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Published: January 1st 2008
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After leaving La Cumbre, our plans were to visit Mendoza (wine country!) and then either make a side trip into Chile to see Valparaiso and Santiago, or head straight down to Bariloche in the Lake Disrict. We arrived in Mendoza, and although it was a nice city (and it had taken us 14 hours to get there), we got so excited by thought of camping and hiking in the Lake District and Patagonia, that straight after lunch we went back to the bus stop and bought ourselves tickets to Bariloche.
17 hours later, we were in Bariloche. And wasn´t it worth the effort! The countryside on the drive down was amazing - huge cliffs and stunningly blue lakes. Bariloche is situated right on Lago (Lake) Nahuel Huapi, and surrounded by mountains, all still covered in snow. The views are amazing. We booked ourselves into Hostel 1004, which is on the 10th floor of the tallest building in town. The views are spectacular!
Our first full day in town, and we went straight to the National Parks office to find out about treks. The man behind the counter was able to give us some information about walking in the area,
but also directed us to Club Andino Bariloche. The guide there informed us that there was still too much snow on the mountains for us to do the full Nahuel Huapi traverse - the higher traverses were dangerous, and that our only possibility would be to do day hikes, or overnight hikes to each of the refugios. Disappointed, but vowing not to give up, we decided we would hire crampons and ice axes and camp up in the snow, and then we could determine how far along the trail we could go. We went out and bought new sleeping bags (heavy, but warm down to -17º!) and spent hours studying our trail guide and maps. Jamie started getting very excited about the possibility of building a snow shelter for us to live in!
And then it happened. Jamie was checking our online bank account, and it turned out that we had made a bit of an oversight with our budgetting. We had been receiving payments in error from Jamie´s old boss, which had not been appearing on our online statement! By the time we had paid her back, we were already eating into our ´cushion´!! Jamie and I are
planning to move to Canada after our honeymoon, but we have no contacts and no jobs, and so we were keeping some money back to keep us going while we got back on our feet...our financial cushion. I was happily typing away on a neighbouring computer, trying to find a birthday present for my mum, when Jamie approached me. I prattled on for a while about the challenges of finding a good present on the internet, when I realised that Jamie was looking a little pale, and wasn´t really appreciating my story. And then he said it..."I think we´ve got a problem". He explained the situation (causing me to feel a little queasy) and I suggested we step outside to discuss it properly. When we left the internet cafe and Jamie told me how much money we had left, I actually fell down laughing. This is a common reaction in my family. How did this happen? We´re still not really sure, but the next thing you know, we´re begging the outdoors shop to take bag our sleeping bags, and we´re calling Air Canada, citing an ´emergency´(we didn´t specify the type) and changing our flights to Canada.
The good news
is that Bariloche is the chocolate capital of Argentina, so we´ve been able to take our mind of the abrupt end of our honeymoon and we´ve have conducted a fully comprehensive and scientific survey of the chocolate shops in town. It´s hard to decide which chocolates really are the best, so we´re now conducting the second stage of research (involving more chocolate eating).
Although we were a little disappointed, we feel lucky to have had the last 3 months to travel around, and we are excited about our new adventure in Canada. We are booked on to the Andesmar bus tonight - 23 hours and we´ll be in Buenos Aires. Then we fly to Vancouver on the 5th December!
Today was an absolutely beautiful day, so we walked out to the cable car at Cerro Otto (maybe 5km from town) and took in the view from the summit. Absolutely awe-inspiring! We then found a nice track through the woods that led all the way back to town. It was bitter-sweet really, we were sad to be leaving Bariloche (and Argentina!), but at the same time, it was a beautiful day and a nice way to end our trip.
And we'll be back....
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