Bariloche~It begins....

Hello to all! I am alive and well. I realize it has been a bit of time between my blog posts so I will try to catch you up. I just finished up school this last Thursday. Finals were uneventful and couldnt of come sooner. I ended up getting all A s and one B in my classes. Not bad for taking classes in spanish huh?
Not only was I busy with classes but I was busy enjoying my last few days in Buenos Aires. On my last full day in the city I finally made it to a soccer game. Argentina vs. Bolivia It was played at a place called River Stadium which just so conveniently is right across the street from my house. The game was awesome! I would say only half the stadium was filled but it was still incredibly loud. In an unfortunate outcome Argentina and Bolivia tied 1-1. But the legend of soccer in South America lived up to its name.

On my last day in Buenos Aires I went with my host family to a place just outside the city called Lujan. It was a cool historical place and a perfect last day to spend wtih them. Upon arriving back from Lujan I scrambled to pack my stuff, meet up with my friend Paul and was on a bus headed to a place called Bariloche by 7 o'clock that night.

Now you may remember Paul from one of my other blog posts. To refresh your memory he was the one who saved us all from the mad mob in Santiago, Chile my very first night in South America. He is 6'6 and has a really cool beard. He is the only other person I have ever met that enjoys sweets, especially ice cream, as much as I do. So as you can imagine we travel well together. Some would say we go together like copy and paste.
20 hours later we arrived in Bariloche and checked into our hostel, Marco Polo Inn. It so far has been the only hostel that I have stayed that has included free dinner. As you can imagine we were pretty stoked about it. Once settled in we set out to do the thing we came to Patagonia to do; to trek. Now Bariloche is a beautiful tourist town in the mountains. I would consider it the gateway into Patagonia and equivalent to a Lake Tahoe type of vacation place. This place had everything; lakes, mountains, rivers you name it. So we set out to discover it all.
Our very first trek was up to a small lookout point called Cerro Camponario. We got there by convincing the bus driver to let us ride for free because we didn't have a ticket. I think he felt sorry for us poor gringos so he let us hop on. Once there we could have taken a gondola for 40 pesos or hiked. Of course we chose the more adventurous route. The view was absolutely spectacular. It was supposedly one of the top 10 photographed views in the world. And we clearly could see why. Hundreds of pictures later we made our way down the mountain and hitch hiked our way back to town. It wasn't sketchy at all! It happend to be this nice middle aged woman who was a dance teacher and was just on her way to town. Once in town we finished our night by grabbing some ice cream just before dinner, you know just to get the metabolism going.

The next 2 days in Bariloche were crammed full of adventure. Our second day we did a hike up to a better viewpoint called Cerro Catedral. We randomly ran into a classmate of mine from Belgrano named Mark so he joined us for the adventure too. The hike was supposed to take 8 hours total but we cranked it out in about 7 hours. To pass the time we started playing THE GAME. Now the point of THE GAME is to not think about THE GAME. If by the unfortunate chance you do think about THE GAME you have to announce to everyone that you lost THE GAME and do 10 push ups where you stand. (Note, I just lost THE GAME, and just finished my 10 pushups) As you can imagine Paul and I have been doing loads of push ups. The other game we played was the HELLO GAME. This is where whenever you see a fellow hikers on the hike, you can't say the same word twice. So once we ran out of the basic words like hello and hola, we used random words like backpack and konichiwa. The best part about the hike was not the random games but the fact that the views around every corner just got better and better. We ended our hike standing in amazement as we stumbled upon a crystal blue lake surrounded by mountains.

It made all of that treking worth it. The day ended with more ice cream and a round of drinks and a sharing of stories around the dinner table. Ladies and gentleman that is not all. The next day we decided to go rafting. My other friend who we call Kevito, also joined us for this excursion. This is probably one of my favorite activities to do anywhere, so I was pretty stoked for it. The river itself was beautiful and stingingly cold. The color was emerald green and we were surrounded by mountains. The view itself was worth the money, and the rapids brought it over the top. They were all about Class III, and were pretty fun. I would still say that as an overall rafting experience I have to give the upper hand to Kidder Creek(Holla at my Kidder Folk!) but it was still a great time. As always we finished our day with ice cream but Paul and I decided to go big and order the full kg size. We went on to shock our friends and the entire ice cream parlor when we both finished the kg(killer of gringos) size. I just may have type II diabetes now. Totally worth it.




Now we are in a quaint hippie town called El Bolson. This place is even more stunning than Bariloche. But I have a feeling that this is typical of Patagonia, it gets more beautiful around every corner.....

Got any suggestions of any games to play while hiking? Shout them out!