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So on Tuesday afternoon we arrived in San Carlos de Bariloche. It's a ski resort town close to the Chilean border and in Patagonia in Argentina. It's a cute town, fairly reminiscent of Queenstown, but it's slightly bigger (there's about 300,000 people living here). The main attraction of the town is the ski resort - Cerro Cathedral.
This year there's not been that much snow, so the town doesn't have any snow. The day we arrived it was really windy and Cathedral was shut. Fortunately for us, it was open for the rest of the week. We organised some rental gear on Tuesday and hit up the grocery store - the kitchen in our hostel is awesome, so we've managed to make most of our meals this week!
The hostel (called 41 Below) is really cool - run by a Kiwi/Brazilian couple. It's pure luxury compared to some of the places we've been - there's a heater in our room, hot showers, a kitchen (with pots and pans!). There's also an awesome living room so we've met lots of the other travellers here (mostly American and Australian). The staff are really laid back and probably the most helpful of any hostel we've stayed in, so suffice to say we've had a good stay in Bariloche.
What did we do? Well, Wednesday morning we woke up and went up the mountain to go snow boarding. The public bus up was very cheap, but packed out and on the first morning we had to stand for the 30mins to get up to the ski field. This resulted in both of us having upset tummies and feeling a bit crabby. Soon this passed and we ended up finding snowboard rentals and got a two day lift pass. The prices here are a bit cheaper than NZ, but not as much as you might expect. A day pass was $66 Australian and the board and boots cost us $26 a day (for each of us). So after three days of boarding, we're a little broke!
The first day we made it up to 'the Plaza' which is a beginners area that has a short chair lift. It was lots of fun and Jane quickly picked up where she had left off in NZ last year. She has had a few problems getting 'toe-side' (that means snow boarding facing up the hill, with your toes pointing into the hill, the other option is facing downhill, with your heels pointing into the hill - referred to as heel-side.... with Jane had though of as hill-side due to learning from a kiwi!).
Wednesday we spent most of the day on the beginner slope - Karl went up another level and checked out a blue run (the next level of difficulty) but unfortunately it was too much of a step up for Jane and the run wasn't in great condition either. As this year there has been much less snow than normal, there were bald patches around this area of the mountain and the Nubes run suffered from this. So we went off to another section of the mountain to check it out.
Up the left hand side there's a gondola, it takes about 10-15minutes to get to the top and once there, there's a beginner field and another lift up. We took the lift all the way up and checked out the lodge at the top. We got to the start of the run to put on our boards - a nice big wide blue run with plenty of space for Jane to fall and found that the binding on Jane's board had broken!!! What a disappointment for Jane - she was really starting to get into the boarding. Karl had fun on the way down and Jane took the lift back!
The next day, all bindings in tact, we headed up the gondola again and this time Jane was able to follow Karl (slowly and surely) down the hill. We split up to go at our own pace, after Karl had given Jane lots of pointers and things to practice to get into the toe-side run of things. Basically, what it came down to was getting the confidence to go 'backwards' down the hill - as in, facing up hill and looking over one of your shoulders. After a long day, and lots of stumbles and freak outs, Jane finally had it down!!! She could get down the hill toe-side.
The lift up this hill takes a very long time. It's super slow and there's a lot of people - as it's a beginner friendly blue run. So by mid afternoon we were sick of the wait (and the huge crush of people to get to the lift... there's a bit of the Latin "who ever's manly enough gets to go first" happening) and went back to base to have a quick lunch. In the afternoon we went up another section of the mountain - we went up the sixtuple express - a 2.5km chair lift to get to the base of the other snowy area. Once we were there, there are a few different lifts you can take to get to the top. we were just doing one run on the Thursday to see how it was. We went up one run and found the most spectacular views! This run you can see over the peak and to the back of the range there's another range that was beautifully snow-capped and picturesque. From here you can also see the lake that Bariloche is based around too - a very special view from so far up.
We made our way down. Jane got her confidence on and overtook Karl - probably not the best idea as she proceeded to get disoriented and took the plunge over a crest down a red run - the next level of difficulty up from blue. Well.... it was steep and icy! There where quite a few bumpy patches that were icy - the first of which Jane hit and ended up on her bum!! Sliding down a few minutes until the momentum stopped. She did feel better though when Karl hit the same spot and met the exact same fate as Jane, ended up on his bum, next to her on the hill. A bit of a giggle and we were on our way again safely making it down the run (Jane somewhat slower and more cautiously!).
That was it for that afternoon. After two days of snowboarding neither of us were feeling like cooking tea. So we went out to dinner at a fancy German-Argentinian restaurant down by the lake. It was spectacular! Karl had their regional specialty - wild boar - and it was cooked to perfection! With a gorgeous Malbec (local wine) and fruit sauce. Jane had a delicious Venison stew - another traditional dish from Patagonia. Delicious!
Friday was our last day on the slopes, so we headed up as early as we could get there and started back where we left off - Karl went off and had some fun and Jane practiced until it all started to click! She managed a few turns from heel-side to toe-side and vice versa making significant progress over the three days. It was a beautiful day - we were very lucky with great weather all three days but Friday was special. So warm up the hill that we were stripping off the layers and enjoying being in the sunshine. At one point it looked like it would rain and a dark cloud threatened our vision for a little while but we stopped for a drink and a break and by the time we were done the wind had pushed the cloud away and we were back in the beautiful sunshine.
We called it a day before the crowds were heading back down (to avoid the human crush into the lift!) and got back into town. One of the girls from the hostel was having her birthday on Friday and so the hostel had organised a pizza night. We all pitched in to make them from scratch! While we had been on the slopes and getting back, those that were having a quiet day were making the dough from scratch! We had a great, very social night, helping to make and enjoying to eat pizzas and a big birthday cake. There was about 14 of us staying in the hostel and three staff around so it was a lot of fun. The evening included a lot of food, some good drinks - nice Argentinian wine for us! - and some of the more keen hostelers ended up heading out to some of the local nightclubs.
Night life in Argentina doesn't start until much later than we're used too! Normal dinner time (at a restaurant) is 8.30 - 11pm and apparently the discotechs don't really start till midnight, 1am! We were in bed by then, happily resting our sore muscles!
This morning we had a sleep in till about 9am and got going on the packing. We are heading back to Buenos Aires today so that we can fly to Foz do Iguazo tomorrow - the massive waterfalls on the Argentinian/Brazilian boarder. Sure beats 30 hours in a bus!
- comments
uellan sounds like you have had a ball snowboarding! bet some muscles were protesting! hope the slide down the red run didn't wear any holes in the pants!!