Bariloche

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We disembarked the Navimag in Puerto Montt at about 7.30 in the morning. We were all a bit rough after our party and had only had a few hours sleep. But we had to run to the bus station to try and get the next bus to Bariloche as we didn´t fancy staying the night in Puerto Montt.

The first bus we could get was in the afternoon so we had to hang around for half a day. Puerto Montt was like a ghost town, everything was closed and there was hardly anyone around. Now I´m not sure if this was cause it was Good Friday or if it is always like this. We walked around the town and there was literally nothing open. I´m sorry to say that we came across a McDonalds and waited outside it for it to open as it was the only place that had people in it! Sad I know but it really was the only place open. Everyone from the boat ended up in there as there really wasn´t anything else (feel I have to justify going to McDonalds a lot at it is really bad!!).

I can honestly say Puerto Montt is a complete nothing and I´m glad we left straight away. It has tried to improve itself by building pointless statues but it really isn´t that great.

The bus to Bariloche was horrible. It was packed with people from the boat and the aircon didn´t work properly. We had to cross the Chile/Argentina border again (for about the millionth time). At this border instead of scanning everyones bag they just choose a few people at ´random´to search their bags. When I say at ´random´I mean they chose all the local people as none of us Europeans were choosen even though we were about 60% of the bus. One lady who was lucky enough to get picked seemed to have two empty bags with her which just had lots and lots of socks in them. Of course customs didn´t like this as she looked like she was going into Argentina to see these socks (although even if she was, who cares? Hardly going to damage the economy much with illegal sock selling!). We had to wait at the border for about an hour while she explained what she was doing with these socks! It was all in Spanish so I don´t know what they were saying which was annoying, but anyway she was eventually allowed back onto the bus and into the country with her socks! It was very annoying for everyone else on the bus though.

In Bariloche we stayed a bit out of town as wanted to relax. This would have been fine and the hostel was lovely apart from the fact that a tour group arrived on the second day. This meant that there were 20 people from the tour and me and Ian in the hostel. Tour groups are annoying as of course everyone knows each other and so they are loud all the time and also think the place is their house and so take everything over (leaving all their stuff everywhere and lying all over the sofas so there is no-where to sit, all having showers at the same time so we can´t use the bathroom etc). Also a couple of them were complete idiots and insisted of telling EVERYONE how they had spent the entire day on youtube - now that is travelling for you (all English of course!).

Bariloche is a very pretty town and is called the Lake District of Argentina. We decided to rent some bikes and go for a ride round the circuit. It didn´t occur to me that of course we were in the mountains so this would mean having to ride the bike up and down mountains. Stupid I know! Bascially I can´t ride a bike up a mountain (or even a small hill I think) so I ended up pushing my bike for most of the trip. I am also not very good at going downhill which was def made worse by the fact that we saw someone being put into an ambulance we assume after falling from their bike when going fast downhill. Then to make the whole ride that much better the last 7km was on a really busy road and a bus nearly hit both of us, even though it could have moved over and not gone near us. All of this pretty much made me hate the bike ride and I felt like throwing my bike off the mountain! The views were good but in all fairness we could have got to them on the bus. Annoying and has compltly put me off bike riding now!

We also climbed the small mountain Campanario which had amazing views of the lakes. We wanted to climb the bigger mountain but the bus there only goes every 2/3 hours which is annoying. We also went o a small town called Colonia Suiza. We went all the way there to go and get some traditional food they sell in the market that is cooked in the ground and covered under some leaves. We went all the way there only to find they had none left by the time we got there (it was 2.30). We were really disappointed so literally got straight back onto the bus and left (the next bus was going to be 2 hours away and didn´t want to stay if we couldn´t eat!).

We met up with some people from the ferry in Bariloche. We got completly lost and couldn´t find where we were supposed to be meeting. Ian was in a really bad mood and I was trying to say that it wasn´t that bad, at which point I fell over a step in the road and completly distroyed my knee! I wasn´t paying attention to where I was going so missed the step complety. Ian had to came and picked me up off the street as I was lying there confused about what had happened!

On our last day we finally got to have some chocolates (which Bariloche is famous for). The chocolates were so good! I wished I had got some more as I only got a few.

The strange thing is that even though lots of things went wrong in Bariloche (the bike ride, falling over, not getting to eat the traditional food and the tour group) it was still a really nice place to be and I would recommend people to go there! Also it seemed that everyone had something go wrong there so we weren´t the only unlucky ones!

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