What an eventful week it has been in Bariloche! Firstly, in the early hours of last Sunday we were all supposed to be getting the bus up from El Calafate when Zoe became really ill out of nowhere and couldn't stop being sick. Despite leaving it to the last possible minute (3am!), she just wasn't fit enough to cope with a 33 hour bus journey, so we moved the girls into another hostel for the night and Karl, Lex and myself caught the bus. The first change was at Rio Gallegos at about 7am, which is south east from El Calafate; bizarre when you think that we wanted to be heading in a north westerly direction! Lex tried to get on the next bus in one of the girls places since he hadn't been able to book his tickets for the whole route, but despite explaining the situation they stupidly wouldn't let him on, so Karl and I did the remaining 28 hours, including another changeover, on our own - a bit weird since it had been over a fortnight since it had been just the two of us! We didn't do much on Monday except have a wander through town, and then we met up with Lex again on Tuesday after he had caught the next bus up. We had been hoping that the girls would be on that bus too, but by this time Emma had started being ill too, so they were both still stuck in El Calafate. It all led to a frustrating couple of days of not knowing what to do for the best, particularly since we had planned on hiring a car together and there was no easy way of talking to each other. This was compounded when I locked the keys to my locker inside it and so after trying to unscrew the lock with Karls mini screwdriver, had to admit defeat and get my padlock sawn off - what a muppet! Things finally got going on Wednesday when the three of us went white water rafting and had an absolutely brilliant day. We rafted down Rio Mansa fir the best part of two hours, by the end of which I could not feel any of my toes because of the freezing water, had blisters on my hands from paddling so hard, and was generally just completely spent! Lex and I were the two in the front of the raft and so had the best view of everything, but also had to break each wave that came our way. I don't need to say who the only person to fall in was - check out the picture of me being rescued whilst Lex nearly fell in the other way as he lost his concentration through laughing at me so much! Our guide was really good and funny, especially when he casually walked down the raft, came up behind an unsuspecting Karl and said "You want to swim?" before pushing him into the river, where he disappeared under the raft for a few seconds , looking completely perplexed when he finally surfaced! After rafting all the way to the boarder with Chile, we transferred back to base camp where we had a BBQ with a couple glasses of wine to round of a really good day. Thursday was the start of our 3 day road trip as we picked up the car, although it almost didn't even make it into it's first hour as I nearly killed us driving off, confused with the whole driving on the opposite side of the road malarkey! I said made sure I said my prayers that night! It was only the three of us to begin with, since despite the girls now having had arrived in Bariloche, Emma was going to see the doctor on Friday morning so they couldn't come with us. Off we set north towards Parque Nacional Los Arrayanes where we hired mountain bikes and did a 26km round trip through the forest of arrayanes, passing past countless lakes and lagoons (though I'm not sure what the difference is!) until we reached Lago Nahuel Huapi and had a well earned rest. I lost count of the number of times I fell off; partly because the bike was crap, partly because I am blatantly a terrible biker, and parlty because the route was so bumpy, and I reached the point where I had so many bruises on my shins and calves and blisters on my hands from gripping the handlebars so tightly that on the way back I stopped caring and just went for it, picking up some serious speed whilst dodging boulders, braches and tree roots - I saw my life flash before me a couple more times! By the end I was completely shattered and had an extremely sore backside, but had really enjoyed doing something a bit different. We stayed the night in the quaint hamlet of Villa la Angostura in a typically wood-and-stone cabin type hostel, and all three of us slept like babies! Waking up Friday morning, we felt like old men getting out of bed, and still didn't know if we were hopefully going to meet up with the girls later in the day. After hours of driving we passed through another remote hamlet Villa Traful where we tried unsuccessfully to contact them, and so continued on driving on ridiculously bad 'roads' praying all the time that a stone didn't fly up and crack the windscreen (particularly since the insurance was covered by my credit card!), passing by lake after lake and stopping whenever we wanted to have a stroll through the trees to the riverside, enjoying the tranquil surroundings knowing there wasn't anyone else around for miles - the true beauty of doing an independent road trip! After more winding, stoney roads, we finally began our descent into San Martin de los Andes where, much against my initial better judgement, we picked up a hitch hiker thinking he was a fellow gringo. As soon as he climbed in the back next to Karl we realised he was just a local and was absolutely wasted of booze! We had a few comedy minutes with him before we kicked him out at the bus station and then went to find a hostel, hoping that by some miraculous coincidence that the girls would have used a bit of gumption and gone to the first one listed in the Lonely Planet, the travellers bible. But alas they hadn't, so as a final attempt to contact them we went to an internet café in town, and guess who was there? I was still locking up the car over the road, and yet I still heard the unmistakable sound of Emma's laugh, and couldn't help but smile at our good fortune! It must have been karma from picking up the hitch hiker! Saturday was spent doing some serious km's in the car, after we had almost drivin off without paying for the nights bed! First we visited the Lanin volcano, taking the car down roads that a 4x4 would have struggled with. For lunch we parked up and hiked into the forest, stopping to eat on a remote ledge by a waterfall, where I had to wonder if anyone had ever done the exact same route was us - probably not. Then it was a case of foot down along Ruta 40 as we set of back to Bariloche. At one point the horizon straight ahead was simply the road, so I floored the accelerator and got the car up to 190km/h - a wicked feeling speeding through such a remote landscape, whilst Lex and the girls slept obliviously in the back! Saturday was going to be our last night together as a fivesome since Karl and I had bought tickets to Santiago for Sunday morning, so we went out for a really nice meal (yet another steak!) to sign off in style. After the restaurant we went to the late night Irish bar that is the most popular in town, where two of us struggled to hack the pace (see the pictures) and the rest of us danced until we left and got back to the hostel around 6am feeling slightly worse for wear. I was supposed to take the car back for 930am and then our bus was at 10am, so I thought setting the alarm for 745am would give us plenty of time to get sorted. And it probably would have, if one of us had heard it going off. Instead, all of us slept right through it and it was only when Zoe woke us up at 950am, still drunk, that we realised what had happened! Ooops. All Ballard could do was laugh as I ripped my towel frantically trying to get showered quickly before I realised there was no way we would make the bus. Goodness knows how we got away with taking the car back in the state we did - absolutely caked in mud and the underside must have been battered to pieces, but somehow we did. Walking back to the hostel it dawned on me that one good thing to come out of missing the bus would be that I would get to watch United vs Arsenal in the afternoon, and after a quick doze Lex and I went downstairs to watch it, only to find some local burke wanting to watch the Davis Cup tennis - how is that more important than United?! So, much like we did in El Calafate, we started wandering the streets trying to find a place showing the match - a tough task on a Sunday afternoon. In the end we went into a kind of service station and begged the woman to turn over the tennis, and so we finally started watching it half an hour in. We were obviously providing the locals with some entertainment as when Rooney scored and Lex jumped on my back, these two women were in hysterics laughing at us! At least in meant something good came out of the day, even if the rest of it was spent in bed! So, after over a week based in Bariloche, we will be leaving the Lake District of Argentina and heading north tomorrow, having decided to completely miss out Chile now. I will go there on my next trip! Jonny