Bariloche - chocolate country

We went from mendoza to Bariloche, a cute little swiss chalet type of town nestled between some hills and a whole bunch of lakes. Its a ski resort in the winter, and a hiking destination in summer. As we were there in neither, we didn´t do alot. They make chocolate there, so we decided to sample the local stuff, went to three chocolate shops and bought way too much, went back to the hostel and tested it all out. Definitely over-rated. We felt decidedly ill.

So we thought we should do something, and on saturday, went for a day trip to nearby el Bolson, another cute little town in some mountains, famous for its market of all kind of stuff, you know, the usual artisan handmade everything. Oh, and there are raspberries. I bought a big punnet of them, and ate them, very very nice. See Richard´s blog for pics of me eating raspberries.

The next day we got a local bus out to a peninsula, where there is a very very nice hotel and a cute wooden church, complete with Saint Bernard dog with barrel around its neck, posing for photos with the tourists.

I won´t put any pics up because Richard put pretty much all of our Bariloche photos up... we didn´t take many (cos we didn´t do much).

It was nice there for a few days. Then we continued the bus journey south. 12 hours or so to Comodoro rivadavia, a windy spot on the Atlantic, where we had a 12 hour layover before our ongoing night bus (a further 12 hours to Rio Gallegos). Not much was going on in Comodoro. The bus station was open, and a servo, a bakery and one coffee shop. Yep, we managed to pick a public holiday, very very cold and windy one, to spend there. So we ate alot at the bakery, had a coffee at the coffee shop, and another at the servo, and waited around at the bus station. Next bus, another 12 hours to Rio Gallegos, where we only had to wait 4 hours for the next bus. And onwards El Calafate we went. The scenery was bleak, cold, and nothingness, followed by bleak, cold and snowy... I was most excited about the snow.

This photo I actually took on the return journey, of a couple of Guanacos (a type of llama) in the snow. Poor Llamas. Amazingly on the trip I also saw two rheas, which look like slightly fatter emus.