Beautiful Bariloche, Argentina

When I was making my plans to travel around South America, my brother Neal specifically told me that I had to hit Bariloche. His description of it was "latin america meets swiss village meets disneyland meets boulder colorado." I figured with a description like that I had to go there!

I took an overnight bus from Puerto Madryn to Bariloche. When you are traveling overnight buses in South America, you have a choice between "cama" seats and "semi-cama" seats. I took "cama" for the 19 hours down to Puerto Madryn from Bariloche. The rows are only three seats across (2 seats and then just one by itself on the other side of the bus). Although the seats don´t fold all the way down, they do go down pretty far and are fairly wide, so it is easy to be pretty comfortable. dinner was a chicken breast with veggies, bread and a little dessert. to drink you could have coke, sprite or a small bottle of red wine. I went for the wine just to try Argentinian wine, but couldn´t finish it, it was SOOO intense! wow! Breakfast was some croissants and toast. Just a very pleasant ride. Ok so then to go to Bariloche, I decided to go cheap, gott the semi-cama seat b/c how diff could it really be???...uh A LOT! these buses now have 4 seats across, which means the seats are a lot narrower. dinner was just a ham and cheese sandwich, muffin and coffee. breakfast was this packaged cookie thing and coffee. so moral of the story - even if it is more $, always go for the cama seats! LOL

I really wish I had pictures of Bariloche to show you b/c the place is absolutely gorgeous. I was able to buy a kodak disposable camera, so at least I will have some photos!
The city faces this gorgeous lake and range of mountains. When I arrived the water in the lake was this gorgeous royal blue color!
The first day, Wed, I was there I just walked around the city, ate lunch...
Thursday I signed up for an all day tour in a National Park. The tour was led by a guy Caesar who drove the van and a girl Pia who explained everything in Spanish and English. There were probably about 10 of us that day. Pia did a great job talking about the history of the area, as well as info on all the plants and animals of the park (what I was of course interested in!) The first hike we did was a 20 min hike to see a cool waterfall. Nothing will ever be Iguazu falls, but this was still pretty cool! What was super fun though was that since the water in the river was in a protected national park and was coming straight from melted snow on the mountains, we were able to fill our water bottles with fresh mountain water. It kinda went against everythingI had ever been taught about hiking/camping..but man was that water tasty! (didn´t have any problems from drinking it either!) I did this twice during the day - sooo super cool!
After the waterfall we took an hour for lunch. Then it was off to see the black glacier. What´s amazing is that I have taught my students in FL about glaciers carving out valleys, but it is kinda hard to picture a glacier when you live in South FL. So seeing all of this in person, was amazing. The valley was huge and green and flat. At the end was a huge dormant volcano covered with this glacier that has ice that is 200 meters thick! (haven´t taken time to figure out the conversion there, but it´s THICK!). There are tons of mini waterfalls where all the ice is melting from the summer sun. Because all the sediment is volcanic, the ice at the base of the mountain is black and really doesn´t look like ice at all. This girl and I wished we could have touched it just to make sure it wasn´t just piles of rock or dirt!
It took us about an hour and a half to get back down the mountain, most of us snoozed b/c we were pretty tired from our hikes. I did wake up in time to see a lake that we had passed earlier. When we saw it that morning it was a pretty blue color. But now that the sun was setting, it was this GORGEOUS turquoise color. Just absolutely unbelievable! It´s amazing to see all the beuaty that God has created!

I definitely need to get back to Bariloche somehow b/c I know there is more to see and do and I just didn´t spend enough time there. I did buy super yumy chocolate and drink a drink called submarino - they steam milk and then give you a small chocolate bar to put in it to let it melt!
Friday morning before I headed out, a girl named Erika and I made a run for one last tourist spot. We took a ski lift to the top of a "mountain" (lg hill really) and saw a view that literally took my breath away: tall mountains with some snow still, multiple blue lakes with islands in the middle. She took a bunch of photos for me/us, so I hope that I can get them and post them. it was amazing!

I am now in Chile and will try to get photos and a blog up soon about that! I was able to buy a SUPER sweet camera while I was here and I can´t wait to start posting photos!