World Adventures- Africa, the UK and South America

31.03.10

Work up to intense rain, which was not great, as I had to put the tent down by myself. As it took twice as long as it normally should the tent filled with water. I was wearing jeans and was completely soaked from the effort.

Crossed the border into Argentina

Spent the rest of the day driving to Bariloche, arriving very late afternoon. It was still raining when we arrived and we were all keen to upgrade into a dorm. Fortunately there was space available, and I again managed to score a bottom bunk in a 12 bed dorm.

01.04.10

The camp site is known as ‘Petunia’, and has everything that one needs of a camp site. In the morning the truck left for town to get repairs, and I hitched a ride and was dropped off. I wandered around the most part of the morning with members of the group, but as usual their interests and my own did not run parallel, so I ended up walking around by myself. Bariloche is a very nice little tourist town on a lake, and they make amazing chocolate. After buying some chocolate and visiting various shops, I walked to the chocolate museum on the outskirts of town on the way back to the camp site. It was about 1.45pm when I got there, and I was told there would not be an english speaking tour until 3pm. Since I was on my own I decided to skip it, had a quick look around the shop, and then started the 15km walk back to the camp site. Most of the group caught the local bus back to the camp, but as I really had nothing else to do for the day, and the road wound in and out around the lake, I decided to use the time walking. It was a plesant walk, and I got some great photos of bees on thistles, the lake, and views across the lake back towards town. Not long after the half way mark, Dan had seen me walking and got off the bus he was on to join me. I was glad that he did, because although I remembered most of what we had passed on the way into town, I did not actually remember the name of the camp site or its precise location.

We stopped at a brewery on the way back, and Dan bought some local beer, including strawberry beer- which I tried and did not like.  We then stopped in at a chocolate shop to get some more chocolate, but the taster we were provided with was no where near as good as in town, so we skipped it. We then passed a movie hire store, and hired Twilight and New Moon to watch later in the evening, as the whole truck has been reading the books.

Dinner that night was home made burgers from cook group- they were very good. I checked my emails briefly, and then we watched the dvds. I remember why I did not even finish watching Twilight the first time I saw it, it is just a blink of the book, thats the best way to describe it. I honestly don’t think the film makes much sense unless you have read the books, its just fragments in a time line. I was able to appreciate the movie much more this time, but I still would not recommend it for others to watch. New Moon, the second of the series, I had not seen at all, and it was better than Twilight in that it did not cut that much out, and I felt that you could at least watch that as a stand alone movie. Got to bed around 3am I think.

02.04.10

Today I was planning on doing a hike with a number of member of the group, but as the weather had cleared up so much, they all decided to go up the cable cart instead. Garath was still planning to do the hike, and was annoyed that he was now the only one, so I decided that I would go with him so that he was not hiking alone (since I know from repeated experience what its like).     We caught the bus about 20km up the road, further to the camp site, and got off at the start of the hike. There was a french girl and a sweedish girl that also got of to being the hike with us, so we spent the day with them. We would have done the trail much faster had we been alone, but I was happy for the company of the girls, it was nice to talk to someone new, and both of them very  lively and happy people.

It was quite a steep walk, and took about 3hours to get to our destination, which was a refuge right near the top of the mountain range. It was a very nice walk despite the effort required, as we were rewarded with stunning views of the area, known as ‘The Lake District’. I got some great photos, which I will upload onto the blog, but they are also on facebook.  It didnt take that long to come down the mountain, and we had to wait 1.5hrs at the bus stop to get back to camp. The bus stop was in the shade, and it was absolutely freezing. I think I spent the whole time wearing all of my layers, shivering. By the time we got back to camp all I wanted to do was have a hot shower and warm up. The shower did not help that much, and I ended up going to bed relatively early that night in a hope that I would regain control of my body temperature. I did spend some time upstairs with the other Oasis truck, catching up with them before bed, which was great- because I much prefer the individuals on that truck.

03.04.10