians want you to believe. And to be honest, it kind of is. There are snow capped mountains, lakes, chalets, cheese fondue restaurants and many ... read more

We filled our last 2 days in Bariloche with more....lakes and mountains! But first we popped into the town museum which has a small room of natural history exhibits (stuffed birds and animals!) and information about the region's geology/geography/flora/fauna. Here we discovered that the armadillo that we thought we saw on our first visit to the country about 10 years ago was probably a pichi rather than a large hairy armadillo. The upstairs room had a history of the inhabitants of the whole country with the various settlers, civil wars, native populations in different regions and how most of them were wiped out. This was all in Spanish so we we picked our way through some of it but you'll not be surprised to know that the railways were largely built by the Brits. However, theirs ... read more

We started our 4th day with the Chilean border formalities (once our guides had roused the immigration staff) even though we still had another 22 km up a gravel road before we reached the official border. This was our first serious challenge, in the final 7 km we had to climb 700 m. It would probably have been fine up a paved road, even with the occasional hairpin bend, but on the loose gravel surface it was definitely a bit tricky! I was using my own shoes and pedals so was riding 'clipped in', this was an advantage for the majority of the time, but not when you might fall over. I didn't actually fall but a couple of times I needed to pre-emptively unclip and stop just in case. I then had to walk the ... read more

On Monday (30th march) myself and some others from my hostel left Calafate for an 27hr bus trip to Bariloche, the journey its self was long and not as comfortable as I had hoped. There is only one bus company from El Cal to Bariloche so we had no choice with the ticket price or seats, and even though we had paid for "cama" the bus we were put on was "semi-cama", it was also freezing cold and no pillows or blankets were provided, some people hadn't brought a coat/blanket with them. Our bus had movies playing for the whole trip (not good ones), everyone was glad to arrive at our destination by 9pm on Tuesday evening. Bariloche is a lovely Swiss style town, it is the Chocolate capital of the world. I was here just ... read more

After enjoying the mountians and Patagonia it was time to say good bye to this vast and beauitful part of the world. The journey to the Argentinan lake district began with a 25 hour bus ride and our first mishap. Upon arriving at the bus station at 11:30pm Sandra discovered that she had forgotten her purse (including wallet). As we frantically searched our bags in the hope that the missing purse was in fact just packed, an Argentinan girl seeing off a friend took notice of our predicament. We explained our issue and she offered to inquire at the restaurants we had visited that day. She ended up finding Sandra's purse and returning to the bus station the next evening and talked the bus driver into delivering it to Bariloche. Sandra got her purse back, with ... read more