Bariloche!

Soo… I have been in a lot of new adventures eversince we left for Bariloche about a week ago.

After a mere 29 hours on busses all the way up to Bariloche, we finally arrived on fridaymorning at the bus terminal of Bariloche. Instead of taking a taxi, we decided to catch a local bus into town to save money. We had a reservation at the marcopolo inn hostel, and as soon as we got off the bus, one of their employees came up to us to recruit us to their hostel. I told hiim we already had a reservation at their hostel, so instead he told us which local bus to get into town. I asked the local bus driver to tell us where to get off. He agreed and we got on the bus. Unfortunately the busdriver forgot about us, as soon as the whole bus got overloaded with students heading home from school. We sat on the bus for quite a while and I had this feeling we already passed the hostel. I asked a woman next to me and she confirmed that we indeed just passed the place we wanted to get off. We got off at a few busstops afterwards and we had to walk back for about 20 minutes to the stop we wanted to get off. Jannik was not amused as he wanted to get a taxi to the hostel and told me how relying on local busdrivers is not a great idea. Once we finally arrived at the hostel we checked in and had a wander through town. The hostel offers free breakfast and free dinner, so after our free plate of mashed patatoes with meat we had a few beers in the hostebar. As it happened to be fridaynight and the fact we hadn´t been out for at least 3 weeks, we decided to go and have a good night out .We headed off to an Irish pub down the road. On friday night this happens THE place to be in Bariloche. From there we headed off to a club a few blocks down from there. Bariloche turned out to be city full of teenagers, as the club we ended up in was filled with just 16 and 18 year olds. We had a good time anyway and we turned back to the hostel in the early morning the next day.

Saturday was a day of pure relaxation. We were in need of some sleep. I slept for most of the day. That night I got a message from a guy we met in Torres del Paine, David. He told me he happened to be in Bariloche as well. We decided to go and meet him after dinner. We walked to his hostel and found him there. That night we decided to have a few drinks in the local pub and catch up on the adventures. After a few pints we decided to head back to the hostel as the next morning we decided to go and check out a motocross tournament about 20KM´s out of town.

The next morning we woke up failry early. After breakfast we headed off to the busstop to catch a bus to the motocross tournament. Unfortunately after over an hour of waiting the bus never came. We decided to grab a taxi instead. The taxi dropped us right at the entrance of the tournament. We were right on time, half an hour after arrival the first races started. It was quite fun to watch and sometimes we could see some spectacular jumps as well. At times one of the bikers crashed and had to be carried from the track to an ambulance nearby,  but it seemed like it wasn`t anything too serious. After a few hours we decided to head back to the hostel. We hitchhiked to a nearby busstop and from there we caught the bus back in town. That night we decided to go to the local cinema. We cooked ourselves some dinner and went to see the movie 10,000 BC. The cinema was quite cheap, about 3 euros, so that was quite good too.

The next day I decided to ask reception what other activities I was able to do around Bariloche. They told me I could rent a mountainbike and drive around a small lake. They also told me I could hike up to a viewingpoint for a panoramic view of Bariloche and surroundings. I reserved me a bike and went to the busterminal to buy a me a busticket to get to my next destination after Bariloche. Afterwards I headed back to the hostel to buy some lunch and then to catch a bus to the viewingpoint. It was a twenty minute steep hike up the hill to the viewingpoint. After checking out the viewingpoint we walked back down and headed to the mountainbike rental place. Unfortunately it was already a bit late and the guy at the rental place told me we only had 2 hours to rent the bikes. We decided to rent them anyway and do a somewhat small circuit. It was still quite a tough ride up and down the hilly roads. Two hours later we got back to the rental place. I was quite tired after the whole bikeride. Once we got back to our hostel I decided to arrange a rentalcar for the next day, as the main attraction of Bariloche is driving around the 7 lakes of Bariloche. I did some research and found myself a good deal thanks to a girl from Isreal who recommended a place. I called the guy on his cellphone and reserved us a car for the next day. That night we went out to the best restaurant of Bariloche, perhaps even of Argentina. It happened to be a steakhouse which did the most brilliant steaks ever. Several people had already recommended going there, and it turned out to be as good as people had been saying. It turned out to be the best meal I had on this whole trip. After dinner we went back to the hostel to search for some other people who wanted to drive along with us the next day, that way we could split the costs of the rental car even more. We found an english guy in our room, Steve, who wanted to come along.

The next morning we woke up early. I wanted to get the rental car as soon as possible, that way we would have the full day to drive around the 7 lakes. I picked the car up at 9:30AM. It turned out to be a brand new Volkswagen Gol, apparently a Golf is called a Gol in Argentina.. I was quite happy to find out it didn`t happen to be some piece of crap they were trying to rent me. After the nescessary paperwork we went on our way. I decided to drive, as it was my creditcard used for the deposit. It turned out to be a beautiful day with great weather. The drive was really scenic and extremely beautiful. Much better than I expected it to be.  Parts of the drive turned out to be on dirt roads, with lots of stones on it. I was happy it wasn`t my own brand new car having to deal with these incredible nasty roads. Stones were flying against the car and I hoped it wouldn`t create a lot of nasty pits and dents to the car. We drove around for the whole afternoon. We got back around 18:00. We filled the car up with gas and cleaned it out a bit. Then we returned the car back to the rental place and bought us some typical chocolate from Bariloche. Apparently Bariloche is very famous for its chocolate. There are chocolate shops everywhere.. It`s insane how many and as well how big these shops are.

The next day we had to get up early again. This time to catch our bus up to our next destination; Pucon. More news soon from Pucon!!

Apr 18th 2008 – Apr 22nd 2008