Bariloche - or: Argentina's Switzerland

The 1840 km (1150 miles) trip
from El Calafate to Bariloche

Our last stop in Argentina was the city of San Carlos de Bariloche, or just Bariloche. We were faced with two options how to get to there from El Calafate: either a short two-hour flight, or a much less expensive but 29 hours long bus trip.

Needless to say, we chose the latter. :-)
So, with all our electronic entertainment devices (Kindle, iPod, Laptop) fully charged, we boarded a bus on an early Wednesday afternoon, spent the night on a sort of comfortable "cama" ("bed") seat, and arrived at the Bariloche bus terminal on Thursday evening.









With the nearby mountains already resembling Switzerland, the city of Bariloche has decided a while ago to go all the way and make its downtown district look like a Swiss mountain village.

(Long before Leavenworth, Washington came up with a similar idea...)

The city's main square....

... with a view of the Lago Nahuel Huapí.

















Staying at the cozy Periko's Hostel for a couple of days, we spent a lot of time exploring the nearby mountains and lakes.

A view of Bariloche from Cerro Otto, west of the city center.

... where they also had some fancy artwork.
























And - just like in Switzerland - there is the other attraction Bariloche is famous for: food! In particular, chocolate ...

... more chocolate...

... and even beer with chocolate (cerveza con chocolate) - no kidding!

A clear violation of the Reinheitsgebot, you would probably get chocolated and feathered for doing something like this in Germany.

Oh, and of course: cheese fondue! Ranzenpflege!














Finally, an unexpected highlight happened on our last day when we ran into Bariloche's carneval parade.

Today we also learned: somewhere on this planet, they manufacture fake butts.















Hours of fun! :-)











On to our next stop: Pucon, Chile! More in our next blog post...