The nice man on the bus had forced us into taking extra sandwiches so we had some of them for tea. As we walked round Bariloche, after we had checked into our nice hostel, we very quickly found ourselves in one of the numerous chocolate shops and dutifully bought some to supplement our dinner. Here we also found a large proportion of the tourists in Bariloche - it was rammed!

We had a very thorough and helpful introduction at the hostel from a woman who could speak five languages fluently. Our room was one of the best we've had with nice decoration and furniture, comfy bed and plenty of places to put all our things.

The next day we spent lots of time doing some jobs and planning some more of the trip. We went back to the bus station and booked three expensive long distance buses, which took a while to do. At one office the man was very confused that we were wanting to buy tickets to leave from another town a lot further south so it took a while to get him to understand. He thought that we thought we were already in Rio Gallegos in the south! Still he was very nice and we got there eventually. It also meant we converted a huge wad of pesos that we'd been carrying around into small bus tickets. We spent some time booking accommodation so by the end of our few days in Bariloche we had all our accommodation booked until the end of the trip. Simon also had a sort of pre-job interview over Skype and found out he has an interview with a different company after we get back to Bristol. We also got up to date with the blogs after our busy week with the car.

The highlight of the day was getting my photo taken with some St. Bernard dogs. Every day there were several of them in the plaza available for photos (I don't think they do mountain rescue anymore, it's easier work having your photo taken) and we stopped by several times over the few days to look at them. I sat on a wall for a photo with the two month old on my lap chewing my arm and the 11 month old posing next to me for a not small sum of money. Simon was lucky I didn't run off with the really cute small one.

Another highlight was our first trip to the amazing ice cream shop where we got a quarter of a kilo in three delicious flavours. This and some sausage sandwiches from a man with a small cart in the park served as a nutritious lunch. We made up for this by later cooking a healthy veg sauce with gnocchi for dinner, washed down with a Patagonian wine.

We can't sustain this increased calorie intake without doing a bit of exercise so the next day we got out of Bariloche to see some of the Nahuel Huapi national park that Bariloche is a part of. We took the bus about 45 minutes out of town and began our walk through the woods, occasionally popping out for views of various lakes with high peaks behind. We didn't see many people at the start but later in the afternoon we came across more and more people. Around a small lake in the trail we could hear woodpeckers so it was exciting when we found some people looking at one in the trees. One had a bright red head and two others had lovely Mohican hairstyles.

Around lunch time we came to a really beautiful viewpoint looking out across a large lake so ate our lunch there pretty much undisturbed. The last stage of the walk was up Cerro (hill) Llao Llao which was a bit of a steep slog at times but when we popped out at the first viewpoint it was all worthwhile as it was stunning. The lakes in Chile were incredible with the volcano views but I think that the Argentinian lakes beat Chile with the amount of lakes and so many high mountains and peaks all around. At the top of the hill we had an even better panorama and we could have stayed up there a lot longer had there been some shade. We dragged ourselves away from this jaw-dropper and headed down to the end of our six hour outing to get the bus back.

Back in town I heard the ice cream shop calling my name so we obligingly tried another three flavours before arriving back at the hostel for showers, internetting and yesterday's leftovers.

Our original plan for the third day had been to do a long eight hour walk but we hadn't prepared ourselves enough to get the early bus meaning we didn't have quite enough time. Instead we still went to Cerro Catedral but did a lot less walking. We took a bus to the ski village at the bottom of the mountain then caught the first cable car up from where we walked up to the top rather than taking the next chairlift. Apparently this is one of the biggest ski areas in South America. Once at the top we had very different views from the day before, across a barren rocky landscape with many peaks covered in snow or glaciers. Still very beautiful though and it would be incredible to ski there looking down on the lake. We managed to enjoy our lunch in peace before a large guided group arrived then we made our way back down to the chairlift once more and more people started to arrive. However a bonus of more people meant that one of them spotted the condor flying overhead; the first we've seen on our trip despite months spent in the Andes. We took the chairlift back down whilst looking out over the large lake that Bariloche sits by, then the cable car after that. We had some time to kill before the next bus so found a very short trail to a stream, billed as a waterfall on the map- it wasn't- then hung around until our bus. The weather had changed so we started to get a bit cold in shorts.

Back in town we suddenly found ourselves in the chocolate shop recommended as the best in town and spent a while deliberating over our selection. We managed to save half for the next day's bus journey.

That evening we went for a meal out to a gastropub where Simon sampled some microbrew beer to go with his steak and I wasn't too upset when they didn't sell wine by the glass, only by the half bottle, to go with my pizza. After this we went to a small pub just down the road from our hostel where Simon tried some more microbrew beer which he is enjoying after the limited offerings from the rest of the trip. I had a fernet and coke, a hugely popular drink in Argentina. I'd tried a bit before and thought it was ok but the large glass I had was not so pleasant: the spirit is made out of some herbal plants and was originally made to be medicine. I'll stick to the wine next time.

The next morning I had a bit of a lie-in while Simon got up and tried to shake off his hangover - more practice is needed before our inevitable pub catch-up sessions back in Bristol. We packed up our stuff, went out to buy food supplies then got the bus to the bus terminal ready for our longest bus of the whole trip: down the legendary Route 40 to the depths of Patagonia and the start of the serious hiking.

Katy