Argentina

November 6-29, 2009

November 16: Esquel to Bariloche

Today we were leaving Esquel and headed to our next stop: Bariloche. We packed up fairly quickly and once the kids were done breakfast we headed out. Before leaving Esquel we decided to head over to the train station to see if we could get a glimpse of "La Trochita", an old steam train which unfortunately was not running on the couple of days that we were in town. The people at the train station were very nice and pointed us to the hangar where the train is kept and we were able to go right in and take a look.

For lunch we decided to head to El Bolson. Originally we had planned to stay overnight in this little hippy town but in order to minimize wasting time looking for accomodations, we decided to spend an extra day in Bariloche instead. Lunch was had at the Jauja restaurant which Rubby had found online with great reviews and it didn't disappoint! The kids were particularly fond of the icecream shop and chocolate shops right next door. ;-)

The last part of the day was driving to Bariloche and finding accomodations (a task which we always dreaded). The tourist information in Bariloche was less than helpful and in the end we just cruised the main road along the lake coming out of town and tried to find places that looked clean but not overly posh. At the first place no one answered the door but at the second spot the owner was very nice and being that it's not high season we got a beautiful and spacious 2 floor apartment for just 200 pesos a night. Other than Auntie Christine's place, this ended up being our favourite accomodations on this trip. Our only complaint in Bariloche on this first day: it was pouring rain.