Bariloche!!

A bite of adventure so big that I am still chewing.

For my last full weekend in Argentina, I decided to take a trip to Bariloche. I realllly wanted to visit Patagonia, and Bariloche is located in the northern west point of Patagonia. No glaciers or penguins, but still beautiful! The bus ride there was around twenty one hours. I slept about half the way, read, talked to an Argentine person next to me, and enjoyed the scenery! It was an interesting transformation of landscapes.

It looked like this for hourssss. La pampa!

Then it started to look like landscape similar to that of Mendoza.

Then there were pine treeeees.

And lakes.

Once I got to Bariloche, the chaos began immediately. To make a long story short, I missed my bus stop and ended up getting dropped off in the middle of nowhere, took a random bus back the opposite direction, and ended up walking the rest of the way, finally making it to my hostel.

This is the view from my hostel...sunset on the first night.After I settled into my room at the hostel and took a much needed shower, I went downstairs to look for an excursion or something to do the next day. After about 40 minutes of talking to the receptionist about the excursions, I decided I wanted to do the full day kayaking trip. Come to find out, you need to sign up for that in a group of three or more. This ended up being the same for pretty much every other excursions I was slightly interested in. The receptionist told me to go to dinner and to look for other people who were by themselves, and that usually it's easy to find other people in the same boat as you. So I went to dinner, and had no luck. Everyone was with a group of friends, except for the people that I shared a room with, who were 1. working at the hostel 2. going to work at a ski school and 3. leaving tomorrow. After dinner I went back to the reception and booked a car - they had a pretty good deal to rent a car for 50 US dollars. This way I could go to lots of different places and hike wherever I want. Although it was fairly unorganized, it seemed like the best option.

The next morning someone meets me at the hostel with the car - a stick shift! SHIT!

I had driven a stick shift twice before then...once four years ago and once last summer, just for fun around a park and in the country. I figured I could back out now, and have nothing to do for the day, or just bank on the fact that it couldn't be that difficult to re-teach myself. I told the guy that I hadn't driven a stick in a real long time so he rode with me around a few blocks. I'm pretty sure he only allowed me to take the car after that with the expectation of making a lot of money via my lack of insurance on the car.

I had a few maps and took off. My first major stall out was on the road in front of the gas station. luckily cars were able to drive around me, until I figured out I was still in third gear and was able to turn into the station. After I got gas, I just kinda kept driving, until I saw Llao LLao hotel, which is a pretty famous hotel because it is BEAUTIFUL! I stopped to take pictures.

That's it!

Here I am in a parking lot that caused me some major problems. I still to this day have no idea how to make that car go in reverse. I ended up putting my car in neutral and pushing it backwards. It kept rolling backwards so I had to jump in my car real quick and slam on the breaks before it went through a fence into a lake. I decided not to park the car from here on out unless I could park at an angle to just drive away without reversing.

The water was crystal clear!

I found this parking lot nearby some hiking trails! SCORE!

A lot of the trail looked like this. I was and still am slightly confused by all of the bamboo.

This was a bridge that was constructed in the 1930s when the area was first made into a national park.

The ground was icy!

Here it was frozen in a really interesting manner. This is a footprint. The ground was crunchy.

A lookout point!

This was my favorite part of the entire trip. I went to this one trail that let to a dock on a very beautiful, very small lake. I'm pretty sure it was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.

I didn't ever want to leave that dock.

I like this pic a lot...that is the water.

A little further down there was a bigger lake.

After my hiking, which was probably about two hours, I continued to drive around. I drove through a Swiss village, but didn't stop, in fear of not being able to get out of a parking lot.

More pics that were taken while driving.

I have absolutely no idea where this is at.

There was a lot of road like this...it wasn't even paved most the time. I'm pretty sure I was the only car for miles.

I finally hit a main road! Yay!

Taking a check-the-map break.

I followed road signs back into town, and somehow managed to make it back to my hostel. I was on a one way street, so getting there was not super easy. I only stalled out in intersections a few times....no accidents!

What a crazy day!

DAY TWO

I booked a half day kayaking tour for my second day there. I woke up in the morning and it was raining. The excursion wasn't until 1:30 and it was still raining then, but at least it wasn't canceled!

This is the place where all the gear was kept.

Hahaha me in all my gear!

There were four other people from Israel on the kayaking trip with me. We were using two person kayaks so the guide was my partner. I'm pretty sure he didn't paddle half the time tho.

Cold and wet, but still beautiful.

Afterwards we got to go inside of a cottage and get coffee and pastries next to a fire! This was much needed. It stopped raining about half way through the kayaking, but it was still cold! Definitely still worth it though!

As stressful and crazy most of this trip was, it was still amazing. I wish I had more time there, but I'm just glad I got to go! :)