Bariloche.

Bariloche is a small town in the Andes mountains by the Chilean border. The architecture and location may remind you a lot of any town in the Swiss Alps. There is a lot of wood, even full size logs, that decorates the beautiful houses. The town is located right on a beautiful deep blue lake surrounded by tall mountains, and the day I arrived was the first day with clear skies in over a week. It was really easy to find my hostel, which I for the first time since Naning in China had booked in advance. The name of it is "41 Below", and it is run by a Kiwi. Everything about the hostel was great, except that there was not that many people who spoke Spanish there. The kitchen was nice and easy to use, the bathrooms were working perfectly and the dorms were comfy and not too big. The lockers were big enough to live inside, so it was easy to lock up everything when I went out. There was free wi-fi and some kind of a breakfast included.

I met some cool people and played a lot of cards that evening. We played "s*** head", or as we call it in Norway, "Idiot". It was a few more rules to it that made it more interesting. If someone put down a jack, the game was turned around. When someone put down a seven the next person had to put something lower, and whenever a six was on the top od the deck everyone had to be silent. If you spoke when the six was up, you had to take in all of the cards that were played.

It turned out that I was in a room with the people I was hanging with. Matt from Toronto, Youri from Amsterdam, Oscar from New Zealand, and his friends Kate and Hannah. The boys were going to hire motorbikes the next day, and I decided to join in. They did not have much experience at all, but the bikes were half automatic, and only 110 cc, so we should be fine.
We got up for breakfast and walked up to the bike rental the next morning. The guy who rented us the bikes was very nice, and he looked a little funny with his rotten teeth. He did not demand any deposit except some creditcard information. We signed that he was allowed to take 1000 Pesos from our account if we totalled the bike. Here my old and cancled credit card came in handy yet again. We got on the bikes and headed out of town. At first a little slow so everyone could get used to the bikes, but as we got passed the first of about four police checkpoints on the 80 km stretch to Villa Augustina, we cranked it into full throtle. The fantastic and changing landscape was incredible. Some times it was hard to keep the eyes on the road, and we had to pull over to let the beautiful shapes and colors burn onto the rethina. Just in case though, we took a few pictures as well.

The first landscape we passed was a long stretch along the lake, the deep blue water with choppy white decor, lay in front of the pointy mountains and the clear blue skies. Later on we got into more of a desert landscape, with hills and plains similar to the grassy ones in New Zealand. I did not ask the Kiwi for that opinion, but base the comparison on the landscape in the Lord of The Rings movies. Crossing these plains was really cold. I was wearing a wind proof jacket and gloves, but it was still freezing. Youri did not even have gloves on, and we started making stops to get warm. Our average speed must have been just under 80 km/h on this trip, but on some longer downhill stretches We hit more than 130 km/h. The speedometer on my bike constantly showed 0, but I was riding behind Oscar, the Kiwi, and he hit 136 km/h at one point. The bikes were very new, and the wheels were bigger than usual. That combined with smooth driving surface and little traffic made those speeds double. With about 25 kilometers to go, we turned off the main road and onto a dirt road leading down to a camp site. We stopped to ask for fuel, but they did not have any that would work in our bikes, so after a quick visit to the beach we got back up to get in to Villa Augustina, our destination for the trip, and the closest gas point. It is remarkable how far one can drive on an empty tank.

Villa Augustina was very much like Bariloche, except one thing. The whole town was souvenir shops and restaurants, a classic tourist town. After filling the tank for about 10 pesos (2.5 USD/15 NOK), we found a place to park. The sun was warm and the air was clean. We decided to walk around town for a while to see what it could offer. In a small market I bought some cheese. One with black pepper, one with herbs, one with some other spice mix, and one plain. They were all hand made and delicious. Nothing added but milk. We were all hungry, so the next thing to do was to get some food. We got a recommendation from the cheese lady, but that place was so packed that we could not wait in line, even if we got in after half an hour, we would probably wait very long for the food. We found a pizzeria a little further back, and had some fantastic pizza, prepared by some real Italian-Argentinians. After dinner, Matt, from Canada, and I unlocked our bikes which we had locked together.

The ride back home to Bariloche was another 80 km, but we did not make as many stops. When we got back into Bariloche we decided to take the bikes for a spin in town. It was a lot easier to ride in town because we did not have the strong winds from the lake, since we were sheltered by the buildings. There were no semi-trucks passing at great speeds, throwing us off our bikes either, and when we stopped down town, by the town square, there was a chainsaw sculpturing competition. We decided to take the bikes up the mountain, behind the town, and found some dirt roads leading up to some residential areas up there. It was very steep, but fun to ride. As far up as we could go, Matt decided to try to make a doughnut, and failed. I had stopped a little further back to take a photo, and came riding in right as he ate the dirt. I hurried over there to get a picture of the action. The bike got a few scratches and a small piece of plasticc broke off. It was minor, and hopefully the guy would not notice. Matt tried to cover up the scratches with a black marker, and the guy with the rotten teeth said nothing when we returned it. However, he did show up at the hostel 20 minutes later. He wanted 690 Pesos to fix the bike, they agreed on 360 Pesos, I guess a reasonable price. The one day rental was 140 Pesos.

For dinner we had some empanadas and started playing some interesting games to get to know eachother better. All of us from the room played, and a couple others joined in. We had a few Quilmes Red Lager, and went to the busiest bar in town to check out the nightlife in the Andes. Wilkenny was so packed that it took us ages to get a table, but it was fun. The two Kiwi girls did not join, but a couple American girls did. One had Indian parents, was born in Georgia, but studied in California. The other had Chinese parents, was born in Indiana, and went to the same school as the other girl. After a while we moved on to a club called Dusk, and there Matt and I got to practice our Spanish a little more with some tourists from Buenos Aires. When Matt and I were leaving to check out the bars on our hostel's street, his jacket was gone, and they told him that there was nothing he could do, except take another one. I said he should just do it and get out of there, and of course we felt bad about it later. At the small, local bar we ended up in, there were almost only locals, and several of them were eager to teach us Spanish. By the time we headed across the street to 41 Below, it was already 5:30.

Saturday was Easter, and when I had breakfast about 10, the hostel were giving out chocholate eggs to the guests. I managed to get up so early to join Oscar, Hannah and Kate for a hike called Cierro Lopéz. It was a 40 minute busride there, and then a 3.5 hours high pace hike to a shelter high up in the mountain. The first thing we did after getting off the bus, or second because Oscar needed to clear out his guts after the curvey busride, was to empty out all the botteled water and fill up with the clearest spring water I had seen in a long long time. The terrain changed a lot on the way up the mountain, and as we climbed we could see the beautiful small lakes shrink below us. Every time we stopped to have a look at the view it was more breathtaking than the last time. To begin with we walked through large forest trees, then we climbed sandy hills with sand as fine as on a beach, then it was more rock and root climbing. I guess we made too much noise to see any wildlife, except for the woodpeckers. They made more noise than us, and they were beautiful big birds with red heads. We had a group picture taken right before the girls turned around and me and Oscar went on. I really wanted to make it to the top of the mountain, but after eating our lunch at the pink shelter high up in the mountain we had to turn around to make it back to Bariloche before dark.

The views were magnificent, and we took some good photos up there before we turned around and ran down the mountain. It is a lot easier on the knees to run, and we were in a bit of a hurry. Neither of us fell, and we made it down in only one hour and three minutes. Well down, we realized that there would not be a bus back in a long while. I tried to hitchhike for about half an hour, but all I got was a couple waves and some gestures with two fingers, probably meaning "forget it" in Argentinian gesture lenguage. But finally a large yellow van with some Chilean family on a road trip picked us up and said they would take us to the intersection on the main road. We thanked them, and got in. On the way they stopped at a view point where they wanted us to take some pictures with them. When we walked out of the van we saw two familiar faces a couple meters away. It was the girls. They had walked out there, and were planning on walking to the intersection and catch a bus. We could all fit in the van, so we took the girls with us out to the intersection. There we caught the bus to Bariloche and had a nap to catch up on some sleep. The rest of the evening was spent at the hostel, just relaxing.

Patagonia is fantascic, and I can easily understand that there were a lot of German settlements here. These settlements, the distance from Europe, and the lack of political relations between Europe and Argentina made this area a perfect place to settle for runaway Nazis, during and after World War II. I met a lot of people wit blue eyes and names I could relate to the German lenguage. Even Ernesto "Ché" Guevara ran into many ex-nazis on his motorbike journy around Argentina in 1952.
The rest of my time in Patagonia I spent just relaxing and getting ready for the long bus journey back to Buenos Aires.

Oscar and the Kiwi girls are traveling north, and I might run into them again soon. Youri I am sure I will meet in Amsterdam, he is a real laugh, and a great guy. Matt is the real traveler. He even deleted his facebook account before he left home, so that he would not be disturbed while traveling. Hope I see him in Norway some day. Oscar is in fact coming to Norway this fall, so I am sure I get to see him then.