Blogs from San Carlos de Bariloche, Río Negro, Argentina, South America - page 64

This trek goes around Monte Tronador (The thunder mountain), but actually it's best parts are the side-trips - Refugio Otto Meiling and Salto Garganta del Diablo. So, following the recommendations of other people who did the trek before us, we've decided to do just them, and they were indeed worthwhile. On the first day we've climbed up to Refugio Otto Meiling which is situated in the middle of nowhere, just bellow the permanent snow line, at the height of 2000m. On the way to the refugio we saw some interesting ice and snow phenomenas, which we of course had to explore. From the plato on which the refugio is situated an amazing view opens up, of snow caped mountains, and valleys far bellow. It was actually difficult to tell sometimes where some mountain ends and the ... read more

Hello Friends, On the evening of April third, we were picked up at the Bariloche (Argentina) bus stop by Riens, the co-director of Sin Fronteras (in English "without borders"), the language school we would be attending. After a crazy, wonderful week of being bombarded with sights and sounds in Chile, we happily anticipated being in one place for a week. Sin Fronteras is a very small school with no more than 6 students and 3 teachers at a time. The school doubles as a hostel for its students. When we arrived, there were 3 other students. We each had 3 hours a day of individualized instruction plus homework, which left us a bit of time to explore Bariloche. Bariloche is set on the coast of a beautiful clear lake with the Andes mountains soaring overhead. Because ... read more

Im in love with this town...i have found the backpacker haven!!! this is party central...home to acute alcohol intoxication and everything exiting!!! ive been here for 1.5 weeks...picked up 5 spanish lessons with a cute argentinian called natalia...within the first lesson i was able to learn how to find out if she has a boyfriend (novio) in spanish...which to my misfortune she does... i partied 7 out of 9 days...averaging 4-5 hours sleep...met some great people at my hostel...went out for awesome food (best steak so far...and awesome pastas!!). the best chocolate ive ever tried and ice cream that leaves your tongue in a state of paralysis. went paragliding over the amazing beautiful landscape of Bariloche, with its sweeping white tipped mountain ranges in the disctance and sparkling mirror image lakes at its footsteps, it was ... read more

After arriving to Bariloche, first thing I did was a jeep tour around the city - as it was supposed to go through all the good viewpoints. Bariloche is situated on the banks of a huge lake, and has an interesting structure - It's relatively a big city of population around the 100,000, but in most places it's quite narrow and very long - something like 8 or 10 really long parallel streets. Unfortunately it was a cloudy and a bit rainy day, so the views weren't perfect, and unlike what I expected, the tour concentrated more on the 4*4 driving, and much less on sight seeing. We had a really crazy driver, so we enjoyed allot from the driving - he was driving around 50-60 kph, on the worst possible roads. The other drivers were ... read more

Day 13 After our last night in El Calafate we wake up at a reasonable hour to prepare for the next leg of the trip - hitchiking to Bariloche. After deciding not to go to the next town North (El Chalten), we make a slapdash sign saying ´NORTH´ in black felt tip and hit the road. It becomes a bit of a joke with everyone at the hostel due to messy writing and the piece of card which was falling apart... We leave full of naive confidence... Our first problem is trying to find the right location to stand with our sign. We move around several times, picking up advice from passers. Eventually we return to our original location on the side of a road leading out (we think) north of the town. Many drivers acknowledge ... read more