Week Five- Bariloche

First off, Bariloche is the most beautiful, incredible place I´ve ever been to. If you ever get the chance. Go.

After a 22 hour bus ride from Buenos Aires, we arrived in Bariloche on Sunday around 11 a.m. The bus ride was not bad at all. We walked about ten minutes to our hostel and got settled in. We grabbed lunch at this nice little restaurant not too far from our hostel and the waitress talked with us for about 20 minutes. She was from Chile and told us some places we could check out if we decided to go to Chile. She was so nice! Sunday was pretty much just exploring the town. We found the cathedral by the lake and sat on a dock for a while. It was beautiful and so relaxing! We then found one of the chocolate shops named Mamuschka and the chocolate was incredible! After walking around some more we got the best ice cream that Bariloche has to offer at Juaju. After looking into some excursions for the week, we headed back to the hostel. We went to the supermarket on our way back to buy some food to make dinner. We got stuff for sandwiches and made them in the kitchen of our hostel. Considering we didn´t do anything big, it was a full day!

Best Chocolate Ever

Ice Cream!

Monday my friends decided to go trekking in the mountains, but as my feet were giving me problems, I decided to pass and walked around the city. There is a big craft show in the town center everyday except for Sunday, so since we couldn´t go on Sunday, I decided to check it out. It was very cool. I really love the ferias everywhere. I kept walking through the city and ended walking past the chocolate museum. (Bariloche is very famous for its chocolate). It was on my list of things I wanted to check out, so I went inside. The factory wasn´t fully running today, because today and tomorrow are national holidays. Because of this, I was the only one in my tour, so I got a private guided tour of the museum. I was a little worried since the tour was completely in Spanish, but even though she spoke very fast, I still understood almost everything! It was really interesting about the history of chocolate and a little bit about how it´s made! Before my tour they gave me ¨hot chocolate¨ and it was incredible, but was almost like drinking a bar of chocolate. Awesome. After my tour, I walked around for about 2 more hours before heading back to the hostel.

Arrayanes Trees

Tuesday we went on an excursion to la Isla Victoria and el Bosque del Arrayanes just outside of Bariloche. We got to our pick up point at 1:00 after trying a different chocolate store (Abuela Goya- not as good as Mamuschka) and took a bus to our boat, Modesta Victoria. We had about an hour and a half ride to el Bosque del Arrayanes. The ride was really cool. We were able to go out on the deck and take pictures and whatnot. There are no words to describe how beautfiul Bariloche is. El Bosque del Arrayanes is the only forest in the entire world to have the Arrayanes tree. We had about 30 minutes to walk around the main path and enjoy the forest. After the forest, we boarded our boat for a 40 minute ride to la Isla Victoria. La Isla Victoria is part of the National Park Nahuel Huapi and because we are students in Argentina, we only had to pay $20 Pesos instead of $60! It was really pretty, but we didn´t have much time to explore by ourselves. We had a guided tour of part of the island and then had a little bit of free time to view the redwood trees on the island. After about an hour and a half on the island, we boarded our boat and headed back to the city. We went to dinner right next to our travel agency to try a popular fish dish here that´s called Trucha. It was very good and it was presented very nicely, fish head and all! That was a little bit of a surprise! Haha. After dinner, we got some ice cream and headed back to the hostel to talk and plan a little more.

My Horse "Grandote" and I

Wednesday we got up nice and early to be picked up at 9 a.m. in front of our hostel to go to an estancia (ranch). Our ride ended up being 40 minutes late, but that´s typical in Argentina. The ride took about an hour and we arrived at the estancia. We were greeted with a small breakfast that consisted of croissants filled with dulce de leche (caramel) and coffee. After breakfast, we headed out to go horseback riding for two hours. It was absolutely incredible. We rode through the mountains and by the water and even through the water at one point! It was definitely the highlight of my trip. Incredible. After we got back from our ride, we were served an asado. An asado is basically just a bunch of grilled meat. Very good. It consisted of chorizo (sausage), chicken, beef, empanadas, salada and fruit. It was a ton of food for what we paid. All in all, it was an amazing day and for just over $50 US, it was a steal!

Las Cavernas

Thursday, we got to sleep in a bit and woke up just in time for breakfast. After breakfast and showers, we walked to the supermarket and bought stuff to make sandwiches and some fruit to have a picnic by the water. It was super relaxing and really nice. It was really cold and rained a little bit, but it was nice. At 2:30 we were picked up by a van to go to Cerro Leones. We arrived around 3 pm and were taken a ways up the mountain and went on a guided tour of the caverns there. They are called Las Cavernas del Viejo Volcan (Caverns of the old volcano). We saw three caverns that were once inhabited by the Mapuche tribe. The first two caverns were pretty cool and we got to see a drawing on one of the walls that is thousands of years old! The third cavern was the best. We literally crawled through a hole in the cave to go to the main "room" of the cave. It was really dark and scary, but totally cool and legit. I was not expecting to crawl through the tiniest opening ever in a cave today. It was awesome. After the last cavern, we went up the mountain to take pictures and enjoy the view. It was incredible. After the excursion, I bought some more chocolate and had my first submarino. A submarino is essentially hot chocolate, but way better. The give you hot milk and a bar of chocolate to melt in the milk. So good. After that we decided that we wanted to cook our own dinner in the hostel, so we went to the supermarket and bought stuff to make pasta and vegetables. We cooked everything our selves in the kitchen and it was really good and way cheaper. All in all, a really good day! 

Centro Civico (Civic Center)

Friday was our last full day in Bariloche. We accidentally slept in a little bit later than we would have liked, but it was nice. After getting ready, we went out to lunch and then headed back to the chocolate museum. It was nice to see the factory and we got a different perspective of the history of chocolate and our guide was much more conversational than the one I had on Monday. We then met up with two other friends to get ice cream one last time. After enjoying our ice cream we walked to the town center to check out the Patagonia (That´s what the southern region of Argentina is called) Museum. It was interesting, but not as cool as the chocolate museum. After this we bought some chocolate to take back with us to Buenos Aires, stopped at the Feria one more time to buy some gifts and went to dinner at this place we found that had different types of food that had a little bit more flavor than Argentine food! It was so good and the waiter was awesome! Now my suitcases are all packed to the brim and I am ready for the 22 hour bus ride back to Buenos Aires tomorrow.

Saturday we got to the bus station around 10 for our 10:30 bus. We didn't end up leaving until about 11. It was pretty uneventful. As far as 22 hour bus rides go, it wasn't too bad. For me, traveling by bus is way better than traveling by plane.  We got back to Buenos Aires around 9 a.m. on Sunday and headed home to get ready for the first day of classes tomorrow!