Bariloche

We made it into Bariloche after a 21 hour bus ride. I think that is the max for me right now. I really don´t know how I´m going to handle a 40 hour bus ride back from Rio De Janeiro to Buenos Aires in February, but I guess I´ll have to deal with it when the time comes.

Bariloche is awesome. It is a small town in the Andes surrounded by lakes and trees. It really reminds me a lot of Lake Tahoe or the Pacific Northwest. The water is crystal clear, and pretty cold. The weather is a little cooler, the people a little nicer, and the pace a little slower. We stayed in Bariloche last night, then decided to rent a car and head south to El Bolson. The drive was spectacular, the Andes always in the background, evergreen trees all around, and small rivers right below the two lane freeway. Apparently there are no mosquitoes here, but those insects have been replaced with flesh eating bees. We think we encountered some today, but did not allow them to eat our flesh, so maybe they were just innocent flies. I´m not gonna try to find out.

We stopped by a river in the middle of the drive and had a picnic with salads, fruits and nuts and ate on a rock. An hour later, we arrived in El Bolson, a really, really small town. There are a lot of backpackers here who are probably going to camp and climb up the mountains. Tomorrow we are going to go to the craft fair and then to the local lake to see if swimming will be possible, then maybe wine tasting.