Bariloche has completely charmed us. It is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. Giant snow covered peaks shoot up over the biggest lake in Argentina, Nahuel Huapi. There is hiking, skiing, kayaking and more. But no swimming, even in the summer the lake is too cold to swim without a wetsuit, someone tried to swim part of it last summer and died from the cold.
Bariloche is also the place that has the distinction of being the first place we couch surfed. We stayed with a young couple, Guadalupe & Rodrigo, who were originally from Mar del Plata. She moved to Bariloche about three years ago to get her PhD in physics. He moved after finishing at university for physical therapy. They were absolutely wonderful, very warm, spoke excellent English (she also speaks German!), so much fun and they went out of their way to show us their beautiful city. They picked us up from the bus station, which was a lifesaver, figuring out how to get to their house would have been nearly impossible without them. They gave us a few minutes to get settled in, even made us milanesas for lunch and then took us to Cerro Campanario. Cerro Campanario has an aerosilla (ski lift) up to the top of the mountain and then a spectacular 360 degree view of the mountains that surround Bariloche and a beautiful view of the lakes. I have no words to describe how unbelievably beautiful it was. (Side note- I should have looked up synonyms for beautiful and breathtaking so I don’t have to keep using them over and over. But I didn’t, so beautiful and breathtaking it is!). They brought along mate for us to try as well. Everywhere we have gone we have seen people with mate. Everyone brings their own hot water, Yerba, cup and straw wherever they go it seems. We have been very intrigued by the ritual of mate but never tried it. Guada and Rodrigo brought some along and explained the ritual to us on the top of Cerro Campanario. Mate is the name of both the cup and the drink. Yerba is the tea like stuff that goes in the mate, then hot water and sugar are added. The person pouring the water passes the cup and whoever he or she passes the mate to must pass it back to the person pouring the water (then more water is added). I cannot say that I am a huge fan, it was very earthy, but Nick liked it.
After our afternoon mate break they took us down to the Centro Civico and showed us the more touristy part of Bariloche. Bariloche has a very alpine feel and a strong Swiss and German influence. Which you can see in the architecture and food- lots of fondue and chocolate in addition to the usual parillas. Guada told us that after WWII many nazis fled Germany and came to Bariloche as it reminded them of the Alps. She was very full of information and was a great resource. She taught us lots of Argentine slang which has several phrases about farts (pedo). For example, “en pedo” literally means “in farts” but is slang for being drunk. “Ni en pedo” means “not even if I was drunk” meaning you would never, ever do something. And my personal favorite of all time: “nube de pedos” which literally means “cloud of farts” and is used to mean “head in the clouds”. Guada taught us all about the foods of Argentina and made us a delicious home made torta of corn, peppers and eggs. We went to a parilla one night where she taught us about the different cuts of meat and even shared the origin of the toast.
Bariloche reminds me of the mountain towns of Colorado in many ways. Both are full of small, quaint shops, hippies with ski/snowboard gear, tons of awesome microbreweries and everything costs a billion times more. There is also lots of good hiking. Fortunately and unfortunately Bariloche had not seen snow in about 10 days and was enjoying unseasonably warm weather. This was great for hiking in the national park which we did the first day. It was not awesome for the skiing we did at Cerro Catedral the second day. It was very sad to see the ski area without much snow. The entire base of the mountain was bone dry. It was only about halfway up the gondola that we knew for sure we were in the right place. The snow was slushy in most places and icy in the afternoon, but it sure was beautiful. Plus, it was still skiing. In August. In the Andes. There is nothing I would have rather been doing, even a bad day of skiing (and this wasn’t bad, just not great) still beats just about anything else. We skied until about 4 then headed back down in the gondola to après ski and wait for our bus home. We were shocked to see the line for the bus, it snaked around the bus stop and headed back up into the village. The buses only came every 30 minutes, several came and went before we were finally able to get on and even then we only barely made it on. I have never been on a bus that full, we couldn’t reach anything to hold onto, but we didn’t need to we were packed so tightly.
Fun story about lunch on the mountain- I am used to going and sitting anywhere there are seats for lunch, and eating sandwiches from home is not uncommon (or making your own ketchup and mustard cracker sandwiches in the dining area). So when we got hungry we went and sat down at a nice outdoor table and proceeded to make sandwiches with the bread, cheese and avocado we had brought. And then a waiter showed up and told us that we couldn’t do that there. He started telling us in Spanish, but got about two words in before he apparently decided we were being way too rude to be locals and asked if we spoke English. He said he didn’t care but that his bosses would be mad. Whoops. So we packed up our sandwich fixings and went back to skiing.
It was an awesome trip, well worth the 20 hour bus ride and definitely on our list of places to come back to!
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