After 2 days of travelling along Ruta 40 in Argentinian Patagonia (with an over night stop on the way) we finally arrived in Bariloche! We instantly loved the town. It is a ski resort in the winter so felt very similar to being in a town in the Alps and it is right next to a massive lake. Our first night there we treated ourselves to some expensive (by South American standards) steaks, which were INCREDIBLE!! Best steak I've ever eaten! As many people keep pointing out, I have a habit of saying this about everything I eat but on this occasion it literally was the best steak I've ever had!

The next day we hired some mountain bikes and cycled around the hills near Bariloche which was hard work and I can honestly say that whilst the others enjoyed it, I have no desire to do it again! It was also raining which didn't make things better. The light at the end of the tunnel was in the form of a local brewery which was about three quarters of the way round. I really enjoyed the last part of the route.

The next day we decided to do nothing but eat and drink as we had been so busy! Two of the guys we were with decided to do a skydive over the lake, which sounded brilliant, however we decided not to do this as it was expensive and we have both done it in New Zealand.

Bariloche has some really good little shops and restaurants and were happy just wandering around all day.

The next stop was Pucon in Chile and although the journey was only 6 hours, an hour and a half was spent at the border crossing (which we have since learnt is nothing compared to the 9 hours a lady we met had to wait). The Chilean border crossings are very strict and I remember this all too well from crossing into Chile from Bolivia 5 years ago. All the bags were taken off the bus and a sniffer dog ran all over them and then went crazy when it got to mine. I had bought this thing which had bits of lavender in it and got it taken off me. Thankfully they didn't fine me!

We arrived in Pucon very late but just in time for the guy at our hostel to give us a briefing on the volcano climb we were going to do the next morning. Volcan Villarrica is just 15km from Pucon and as such there are loads of volcano evacuation signs all over the town. It is 2840km high and because we've done so much trekking and mountain climbing in the last 6 months, this height didn't seem too tough. We were wrong. It took us 4 and a half hours of constant steep uphill climbing to get to the summit. The first two hours were over rocky ground and the last two and a half were over snow. This part was harder as it was really slippery at points and we were only given a pickaxe for stability. The views into the volcano were pretty cool, unfortunately there was no lava visible (which there had been a year previously) but there was a lot of sulphurous smoke coming out of it. The next part was one of the highlights of our whole Patagonia trip. We had been given our snow gear and a sledge to carry up the mountain and we slid down the snowy part of the mountain (the bit that had taken 2 and a half hours to climb) through man made tunnels - similar to a luge. This was so so much fun! We have some videos and will try and get this onto the blog! After this we managed to get down the mountain really quickly and it was only an hour and a half from top to bottom.

The next day was our final day before heading back to Santiago. We explored Pucon, which was probably our favourite town we had been to along with El Chalten in Argentina. Pucon is also next to a massive lake and the weather was great while we were there - this was the first place we didn't have to wear a jacket. As with Bariloche, lots of great restaurants and bars and we all really wished we could have stayed longer here. We had food and drinks with everyone staying in our hostel before getting on the night bus back to Santiago.

We moved into our new apartment with two of our friends and got ready for Nick coming to visit us.... More soon!