After Mendoza we went to cipoletti to spend time with chrissy’s aunti and uncle. Cipolletti is a small town where pretty much everyone knows every one. Chrissy’s aunti Lena was the most talkative and animated women I have ever met… she was probably really funny, I say probably because this woman talked so quickly she didn’t even take a breath. We did manage to have conversations after I begged her to stop talking so quickly, after all I had only been in South America for two weeks or so, I’m good but not that good. She was so excited to have us that the morning we arrived she put on a special breakfast, that night a really good asada, which is really good quality meat cooked on the parrilla (par- rish- ja ) and she arranged for some local boys that she knew to take us out. The boys were really nice, one spoke good English and the other two didn’t speak any; one because he was too shy and the other because he never listened in class and was probably too lazy to speak in English. This first night that we went out was so so so exhausting because it was all in Spanish… gemma was less than amused falling asleep in the pub from boredom… I thought it was funny.
The next night they put on another big feast (meat of course) and then after they took us to another night club and we danced cumbia and regatón which are types of dances that I hadn’t danced before, it was great fun!
Here because we were going out and eating so much we had pretty restful days, plus because it is a small town everything, EVERYTHING closes for siesta from 12 to 5/5.30 everyday. It is such a breezy place to live. Generally you start work at 9 or 10, go home at 12 have lunch sleep for four or so hours and then go to work for 4 hours till 9, but in cipolletti most things closed at 8. Basically no one works. It’s great especially if you hate your job.
From Cipolletti they drove us to Bariloche, which is south in the middle of the Andes and the coastline, and in the winter operates as a major ski city. In the middle of summer it was freeeeezing! Seriously cold as in there was snow in some parts.
It is a major tourist area, so there was a lot to do. The first day that we got there we decided to go for a walk around the city centre, a tradition we had adopted as our first point of reference for discovering cities, however as none of us had taken our suitcases (we left them in Cippolletti because we were going back there after the week in Bariloche) we had NO warm clothes just lots of tee-shirts, jeans and a sweater, and we very quickly decided that walking along the water was a terrible idea and escaped to the haven of a highly recommended restaurant, where the three of us had salmon- the best salmon of my life or at least close to it.
That night we went out to a pub and then to a night club with a few people that we had met in our hostel. In the club we got a bucket- literally- of a red cordial tasting concoction. This was the biggest club it was like 5 different levels all decorated in a different way and playing different music. It was awesome. We got home at like 6 or 7 that morning. We were meant to be going horse riding at 8, and we had every intention of going even when we got home in the morning, but it was just when the alarm went off half an hour later that horse riding was such a less then attractive option, especially to chrissy who felt that she was obliged to finish the last 16th of the bucket of alcohol, which may not sound like a lot or look like a lot at the time but was apparently about 4 drinks worth… so we missed it. The lady from the front desk woke us up at 12 less than amused that we missed the horse riding with the request that we actually go to the massages that we booked for that afternoon (we think the reason she was angry at us was that we paid our deposit for the horse riding and for some reason she decided to be really angry about the fact we didn’t go… its not an exciting job working at the desk of a hostel so I can understand her need for some drama, even if artificially stimulated).
In Bariloche we also climbed to the top of the ski fields, a four hour trek up so quite a feat in itself!! Well technically we climbed two mountains. Again, every easy task has some big great adventure to go with it, so here it is. The reason that we wanted to climb the mountain in the first place was, well actually that is a definite point of contention because I still don’t even understand the compulsion behind wanting to climb up a mountain, but what is more one that is covered in snow?! But I suppose the reason for it was that I had this long conversation with this really great girl from Melbourne, or Sydney… same same. She had been travelling since she was 19 or so and since graduating from uni hadn’t been back in Australia (6 or 7 years) and she had all these fantastic stories. Basically she made climbing mountains sound really romantic. She said its impossible to travel constantly and do expensive things all the time and hiking is good exercise, you get the reward of the view from the top, its fun, lets you get in touch with nature blah blah blah...
Now here is the story: The day we went we were so pumped and we set and ready to go hiking we got up early and everything, (well it still took chrissy dear about 45 minutes to get up but she did). So yes we actually got up early to climb the mountain, it really was an event. She said it would take about 5 hours up and 3 down and she gave us directions of what bus to take to get to the mountain. Chrissy asked a lady for directions to the bus station and we were off. The hill was so so so steep but we soldiered on, so to speak, despite christina’s constant complaining starting two minutes into the hike. When we got to the top in half an hour we were very confused. Either we were very good or this girl was really really slow, but we knew that wasn’t the case because she is the professional – definitely NOT us! HELLO she has hiking boots and one of those professional walking sticks, when she showed me I had to stop myself laughing and asking why she didn’t just use a stick – they are free?. Anyway so we knew something was wrong!! Turns out that when Christina asked for the bus stop she just asked where a bus stop was, and seeing on this one particular intersection there are five different bus stations it is surprising we took the wrong bus. So to cut a long story short we got on the wrong bus and climbed the wrong mountain!! We didn’t mind so much because it was still an amazing view from the top. However when we were coming down this man from the tourist shop, told us to go down to the left where the chairlift was, not to the right where the signs indicated to go. We adopted a stray dog at the top, or more correctly he adopted us, we followed it as there was no path. Very quickly we discovered this was not the right way to go as it was dangerous, no path and very steep. Chrissy then admitted she didn’t actually listen to the man but when he pointed she just decided to walk that way, and most likely what he said was HELP OUT MY BUSINESS PAY TO TAKE THE CHAIRLIFT DOWN, while he pointed to it. So instead of going down the ‘path’ we all basically fell our way down, which was about as much fun as it sounds. Eventually we came to a private property with massive signs warning about savage dogs, not a risk we were willing to take. So we had to try and trek back up the mountain to get out back to the road or to a path. Eventually we did but we were so buggered we were about done with the hiking for that day and really didn’t give a shit that we climbed the wrong mountain.
The next day we decided to attempt it again. This time we went with an American girl from our hostel, called Brooks ‘yes with an s’ Hays. She was so lovely and interesting. She was on exchange from Georgetown University in Washington and going to a University in Buenos Aires, but decided to come to Bariloche during her study break /holidays, time well spent if you ask me. This time we were determined to get the right bus, well we think we got the right bus because web still don’t know if we climbed the right mountain or not, but we did take 4.5 hours to climb it so it was a good effort anyway. We took a picnic up and ate lunch at the top however as it was not ski season none of the restaurants were open and we had to sit out in the freezing cold with few clothes on eating our delicious gourmet hamper! If the food wasn’t so good and if the trek wasn’t so rigorous we may have ignored our appetites and fled from the cold. A good adventure anyhow.
Eventually we did end up going horse riding, and we witnessed some of the most beautiful, most picturesque scenery that I have ever seen. In some ways Bariloche reminded me of Queenstown, because it was so green everywhere; and also because everything looked like it had been tinted in an ice blue overshade to enhance all the natural beauty. Actually this is the place where Disney came to draw Bambi. We wanted to go to the actual place where Bambi lived, well the place where Disney drew Bambi living but the barges weren’t running for a reason, I can’t remember or I didn’t understand to begin with.
Also we went canyoning, which is basically like a flying fox with a harness through the trees in the mountains. It was great so much fun, but I think its better for school camps, probably because your younger and think its scarier or more fun or something I don’t know why….
When leaving Bariloche to return to Cippolletti to get our bags, we pushed our tradition of arriving at the bus station minutes before the bus leaves to the very second it was leaving. We jumped on the bus as it was pulling out of the station. Why? Well we were making a pizza 15 minutes before our bus left of course and then we had to wait for it to cook. That is clearly a logical thing to have done, especially as the bus provides food!! Oh it is non stop excitement I swear!!
Then back to cipolletti to grab our bags have one more night with the boys, and ice cream in the afternoon: yeah they loved us!
