Since my last post, I moved into another hostel where Sandy and I have spent the last week. Last weekend for me was basically filled with excitement and anticipation for Sandy’s arrival. Saturday was spent in town, walking around with a friend that was leaving the next day and wanted to do a bit of last minute shopping. I also went to my old hostel to take part in the asado they have every Saturday. It was a great time and nice to see catch up with people in the hostel that I hadn’t seen in a week. On Sunday, I went biking with a few friends, a guy and a girl from Canada and a girl from Switzerland who is in my school as well. The bike root we did is called the Circuito Chico and it is basically a 25km loop that takes you through gorgeous mountain scenery and an abundance of lakes. It was a beautiful ride and lots of fun, not to mention challenging, it was very hilly but it always felt great when we got up to the top of a huge hill! We stopped a few times to look at the amazing scenery. At one point we stashed out bikes in the woods and hiked up to a Mountaineer Cemetery. It is basically a cemetery for all those who lost their lives to the mountains. We did a little detour on the Circuito Chico to go to small village called Colonia Suiza. Basically a long time ago some Swiss immigrants moved to this village and ever since it has had a lot of Swiss influence. We had lunch there, which included a menu full of Swiss food. After the Colonia Suiza we headed back to the rental place and returned out bikes. I was anxious to get back because I knew Sandy would be arriving soon.
The group that I did the Circuito Chico with.
Circuito Chico
When I got back to the hostel Sandy was already there and it was great to see her!! I am so happy to have her here; we have already had a lot of fun and are sure to have a lot more fun.
This past week I really haven’t enjoyed school, mostly because of the teacher I had. I had the same teacher for the first 2 weeks and she was great and then I got one this week who was absolutely terrible. I won’t go into detail but lets just say that she did all of the talking and when a lucky student got to throw two words in, they would rudely get interrupted by her as she tried to finish their sentence or correct something. I barely learned anything this week.
We have been filling our afternoons with activities. On the first day we hiked up Cerro Otto, there is a gondola that goes up to the top but we wanted to hike. I heard that below the gondola was a trail so we walked to the gondola and found a trail. Little did I know that the trail followed the gondola straight up the mountain. We hiked straight up a sandy, rocky slope for about 2 and a half hours. It was hard and we’ve come to the conclusion that Argentineans don’t know what switch backs are. The view at the top was very pretty. We decided to walk down the road to get back down, mostly because our knees would hate us if we went back the down the way we came. In the evening we met up with some girls we know for skating and dinner because it was the international day of the mujer (woman). Unfortunately the skating rink was closed and so we just went out for Mexican food. The second day we hiked up Cerro Campanario with a few people from our school. This is a very short hike, the same one I did with the Brazilian couple, and I was surprised to arrive so quickly at the top. To put things in perspective, the first time I did the hike it took us an hour and a half this time it took us 30 mins. That’s how slow we were going the first time. At the top of course we had to try their famous cake and took a few pictures. On Wednesday we just hung around town, Sandy wanted to see downtown Bariloche so we walked around sampling chocolate and visited a few of the chocolate factories. Yesterday Sandy and I played soccer with a bunch of people from another Spanish school. It was lots of fun and after many years of trying to convince Sandy to come and play soccer (at the University) with me she finally did and more importantly she had fun! I guess all it took for her to play soccer was getting her down to Argentina. In the evening we went out for dinner and went to the bus station to book some bus tickets south!
Sandy and I at the top of Cerro Campanario. Supposedly one of the top 10 views in the world.
Sandy and I having fun in one of the chocolate factories
Talking about tickets south, Sandy and I made a last minute, impulsive decision to not go back to school next week and to head south early so that we can spend more time hiking together. Sandy may come back and do another week of Spanish classes later on. We leave Saturday morning for El Bolson, a town 2 hours away to check out their famous market and then on Sunday we start a LONG bus ride to El Calafate. From there we plan on catching a bus to Puerto Natales where we can do some hiking. I am happy with our decision and think that we will get lots of amazing hiking in over the next few weeks.
Our last day in Bariloche was good. We went to class and then got ready to travel south. We then caught a bus east to visit la Colonia Suiza and catch the sunset at the top of Cerro Companario. We didn’t really know the bus route (and we still don’t) and ended up getting off 3 km away from the colony. We walked into the colony only to discover that it is pretty dead (except on Sundays during the market) and were ready to leave immediately after we got there. We thought that the bus came through the colony so we waited at the bus stop for 30 mins with no luck and then decided to walk back out to the main road where there would hopefully be more buses. We got to the main road and quickly realised that there wouldn’t be any buses so we started walking the 8km back to Cerro Campanario since we really wanted to catch the sunset. We got there 30 mins before sunset and still needed to hike 30 mins to get to the top. We quickly changed our minds and decided it might not be the safest idea, especially since we didn´t bring headlamps for the walk back down. We caught the bus back to town, feeling tired and satisfied from a long day.
We leave Bariloche tomorrow and hopefully I will have an update when we get to El Calafate.
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