Like sands through the hourglass...these were our days in Bariloche

Despite the unpleasantly early start after our day of drinking, we managed to pack up and make it to the bus station in time for our bus to cross over into Bariloche, Argentina. However, just as it was pulling up, Kurt discovered he didn’t have his passport. Cue frantic searching through all our bags, then a mad sprint for Kurt back to the hostel while I tried to stall the bus leaving. Thankfully everyone else took their time in getting their bags on board, and just when I thought it’d leave without us, Kurt came running back, passport in hand. Thank fuck for that. The bus ride itself wasn’t too bad as we had nice big comfy seats and even got fed lunch. The border crossings were painless and pretty quick and in between the two borders there was an eerie landscape. It took us a few moments to work out what it was then we realised it was the volcanic ash from the volcanic eruption in Chile earlier in the year. Everything was grey and looked like a moonscape. 

Our first full day we didn’t do much, just walked around town and checked things out.

The next day we decided to go for a walk along the lake, and ended up walking a 20km round trip. Unfortunately we couldn’t actually walk by the lake so it was along the road instead and very dusty. There are heaps of stray dogs in South America (thankfully not aggressive) and one decided to befriend us and followed us the 10kms back to town, right to our hostel. It was a big walk so we took it easy for the rest of the afternoon until we had to walk another 5kms or so out to the bus station to buy our tickets to the next place (El Calafate).

Bariloche has been hit pretty bad by a shitload of dust/sand from the Chilean volcanic explosion, which covers the streets and often clouds the views around town. Keryn’s hay fever has been really bad lately and the dust made it even worse so she couldn’t even go outside on the 3rd day.

The day before we left we headed out to Llao Llao National Park for a walk. It was a nice easy walk compared to the two we did in Pucon’s national park, and went around a lake which had good views. However, the view from the top of a lookout over the lake back towards town was obscured by dust which was unfortunate. It was a nice walk though, and heaps of people were hiring bikes and cycling a route around which would have been good too.

We were up at 6am the next morning (see, travelling isn’t all beaches and cocktails) to get the bus south to El Calafate which was going to be a 28hr trip. O for awesome!