San Carlos de Bariloche - The Lake Region, Patagonia, Argentina
The open road: Imagine staring at that for 28 hours. Me, my shoes and the famous Route 40 of Argentina got well acquainted on the longest bus trip I've ever been on between El Calafate and Bariloche. They had pretty bad food, good iced tea and a "No Solids" sign on the on-board bathroom (mi sueno). At least we got in 2 different sunsets, a ton of stars and a sunrise before getting off the same bus. Brian got his jacket and gloves stolen overnight on this bus, but other than that, we got there safe and sound.
Bariloche - Think "The Lake Tahoe" of Argentina - Big beautiful blue lakes surrounded by forests and mountains with several ski resorts. Also, it's the Chocolate capital of Argentina, and the place where stray dogs intimidate drivers and control the traffic.
Mah bad, Archie.
Although we got a lot of tips for great hikes throughout the area, B-ri and I figured we'd pretty much done enough hiking for this trip. For this city, we decided to go for mountain bikes along the Circuito Chico, that takes about 4 hours (about 25-30km) to complete.
Here's Bri at the first viewpoint, about 5 minutes into the ride. We were feeling great, the sun was out and warm at this point, and there weren't any uphill areas yet. Plus this place looks DOPE.
After about 10 minutes into the ride, we hit our first uphill. I had to teach Bri how to switch gears on the bike because he was dying, but it didn't seem to help much. He told me to go ahead and wait for him at the next viewpoint, so I did...
...and ended up here, a small viewpoint off the main track that I thought Bri would find. Then I waited for like 10 minutes and hadn't seen him, so I went a little bit down the road and found...
...the real viewpoint. Whoops. No sign of Bri, but I thought maybe he was still taking his time walking up the hill so I chilled for a bit and soaked it in. The D that is.
This was a cool bird I saw. Probably a falcon? Somehow I caught him in flight.
...still waiting for Brian. At this point, I figured he had either gone back and given up, got in trouble on the trail, or had passed me up and now I was waaaaay far behind.
I caught a couple who were slowly walking their tandem bike up the hill and asked if they had seen another asian dude down the hill. They said No, so I went back a few km back to see if he was back there.
He wasn't.
Then began about an hour and a half of going back and forth on the trail (probably a bonus 10km up and down hills) with the sun getting low and the temperature dropping. At first I was having a blast on the bike (I miss mine back home) but after a while I just felt cold and tired.
...And then, I got AWOO'd by a random car on the road: some Israeli dude and girl yelling at me as I'm sweating and panting up a hill. Then looking in the back, there's a dude in a helmet with a bike hanging over the seat. THIS FING GUY.
Apparently, Bri went waaaay ahead of me (I shouldn't have gone back and forth so much) and was waiting at the next viewpoint for me for a while. He was chillin, met a bunch of cool random people including a newlywed Israeli couple who insisted he have a sandwich with them and then insisted that he put his bike in the car and go searching for me (so he says). Why do we only meet jerks out here???
And after all that, we only had 3 more hours of biking and 20 km left to go. Holler at your boy.
There's the man!
King of the uphill battles
Following that excellent adventure, we were freezing and starving and tired as can be. So we went for our standard post-bike-ride meal: waffles and hot chocolate.
This combo was a steal considering it cost 20 pesos for both and the chocolate cost 18 on its own. Plus it was warm and tasty.
After refueling, we headed over to the lake shore to see this Patagonia Logo live in the flesh. The cameraman can't do these sunsets justice, unfortunately. FlavorColor in the house.
Other highlights of Bariloche:
Rock Chicken - We went to this place back to back dinners because it was cheap and filling. Compared to El Calafate and El Chalten, we were eating like champs for about $6.50 a plate.
Hostel Tango Inn Downtown - This place lied to the world on its website. We booked it for the free towels, wi-fi, pool table and jacuzzi overlooking the lake. Too bad the pool table and jacuzzi cost money, towels weren't free, and no wi-fi to be found. Also, for a full day the hostel had no (nada) running water. They even gave me a key for another room to try, but just as I was nice and lathered up, the water shut off. It was great doing that 5 hour bike ride with a semi-soapy body.
Wilkenny's Irish Pub - What is it with Irish pubs being popular in all places of the world? Are they really that cool? We got a free welcome drink flyer from the hostel and headed over to this pub pretty early, around 12am on a Friday. It was literally almost empty, but a huge place. A couple beers later, it was starting to pick up. A few more beers, at about 2:30am and the place was full as can be, people shoulder to shoulder and a dance floor complete with disco lights appeared in the back. What kind of style is this??? I like it, though.
The stray dogs - Great entertainment while walking down the street or waiting for buses. The dogs will either work solo or in a pack to pick out cars they don't like (we tried to figure out their criteria...maybe the size of the car? color? noise?) and would go chasing them, bite them on the bumper, and bark like crazy. Store owners would scream at them and have to carry them out of their stores. But the dogs are pretty chill to people. One of them, named Brian's boy, literally followed us around the main street for 30 minutes. We would even try to lose him by going into stores, but he would just casually sit down and wait for us to come back out, then casually stroll alongside or behind us. It was weird.
And just like that, we left Patagonia behind and were on to the next one...
...Mendoza, where the beer flows like wine
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