Bariloche

Thursday, Mar 27 – Day 101

We arrived in Bariloche fresh as….., well, not very fresh at all after 16 hours on the bus.

This is the heart of the Argentine “lake district”. There are 7 or 8 beautiful large lakes here, and Bariloche is the main city in the area. It has an airport, and scheduled flights from BA. It’s a favorite summer getaway for the wealthy BA crowd, and also has skiing in the winter. The Jujuy resort is here, and is said to be one of the finest in all of South America.

The is a heavy Swiss and German heritage here. A lot of war refugies settled here because of its physical similarities to the Motherland. The place is known for its chocolate, so you mix in the beautiful scenery, some big red meat with a great wine for dinner, and an awesome chocolate fondue for desert and who wouldn’t want to hang out here for a few days. And oh yeah, the weather was sunny and in the 70’s.

Saturday, Mar 29 – Day 103

We did a bike ride along the lake with a couple of American girls that we met on the bus, took a tram ride up to the top of Cerro Otto, which has a restaurant and bar (look for the sailboat in the picture).

Later, we found a small micro-brewery called La Cruz, (The Cross). Their story is that a guy who worked for a brewery used to stash some of the hops, malt and barley in bags that were used for disposing of spoiled product. They were marked with a red cross. He’d steal the bags at night and make his own brew, which turned out to be better that what the brewery was making.

We went to an Irish pub this evening, and they had a pretty hot chick giving away tastings of Valmont wine, a relatively cheap, mass produced Malbec that’s OK, but nothing special. She says that if we buy a bottle, we get a CD of the music that’s currently playing over the sound system. The music is kind of soft and pleasant, but with the bar noise I can’t really make it out. I’m much more interested in the girl than the wine, but she only wants to make a sale.

About 20 minutes later, there’s a lull in the bar noise and I’m hearing the words to the Pink Floyd song Shine On You Crazy Diamond. Except it’s being sung by a female with a Spanish accent. Weird, but kind of cool. So I wave the Valmont chick back over and ask to see the CD. It’s called Floyd, and is a compilation of great Pink Floyd songs, all sung by this girl in a slow soft voice. I tell the Valmont girl that I don’t care about the wine but I like the CD, and that I’ll give here $20 pesos (US$6.00) for one. She said that the wine was only $23 pesos. Since we’ve been drinking beer, I really didn’t want to switch to wine, but guess what? You can carry the bottle out with you. Problem solved. Saw the same bottle in the wine shop for $18 pesos the next day, so I figured I paid the retail price for the bottle and $5 pesos (less than US$2.00 for the CD). I considered that a win/win.