Bariloche

Fene, Marilyn, Doug and Becky took the plane to Bariloche, a little over a l hour flight. Bariloche is south at the beginning of Patagonia, the Southernmost region of Argentina. It is right next to the Andes and is a tourist city - world famous skiing in the winter and a big lake with hiking and boating in the summer. It reminded us a bit of Lake Tahoe.

Marilyn and Fene headed to their condo in downtown Bariloche and we took a taxi to our hotel - the El Casco Art Hotel, about 14 kilometers south of downtown along the lake. It was a beautiful place and gets its name from its truly amazing collection of original Argentine art. Every room has original art in it, the halls were hung with it, and the public areas as well. It looked directly out on the lake (our room had a spectacular view) and the grounds were meticulousy landscaped with mounds of lavender and geraniums.

The first evening we had reservations at Il Gabbiano - Marilyn and Fene took a taxi out and joined us. Wonderful Italian food! We enjoyed chatting with a Canadian couple traveling with a well-behaved toddler who were touring Argentina to get out of the snow! After dinner we went back to the hotel and had a drink in the bar -- they knew how to make a real martini and serve it elegantly.

We took a taxi into town the next day, met Marilyn and Fene. Fene and Becky took the straight uphill stairs to a yarn shop Tracy had seen. Doug and Marilyn opted for a cafe for coffee! The yarn shop was fun and Becky bought some alpaca yarn to commemorate the trip! We found our way downhill to the cafe for coffee ourselves!

Bariloche is built on the side of the lake and is very steep in many places. The streets are lined with shops selling a variety of goods (it is a tourist town) and one street in particular, Mitre is known as "Chocolate Street". It gets its name from the numerous chocolate shops that line it -- you can't go 50 feet without encountering one and after much tasting we decided we like the chocolates at Rapa Nui the best! We did eat a few of them over the next few days!

Dinner that evening was at a restaurant that Andy and Tracy had found, El Boliche de Alberto, a no frills place with just the best steak anywhere. The only trick is not to order too much!! You give your meat order to one person, who will actually cook the meat on the huge grill in the middle of the restaurant, and drinks, water and side orders are handled by another waiter. We had one order of french fries, very good, which was more than the entire table could eat. You order by the gram - so 400 grams of meat we found was quite a lot!! And it was too good not to eat very bit we could. Thank you, Andy and Tracy!

The next day we had a quiet morning and took a taxi into town for some more wandering and a late lunch. Marilyn and Fene had found a fun restaurant with an Alpine flair serving lots of area specialties - Becky had the trout and Doug had the salmon both from the lake. It was a fun place and fitting since the entire area has a Swiss/Austrian flair - many of the settlers were from there originally years ago.

It was then off for a quiet evening before we headed to Buenos Aires for one night and on to Panama.