Lake district Argentina and Chile': 7 October to 13 October

So, for the sake of fairness and the fact that Rome is not feeling all that great today, the readers of the blog will have to bare with my lesser literary skills for this session.

We arrived in Bariloche after a 14 hour (overnight) bus trip from Puerto Madryn.

There was a group of 7 of us that came off the bus together. There was Jeff and Ramona (the Dutch brother and sister that we travelled with in Puerto Madryn) and 3 American guys (Shaun, Spencer and Ben) from Utah who we met while getting onto the bus and found out that they were coming to the same hostel. We decided to walk from the station thinking that it was a lot closer than it was and ended up trodding uphill for 40 mins to get to our place. Walking was never the less a nice way to see the town.. Bariloche is part of Argentina's lake district and is built on a hill overlooking one of the large lakes in the area. There are snow-capped mountains surrounding it everywhere! Rome describes it as living in a postcard. The area is known for it's excellent chocolate stores and the streets have tons of them (some the size of a Pick n' Pay store). The stores all offer free samples which is great if you're walking on the street and feel like a quick snack.

We arrived at our hostel named "41 below" and were showed our respective dorm rooms. We shared a 4 bed room with the Netherlanders. We unpacked our things and decided to go for a walk around town and get something to eat. We went to a take-away place right on the lake front and all ordered Burger combos while admiring the amazing views through the windows. The rest of the afternoon was pretty lazy and had a nap while the others played more ****head. We went shopping for dinner that night and found a chicken that could probably have bench pressed 100kg's when it was alive. It was massive! Us 4 had chicken curry that night and managed to cook it without the legs, wings or thighs of the chicken! We had a couple beers later and sat and chatted to the people in the hostel and met one of the hostel workers Herman who was a splitting image of Brad Pitt!

The next morning we decided to rent bicycles out for the day. We went on a 25 km route around one of the peninsulas and it was awesome! The cycling itself was quite tough but made our views all that more fantastic as we felt we earned them. We packed ourselves cheese rolls for lunch and went on a short walk to the water front to go and eat them. The ultimate view of the trip was after a really steep uphill that took us to a viewpoint that showed the winding lake around jutting out piece of land that looked almost like an island from where we were standing. There's a 5 Star hotel built up on the hill of the "island" and a small golf course surrounding it. The down hill after that was the steepest and longest and felt like we were going at 80 km/h when free-wheeling down it! We got back to the bike rental place at around 18.30 which meant that we had been cycling around for close to 7 hours! Nice work-out, but we were knackered by the end of the day. We cooked ourselves grilled chicken (still from the same beast as the day before) and sat and played more ****head that evening.

The next day, the 4 of us rented out a car to go take a road trip down a very famous road called the 7 lakes (for obvious reasons). We left at around 9.30 in the morning and this time made very sure that we had enough petrol to get us through the trip! A popular topic of conversation was impersonating the Americans (who by that time we spoken to quite a bit). They spoke a mix of English and Spanish which was very funny to listen to and they would blurt out things like "Can you pass me the leche' amigo?". I drove a car on the right-hand side of the road for the first time which was a lot of fun and the roads were windy and well paved which made for some awesome driving (aside from the fantastic views that I keep talking about). We ate our packed lunch at a river along the way and sat ourselves on one of the boulders that were in the middle. It was that crystal clear mountain water that was freezing cold and sweet. I drank as much of it as I could instead of drinking the bottled water that we brought with us. We sat there for an hour or so and then carried-on driving. The road ends in San Martin which is a toned down version of Bariloche' and we parked the car and got out for a walk around. San Martin is far smaller than Bariloche' and almost all the restaurants, shops and houses have wood finishes to their exteriors which makes the town seem all that more quaint. There is a foot path alongside the lake front that we walked along and we stumbled across a fantastic ice-cream place where we ordered some home-made ice-cream. One of the flavours that Rome and I went for was "Dolce de Leche" which is a very popular caramel-like syrup that they often put inside chocolates and cakes in Argentina. It was incredible. We left San Martin in the late afternoon and got back to Bariloche in the late evening.

That evening was the evening of the 9th and was Jeff and Ramona's last night of travellingg with us aswell as the night we decided to go out and celebrate Romy's birthday. We decided to leave for dinner at 21.30 so Rome went and had a lie-down and Jeff and I hit the town to find Rome a gift. Eventually I got her a nice polar-fleece top for the cold weather that we're going to have in the Bolivian salt flats.

Things in the South American countries only start happening in the early hours of the morning in terms of going out drinking and to night clubs and it's not uncommon for locals to start leaving for a night club at 3 in the morning and come back at 8 later that day. Because of this, dinner is very late and we decided to follow the tradition and only sat down to eat at close to 22.30. We had a great meal and went back to the hostel for some drinks. There was a large Australian group that had arrived earlier that day that we got talking to Andrew and Joey who ended up coming out with us later. We went to a place call "Wilkenny's Irish pub" which was, when we went inside, a packed dance floor playing deep house music. A very big surprise, but a lot of fun in the end. We got back to the hostel at close to 4 in the morning and hit the sack.

Rome's birthday was the next day so we decided to take it easy in the morning so that she could chat to family and friends on the phone and internet. We later said our farewell to Jeff and Ramona after a great week of travelling and went out for a bite to eat for brunch. Later that day we went up to Bariloche's best viewpoint (a panoramic view of the surroundings) and enjoyed a slow afternoon together. That evening we had a big poker game with 10 of us playing! 6 Americans, 2 Australians and the 2 South Africans. I came 2nd which got us a little bit of spending money for the next day.`

The 11th was a travel day and we arrived in Osorno (Chile) after a 5 hour bus ride. We then bought a bus ticket to Pucon from there which left at 15.47. We finally arrived in Pucon at 19.30 or so which left enough light in the sky to see the majestic volcano overlooking the town. It's still an active volcano and last erupted sometime during the 80's. Pucon itself is only 250m above sea level and the top of the Volcano is 2500m above sea level. There is smoke that continually comes out of it's crater and it is permanently covered in thick snow. We found ourselves a nice little hostel close to the bus station and booked ourselves in for 2 nights. At this point, Rome started to feel really fluey and congested so she unfortunately could not book herself onto the Volcano trek the next day. The 12th was meant to be a sunny day and rain from then onwards which meant that it was best opportunity to climb. I booked myself onto the trek that night and had to be up at 6 the next morning to try on the gear before our day on the mountain.

There were 4 of us from the hostel. An Australian couple Tony and Anita, a young German guy Michael and myself. We met our guide Victor and were kitted out with Waterproof mountain trekking boots, metal sharp clamps for the bottom of the shoes (for walking on hard ice), straps for our ankles, waterproof pants, waterproof jackets and helmets. We were also given Ice axes which were really useful for the up-hills.

The morning itself was very over cast from Pucon, but the clouds were sitting below the volcano base which meant that our climb was above the clouds for the day. We drove +-800m upwards to the base of the Volcano which meant that we had a 1.6km vertical ascent ahead of us. We started right away and the first hour and a half or so was reasonably easy.

Like I said, the volcano is covered in snow which makes the walking quite difficult and straining on the legs. We zig-zagged up the volcano face which is done for 2 reasons: 1) to make the angle of the climb a little easier and 2) so that there is always a higher point on the left or right-hand side of your body to plant your ice-axe into. Every now and the we would take a break and take-in some food and water aswell as admire the view. Because it was an over-cast day and we were above the clouds, the views were nothing short of spectacular. There was a bed of cloud stretching for miles in every direction and the peaks of other volcanoes and mountains of the Andes stuck out through the clouds. The day was warm enough to be walking around in T-shirts so we took off our gear and spent the first half walking with little covering-up.

After the first half, the walk got very challenging and we had another 1km to still ascend. The path became very steep and at some points was probably close to an angle of 60 degrees! The further up we went, the colder it became aswell as the air becoming thinner. We finally got to the crater after five and a half hours walking and celebrated our accomplishment! The view was spectacular and the crater itself was spewing out smoke. The crater runs a circumference of around 500m and the rocks inside are covered in yellow and red stains from the sulphur deposits left behind. We spent 45 mins on the top and then began our descent which was fun as hell! There are smoothed-out paths in the snow and we wore pads on our behinds to slide down them. We went down feet first while lifting our feet up so that only our bums were touching the snow and slid down the steep parts of the Volcano. Some of the sliding was 200/300m at a time! The descent took 2 hours in total and by the end of all the sliding and playing in the snow, even the waterproof clothing didn't help us not get wet. Our clothes were soaked and we went straight back home to warm up and shower.

Definitely an awesome day out, but not nice for me not to have shared it with Rome. I'm sure though that there will be tons of other adventures waiting ahead that we will experience together!