As Tom warned me last night not to wake him up pre 9am (apparently he's still worn out after his mountaineering...) I might as well keep the blog up to date for a change.
Some of Mendoza's famous vines
Before
ploughing on with our travels south through Argentina I ought to explain that it wasn't all hard-work and frostbitten feet for Tom... we treated ourselves to a delicious lunch at one of the more exclusive vineyards on our last day in Mendoza. The food, wine and setting couldn't be beaten and despite Tom's attempt at the Aconcagua summit unfortunately being cut short we still celebrated with a glass of champers.
Next stop Bariloche, the capital of the Lake District, which was gorgeous. Its a city on the shores of a huge, glistening lake surrounded by snowy peaks, and felt just like the Alps in the summer.
We arrived at our hostel which didn't look like much from the outside but we were pleasantly surprised, it was very chilled, we met some other interesting travellers and the views from both the lounge and our dorm room were incredible (see below).
Our first day was spent wandering around town where it became obvious that we had headed south into the chilly mountains as all the stray dogs were Alsatian-St Bernard crosses and for some reason took a bit of a liking to us - we ended up being accompanied all the way to the supermarket (a good 20 minute walk) by one "local". Having a quiet night back at the hostel, we were saving our energy for the following day when we hired mountain bikes and spent a good eight hours exploring the National Park which surrounds the city. The scenery was spectacular and we even found a little Swiss village for a pit stop (to refuel on homemade cake of course!)
The next day, again keen to explore, we made our way up the mountain to the Catedral ski area (biggest in South America). Instead of paying for the gondola (trying for a change to stick to our budget) we decided to walk up the slopes but after 90 minutes of being continually pestered by a swarm of some kind of horsefly we admitted defeat and headed back down to relax in the sunshine.
All in all Bariloche was a great place to stop for a few days before heading further south to the remote area of Patagonia, literally the end of the Earth!
Sunset from our hostel's balcony
No comments:
Post a Comment