Southern Exposure

Wednesday, March 18

When we were planning this trip, reaching the town of Bariloche represented to us the arrival at the final leg of our adventure – the remote and beautiful region of Patagonia. We have heard many good things about this town and decided to spend two nights here, using today to rest and take a ride around the Circuito Chico, a 65-km paved road course outside of town that affords picturesque views of the lake and the mountains, and a few sightseeing and hiking opportunities.

We deliberately slept in until 10 am. It felt enormously satisfying to just be able to roll over on the other side and take another nap knowing that we didn’t have to do anything or be anywhere today. We of course missed the hostel’s breakfast, and craving pancakes and an omelette, we set out to find a good breakfast place in this heavily German-influenced town.

We walked around the center looking for the breakfast spot but no menus listed anything even remotely close to pancakes or eggs. More so, at 11 am people were already having lunch. After wandering around for an hour we gave up. We realized later the time had changed it and we had been looking for breakfast at noon. In the process however we managed to visit the main plaza, and its main architectural statement, a grouping of buildings constructed of timber and greenish-grey stone in the alpine style that is representative of the region. Like the llamas on the main plaza in Cusco, Bariloche’s signature Saint Bernard dogs were employed by selfish owners to pose for photographs with tourists. Some, the bigger and hairier ones, were more popular than others. There must have been five or six of them working the plaza.

After purchasing the obligatory Ruta 40 stickers for the bikes, we stopped for a quick coffee and quiche at a bakery. Having realized that our clock was now an hour behind local time, so we hurried back to the hotel to gear up for the circuit ride.

The first ten kilometers were unexciting. Although the views of the lake were great, the constant stream of hotels and restaurants was annoying. Further down the road, we stopped to look at a neat chapel and across it in the distance we could see Llao Llao, one of Argentina’s most famous hotels.

After a few kilometers on the road we decided to park and take a short hike through the forest to the hidden Lago Escondido, which also had excellent views off Cerro Capilla. The rest of the ride was pleasant and had nice views of the surrounding pine forests, steep valley outcrops, deep blue waters of the lake and the small islands.

It didn’t take long before we were on our way back to the hotel. I spent the afternoon working on the blog while Matt was shopping for glove liners in our anticipation of freezing temperatures in Patagonia. He didn’t succeed, so on our way to dinner we checked a few outdoor stores of which there is a great abundance in Bariloche, and found what we were looking for. We also visited one of the many chocolate stores for some dark chocolate treats and set off to have dinner at a recommended Mexican/Mexican-run restaurant Dias de Zapata, which was excellent. I had the best ever fajitas del mar, and I think Matt was also happy to finally satisfy his craving for real, or at this point any, Mexican food.

We couldn’t resist stopping for ice-cream at a German heladeria and chocolateria we put on our list earlier today because it had a large German grandma figurine outside, who looked like she could whip up some good chocolate and ice-cream.

By the time we came back to the hotel, it was already 11 pm. I finished my writing while Matt caught up on his The New Yorker reading.