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We had heard a lot about Bariloche in the Argentinian lake district beforehand and it did not disappoint. Bariloche is set among 7 lakes and some spectacular mountains including Cerro Cathedral which is one of the most famous South American ski resorts and it´s just beautiful but also fairly touristy with lots of tourist shops and some gorgeous chocolate shops - yum! We stayed in a great Kiwi run hostel and met
lots of great people there and also on our Spanish course which helped to make our time here great!
Task number one was to improve our Spanish and we had signed up for a week´s course in one of the local schools and it was intense! We had classes for 5 hours straight every afternoon and the amount we went through was huge so lots of learning still to be done but it´s definitely helped us to be better able to chat with the locals.
One night we went horse riding in the full moon with the crowd from our Spanish school. It was all run from a traditional gaucho estacion and we got saddled up just as the sun was setting around 9.30 and rode around for about 3 hours on horse
back through the farm, up and down hills in the moon light. It was a great experience but horse riding in the dark is pretty intimidating when you can´t see much at all. It was all fine and dandy until the pain set in the next morning, although poor Gareth suffered after this one more so than me
White water rafting on the Rio Manso was an amazing experience too. We got all kitted up in life jackets, wet suits, helmets (and didn´t we look pretty) and then headed out to the rafts to take on the rapids in the Rio Manso. The rapids were grade 3 to 4 and they were big enough to have a lot of fun on! We slide down some,
got totally drowned in others, almost hit against the rocks along the sides of the river and even got stuck on top of some rocks at one stage, all part of the adrenalin rush. Plenty of people got thrown out from the other rafts but fortunately we had a really good crew of people in our raft and no-one got thrown out all day, not involuntarily anyhow but we all jumped out and drifted down the river a few times even taking on a few little rapids while floating. We finished up at the Chilean border feeling very exhilarated.
We had our first taster of Argentine night life too and I learnt that the drinks are lethal and the hours just dangerous! Locals generally head out for the night at 11 or after and the bars were still going strong when we finally saw sense at 5am! We also tasted our first Argentinian steak in Alberto´s Parrilla and it was pretty awesome. Gareth has even confessed that he thinks the meat was actually better here than in NZ which is not something he says easily believe me. We also got to enjoy many ·asados· which are typical Argentinian barbecues and very tasty they are too.
Wish we´d had more time in Bariloche to do some more of the local trekking and some biking but unfortunately with so much time in school it was hard to fit everything in but now the holiday starts proper and we have a good excuse to return sometime!
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