Mendoza - January 22nd

As usual waking up on a bus is a slightly discomfiting experience.  It was definitely so this morning as the driver turned the lights on to wake us up at 06:30, mostly so that we could get our breakfast served before we got to Mendoza at 07:30.  Of course the breakfast was the same load of dulche de leche cookies, with extra dulche de leche on the side, that we got for tea the night before.

The rain that we had had the night before (actually it was a very heavy thunderstorm that lasted for hours and some of the lightning strikes were quite close) had disappeared, so we were able to walk from the massive Mendoza bus station to our hostel.  As we arrive in time for breakfast, even though we weren’t booked in for that night, we got a real breakfast there as well.  The hostel is actually very nice, with a garden for sitting out in, and a washing machine which is free for guests.  So we spend a lot of the time doing our laundry, a large pile of which has built up over the last week and a half.

Between that, blogging, photos, and all the other chores that have to be done (such as my watching Manchester United beating Arsenal 2-1) it isn’t until about 17:00 before we embark to explore the city.  This is actually the only city we will be in that either of us (Gavin in this case) has been in before (and in fact the last time I was here Manchester United beat Arsenal 2-1 as well) so I show Dorota around.  Although all there is to see are the large tree lined avenues and the beautiful plazas throughout the city.  This is because everything is closed, it being a Sunday, so our staying in and doing chores didn’t seem like such a waste of time after all.

At about 19:00 we start looking for a place to eat dinner.  This is not as easy as it sounds.  Everything is closed still, even a nice tapas place I wanted to go back to.  It takes walking around until 20:00 before we see places starting to open.  The locals here eat so late that even by 21:30 when we finish dinner most of them are only starting to arrive to restaurants to begin eating.  It’s a different way of life here.

Bariloche Mendoza Bus - January 21st

Today is another massive travelling day.  We are going from Bariloche to Medoza which is quite a long journey.  An amusing diversion I’ve developed (amusing for me anyway) is mapping where we are in terms of degrees south to degrees north in Europe.  So far we have done from Newcastle (Ushuaia) to Plymouth (El Calafate) to La Rochelle (Perito Morneo) to Porto (Bariloche) and now we are moving onto Casablanca.  So it has been quite a hectic three weeks, and most of the distance has been done in the last week.

The good thing about this overnight bus is that it only starts at 13:00 so checking out of the hostel is not too stressful.  In fact we even get an early lunch (salad, we know we have to keep our 5 a day up here ourselves, as the meals can be quite meaty) and some photos done in a café before going to the bus terminal.

The bus itself is a revelation, far better than anything we have been on before, a double decker, and we are in the lower posh class.  So we get decent leg room, almost flat beds, and a dinner, which is almost entirely made of dulche de leche (a caramelly type substance).  We stop in Neuquen bus terminal at 19:00, which is a very modern and nice terminal, even having airport style carrousels for bags, and best of all, baggage trolleys. Here we mistakenly order two dinners in the cafeteria, when one had enough meat for both of us. The hamburger I got was the size of the dinner plate.

After that it is onto the bus to Mendoza.  This is a similar bus, although slightly older, which means that instead of using your own headphones for the films it is on a speaker.  Other than that it was fine, although the same cannot be said for the film choices.  It began to look like eating our dinner had been a good choice (although they did give us some more dulche de leche at about 20:30 to keep us going), as the hours ticked by with no food, but then at 23:15 came dinner, a turkey and ham dinner with mashed potatoes, and jelly for dessert (all with wine if you want).  This and the one decent film of the day starting at 23:00 meant we didn’t get asleep until well after midnight.

Bariloche - January 20th

One of the main attractions in Bariloche is to drive around what is called the Circuito Chico.  This is a drive along the big lake front and then loop around some other lakes, before coming back into town along the same stretch of road along the lake front.  It’s about 70km long, but a clever bike hire company has based itself at the beginning of the loop, meaning you can do it as an easy 35km cycle.  Which is what we plan to do today.

We get a local bus out to the starting point, and after a quite long briefing about what attractions are available in the area, we get our bikes and helmets and set off.  We probably haven’t gone 500 metres before we encounter our first problem, Dorota’s chain comes off.  I fix it, and then as I start off my chain comes off.  We probably should have gone back with the bikes at that point, but for some reason we continue on.  Because the tarred road is under repair, we have to go on a gravel track shortcut, but it turns out this road is full of dogs which appear quite viscous as they chase us.  It is not helped by the fact that the chain problems are really gear problems which means that getting the right gear to speed away from the dogs uphill is not easy.

After those two problems the rest of the day goes quite well.  We lunch on a little beach on the main lake (which like the one at Calafate is massive) and we go for a walk to a hidden lake (hidden from the main road, but well signposted so actually it is crowded), and we see all the scenic views over the lakes.  We also go to what is called the Swiss Colony, a little village in the mountains.  Here we have what might well be the best ice creams either of us have ever had.  They weren’t that cheap, but the quality of the ice cream, especially Dorota’s deep chocolate and my forest fruits, was amazing.

After that we head back to return the bikes.  Our legs actually suffered today, even though in comparison to Vietnam it was short and not too steep.  I think it might be because we didn’t eat dinner last night.  We make up for it with a big Italian dinner tonight.

Bariloche - January 19th

We wake up to a much sunnier morning and much better views across the lake, as some of the previous night’s ash cloud has disappeared.  However knowing that the views are still going to be fuzzy in our photos, and also because we have had a lot of hiking already, our plans for today have been changed from a hike up a nearby mountain, to just walking around the town.

The town of Bariloche is the biggest we have been in so far in South America.  It’s also the first to have a bit of a slum on its outskirts.  But the central area is as touristy as anything you could find in Europe.  Being a mountain town with both summer and winter activities it is set up like any Alpine town you could imagine.  And it is not difficult to imagine you are in Switzerland with all the chocolate shops, St Bernard dogs, and other such paraphernalia.  Even the architecture of the main municipal buildings feels Swiss.

The setting of the town has to be its biggest attraction.  If you get a nice enough day, as today was, you can go down and sit on the little lakefront beaches or even go into the water if you are brave enough (we weren’t - it is a bit chilly being glacier fed).

But for all that there is little to do in the town except walk around, go in and out of the many tourist shops, and sit in the various cafes, which is pretty much all we did all day.  We ate at one of the chocolate cafes, two little cakes which turn out to be bigger than they looked on the menu and have 100s of calories each.  Between that and a sneaky trip to McDonalds (for research purposes – to see if the burgers in Argentina are better than elsewhere, and they are better than most, only the Irish ones match in my opinion) we actually ate so much walking around town that in the evening we didn’t bother going out for dinner.

Bariloche - January 18th

Today we travel 800km north to Bariloche.  This is a long journey, but unlike the previous journey of 620km, this one is a day trip, and it must be on better roads because it is only scheduled to take 14 hours, where as our last trip took the same time (barring breakdowns).  The bus we are joining actually comes from El Calafate the previous day and it does a complicated route up Route National 40, that means it leaves guests staying overnight in our hotel, but picks up other guests elsewhere, before returning to our hotel in the morning.  So at least we don’t have to walk all the way down the main (only) street back to the bus station.  When we get on the bus there are a few seats taken by sleeping passengers, so we sit down and we are off.

It is only after a couple of hours when we stop in the first small town after Perito Moreno that I realise that I’m the third Dub in a row, as the sleeping passengers have woken up and taken off their blankets to reveal two Dublin GAA jerseys. And probably more unusual than that, another of the passengers is wearing a St Sylvester’s GAA jersey (to the non-Irish – or even non-Malahide - readers of this blog this is the jersey of the football club in Malahide, meaning there is a fellow passenger from my home village). Unfortunately the hop-on hop-off nature of the bus means the other Irish are off before I have a chance to talk to them.

And that was really the only excitement of the day.  Our 14 hour journey actually only took 12 hours which was a bonus.  The rest of the journey saw a gradual change from the barren landscape of Patagonia, to the alpine landscape of the Argentine Lake District. 

As we go close to Bariloche we did notice that the views became a bit blurred.  A volcano in Chile had started spewing out ash again, and while it wasn’t a problem for tourists (unless they were flying in) it does ruin the views slightly.  And it is a pity as our hostel turns out to be a nice lake front hostel with what could be stunning views.  Tonight on arrival is the weekly beach party, so we just join in by having one beer before retiring exhausted.

Perito Moreno - January 17th

The main reason for stopping in Perito Moreno, other than breaking a really long journey, is to see the nearby Cuevas del los Manos, a UNESCO world heritage site.  We arranged pickup at our hotel  from a local tour agency yesterday, but decided this morning to go to a local bakery for breakfast instead of eating in our hotel.  But we made it back in time for our 08:00 pickup.  We then had a two hour transfer to the caves, mostly back along the same road we were on yesterday.  But at least it was the paved part.

The caves themselves are actually quite interesting, taking longer to see than I would have thought.  They aren’t really caves as we would think, more like rock faces underneath an overhang.  This has protected the 8000-3000 year old paintings, which are mostly of hands and guanacos.  The hands are silhouettes which were presumably some form of ritual, and the guanacos and other symbols are the usual markings to indicate where the wild herds must have been at various times of the year so people could hunt them.  There is quite a lot, about 1km of them.

The setting for the caves was equally dramatic, as we walk halfway along a cliff side in a canyon.  So as a second part of the tour we get to trek down into the canyon and back along it.  It adds an hour to the trip but makes it a bit more of a day out.  Otherwise the driving there and back would be longer than the visit.  All we can do on the journeys to stop ourselves from being bored is play spot the guanaco or nandu (the flightless rheas).

We get back to town there is not much else to do except sort out photos on the extremely slow internet.  In the evening we go to one of the local restaurants, where you have whatever is on the menu (it was beef or chicken milanesa that night, like schnitzel, with chips and salad) and it was probably our best value meal so far.  We also took a picture of the statue of Perito Moreno, the famous Argentinean naturalist and explorer after whom so much in this region is named (glaciers, lakes, a mountain, and of course this town).

Perito Moreno - Janaury 16th

The first thing I remember about today was being woken up on the night bus at 03:15 as all the other passengers board at El Chalten, the trekking town we couldn’t find any decent cheap accommodation in.  The next thing is waking up at 05:00 as the drivers changed shifts and seeing how frosty it was outside.  Then it is waking up at 10:00 and seeing how sunny and hot it was outside.  With cold nights and hot days this part of Patagonia is almost a desert.  Despite the interruptions, it actually wasn’t that bad a night’s sleep.

We are going up Route 40, which is supposed to be an Argentinian version of Route 66, but as said it is across a fairly barren landscape so there is not much to see.  The road itself is a bit of an enigma as well, at some points it is gravelly and we can only make 20kmph on it, at other points it is a nice tarred road and we are hitting 100kmph.

The main talking point of the journey was the bus breaking down.  We were on a gravel road in the middle of this almost desert-like plain at the time and there was nothing around, and not much passing traffic, so it was slightly worrying.  The two bus drivers were trying to fix it, but were not having much success.  Now in the past I have been slightly critical of Israeli tourists in this part of the world, but in fairness this time they did help out.  Two of them, no doubt with some military training in driving trucks or tanks across the desert, got up to help the drivers, and actually managed to fix it.  So we only had an hour’s delay in the end.

Thus we were at our next destination, the little town of Perito Moreno at 15:30.  Having travelled 620km north it is now a lot hotter at midday, and although the town is small, just a main street and 2 roads each side wide, the main street is about 12 blocks long, and our hotel is the other end from the bus station.  So it is a long hot walk with the backpacks on.  After checking in we give the town a once over, seeing the few restaurants and bars before we choose empanadas from the local bakery for dinner at the lakeside.