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Published: August 30th 2006
Lago Nahuel Huapi
View from BarilocheInto Argentina then. After a 9 hour bus trip, we arrived at Bariloche, the ski capital of South America.
At first we were slightly disappointed with the town after Pucon. We expected a Swiss, Heidi style town, but it was a bit more Caerphilly than Cloisters. Nadine was quickly swayed though after perusing the streets and finding out what the town had to offer, namely chocolate shops! And I dont mean one or two, I mean twenty or thirty, all producing there in house brand of confectionary. Im sure fattys must come here on al-inclusive´s because you could gorge yourself to death on the stuff. Needless to say, after acting like "kids in a sweet shop" on the first the day, chocolate wasnt exactly our favourite thing to eat.....until we woke up the next morning!
So the main draw here is the fact that it is ten miles away from the biggest ski resort in S.America, Cerro Catedral. We managed to get two days snowboarding in here for about 30 quid a day each. That included lift pass and snowboard rental so it was fairly reasonable. I would definitely recommend it to any of you boarders out there as
Cerro Catedral
View from one of the slopes the snow and the views were amazing. I overheard some american bloke saying that he had skied all over the world and it was the best place that he had vere been to, so that seems like praise indeed. I guess the only stumbling block is the flight to get here!
But thankfully we had a good, "uneventful" couple of days boarding. And after a couple of days of tears, shouting but thankfully no broken bones, we got Nadine turning. So we might have a budding snowboarder in her yet, but I guess the jury is still out until we have some more time somewhere.
On our third day here, we decided to treat our bruised and tired bodies to guess what? More chocolate. About 20km out of Bariloche is Hotel Llao-Llao, one of the finest hotels of the world (and at $450 dollars a night for a basic room it should be!). You can have afternoon tea here for about 6 quid each. This basically encompasses as much orange juice and hot Chocolate as you can drink and as many pastries as you can eat. Its all very posh with silver service butlers an all that malarky.
Snowboarding
Two old pros. But I realised that they dont really sell it as an "All you can eat!" when they frowned upon my fourth visit to the pastries buffett and then politely asked me to do my trousers back up as I was scaring the hotel guests!" I think we were what is called a "fish out of water". All very funny though.
On our final day we were catching an overnight bus, so decided to have a big lunch to make up for the fact that we weren´t going to have tea. And big was the operative word. As if hadnt had enough to eat at Llao Llao the previous night, we went for a steak where the portions were so big you´d swear youd ordered the whole cow. The pictures below speak for themself I think. And its pretty cheap as well. We had altogether Provaleta (melted cheese that comes the size of a small pizza), Chorizo and blood sausage (each the size of a can of guinness!) a Sirloin steak each (2" thick and almost the size of a house brick!) and one portion of chips to share (Look at the photo! That is a one person portion!!!!!) All
Nadine carving up the slopes
And again, no broken nose this time! this came to 13 quid for the lot. I reckon that would of cost at least 60 quid in the UK. Absolute bargain but, as we didnt need to eat for the next two day so it saved us money!
So four days well spent in Bariloche. Thoroughly enjoyed it but off now to Gaiman, a Welsh village on the other side of Argentine, and 14 hours away by bus!
Lots of love Stu and Nadine
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Stephen Paul
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Carne y Papas
The size of that steak and those french fries are ridiculous!!! I must admit, Its too bad you only stayed briefly in Chile. Especially this year, when high snowfall and early spring like weather have made things especially fantastic. Cheers!