Yay Bariloche. I will admit that Bariloche on paper was one of the reasons I wanted to come to South America. Though I was dubious at first, it did live up to my expectations. It's a very nice little town set on the shore of one of the most beautiful lakes I have ever seen (actually second only to Fairview, of course). It boasts its chocolate, wine, and skiing ... very much so. This place has my number. It is like a little Swiss town with more flowers (especially roses) than I have ever seen in one town, and everything was very well kept. The first few days were a bit overcast, and being that it is such an amazing place because of the unbeatable scenery, a cloud cover can be a big downer. This is also part of the reason I ended up staying 7 days instead of 3 ... that and the people. Oops.
Immediately as soon as I walked into the hostel my roommates made (I put up a good fight I swear) me go ou, snow capped for ice cream ... how can you go wrong in this place?? For the next couple days we just kind of bummed around the town and hostel and ate and drank ... a bit (possibly more than a bit??). We watched sunsets from the beach almost every night and froze our butts off during the day and then came back to a warm hostel. It was great.
Once the weather cleared up, some people moved on, but a Welsh guy named Neill and I somehow got trapped and kept ending up getting sucked into more days. The first day we went biking around Circuito Chico and took a walk to Lago Escondido (hidden lake) and had a picnic lunch. The next day we tried to hike up to Refugio Frey, but we took the wrong gondola to start off with, so we were hopelessly lost after that, and basically just climbed to the highest peak we could find and hung out there and had lunch for a few hours in the sun (and snow-- plenty on the ground, and started coming down a bit too) and enjoyed the amazing view. Next day we went up to National Geographic-deemed "Top 10 Best Views in the World", Cerro Campanario-- steep climb but the view was indeed worth it a thousand times over. You can see Nahuel Huapi and many other lakes going as far as you can see, broken only by green, snow-capped mountains popping up all over the place. The lakes literally just glisten. Again, we hung out for a few hours and couldn't tear ourselves away (and had another picnic lunch!).
The next day I went paragliding off of Cerro Otto, and I would argue that that view was even better than Campanario. We started at the very top and then ran down a very steep slope and were suddenly gliding in the air. We had the most perfect day for it, and it was the smoothest most peaceful ride I could have asked for. I'm so glad I waited for Bariloche because I couldn´t imagine a more magestic place to have done it. We sailed out over the water for a bit and finally landed on the beach. Incredible. I would give my left arm for one of those perfect log cabins on the shore of that lake. They are impeccible.
When Neill and I had finally convinced ourselves that we were definitely going to leave the next day, somehow it was Friday night again and we couldn't say no, so we got caught up in more sunsets and red wine and gave in to "one more day"-- who can pack on Friday night-- it's really not fair to have only 9 am busses. That's Finally we resolved the next day to actually make it to the bus station and get out, unfortunately:(.
Off to Chile again (not without a sack full of chocolate for the road, though)!
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