A MOUNTAIN DESTINATION

a few days after i arrived in buenos aires we left for san carlos de bariloche. it's a mountain town in the andes of argentina and is gorgeous!! many argentinians travel here for their own vacations.

we took a 20-hour bus ride there which sounds quite terrible, but it was actually the best transportation i've ever had!! our seats reclined the full 180 degrees, we had our own television on which we could choose our own movie to watch (saw VI was martijn's choice, but that was turned off fairly quickly) and they serve a hot dinner complete with wine. we had a great sleep (almost a full 8 hours!!) and arrived at 11am...plenty of time to enjoy the rest of the day in bariloche.

we stayed at an amazing hotel!! we took advantage of the pool, hot tub and amazing buffet breakfast. the week was spent hiking/walking on trails in the surrounding areas, taking a trip up to a revolving cafe overlooking the lakes and mountains and enjoying the best chocolate argentina has to offer.

one of my favourite days was spent horseback riding. we found a woman (carol) in the lonely planet (which we took everywhere!!) who took tourists out for a ride through her property. there were five of us in total. it was so beautiful there!! we stopped for lunch which they made on a dryish piece of grass they found, heated up the soup in a coffee can put in the fire and roasted empanadas on a makeshift metal tray. and (of course) had brought a bottle of wine. it was delicious!! it has been a goal of mine to go horseback riding through the mountains. i had always expected it to be in banff or jasper, but to do it in argentina was really cool. it felt a bit surreal to sit ride through the landscape. there wasn't a ton of talking throughout the ride, so i was really able to appreciate what was around me.

something we did pretty much every night was head into town for dinner at a restaurant and hit up a pub for drinks. i really enjoyed this because it gave us time to really sit down and talk (not that we shut up for more than five minutes while we were together...and that was for bathroom breaks) and enjoy great food. it was so nice to hang out and be out together, something that is completely impossible within our current skype relationship.

it was a big difference from the city of buenos aires. quiet, peaceful, not very many people. and i felt very safe. i wasn't watching my purse like i did in the big city. in fact it reminded me a lot of the mountain region in alberta. i felt very comfortable here. but travelling is always about new experiences, so after a week we headed back to the big city.