Bariloche is a ski village in the winter but, in the summer it's also very popular for the beautiful surrounding lakes and snow capped mountains. Also Bariloche is the chocolate capital of Argentina so there are hundreds of chocolate shops much to my excitement.
After we had hitched from El Bolson with a hippy guy who smelt like he hadn't showered in a few days . We picked one of the many hostels on Salta Street to stay at, Punto sur. They only had a double room which we treated ourselves to because we had been sleeping in dorms for a while. After we had checked in we went to check out the town. It was pretty big and set around a lake kind of like Taupo. We cooked the best steak for dinner and had a few red wines. It was awesome. We had an early night so we could get up early to bike around the lakes.
The next day we caught a bus out to the cycle circuit and hired bikes. It was beautiful so many green lakes and great view points. We check out hotel Llao Llao which is a 5 star hotel with an amazing view. We stopped and had lunch at this beautiful little beach. Junior went for a swim but it was freezing so I chickened out. We saw these little markets and this girl was selling coins that she carves and files out the filling and sells them like necklaces. See photo. I got the New Zealand 10c piece and Junior got a Cuban coin with Che on it. Some of the only souvenirs we have! We have been to so many markets and around the world and have never seen anything like this . We didn't have enough cash on us so she had to come past our hostel the next day.
We stopped off at a small micro brewery and had a few beers and a tasting plate with some great meats and cheeses to get us going again. After another hill and view point it was just a short cruise back to the bike hire shop where we had another beer to wash down the ash from the ash cloud that had come over from the volcano in Chile. The one that had caused all the problems earlier on in the year.
Night time came and it was happy hour at this small Irish bar called Konner. They only served three beers which they brew at their own micro brewery. Seems there's a lot of micro breweries in Bariloche! The Konner beers were very good and we highly recommend going there if you're in the area. Again at night we cooked this amazing steak and had a few reds.
The next morning we changed hostels because ours was booked. We moved across the road to Pudu which some other travelers had told us about. It was sweet. Because it was on the other side of the road it had a better view of the lake and a great guy Thomas who is running it. There wasn't much we could do today because the ash cloud came over early and it's like a haze so you can't see anything and you can feel it in your throat and lungs. So we just chilled in town all day. We met Cam and Nate two guys from NZ and ended up visiting Konners again for Happy Hour. There were about 10 of us from a few hostels having drinks and Thomas had told us about another hostel on the lake that has a DJ and a band on a Wednesday night. It was a really nice spot so we went and checked that out. It was wicked, full of locals and some great tunes. I think we ended up leaving there at about 5am. Junior had some great street meat on the way home.
On our last day in Bariloche we had some arvo beers and an early dinner with Nate and Cam.