Our first real day in Bariloche! Today we drove around the Circuita Chico, or the “short loop” as they call it here. It goes into a small national park that is centered on two small mountains, all surrounded by lakes. This is the lake district in Patagonia and everywhere you go there is a lake - some big, some small. There are endless beaches and wild areas to visit. We looked up some trails on the internet and figured out where to leave the car in the park and hiked a 10km there-and-back route. The trail head is marked by a green jesus – I don’t understand why but, this is Argentina! We got on the path and felt great getting some real exercise and being out in the trees and mountains.
The Green Jesus Marks the start of the trail.
The Bamboo that is the forest floor covers the paths in it’s search for light.
We both feel that this is much like being in the interior of B.C., another argument in favour of our opinion that most of Argentina is like Alberta, if Saskatchewan were the ocean. The similarities are striking – a primarily farming and cowboy culture, an oil and gas industry, and vast plains all edged with a small stripe of mountains. In Bariloche, it is somewhat dry and yet full of trees and forest at the lower elevations around the lakes, reminding me of Kelowna. On the drive, we were able to scout a few great looking beaches not too full of people, and, to complete the adventure we visited a cerveceria (brewery) called Berlina that I had read about……on the internet. The microbrewery concept is everywhere these days, though this one was established 15 years ago which makes it pretty early to the microbrewing scene.
http://www.cervezaberlina.com/brewhouse/en/cervezas.html
Or
http://www.cervezaberlina.com/cerveza/index.html
Brooke is smiling. What she doesn’t realize is this is just the start of my beer quest.
This pizza was wicked.
Getting back we weren’t too full of energy and were musing about going for dinner again in the hotel but not too enthused about it. So we jumped in the car and started driving along the lakeside road that goes away from the town of Bariloche and toward the national park we had come from a few hours earlier. The road is a continuous stretch of hotels, cottages and restaurants almost uninterrupted for 25 kilometers. We eventually spied a restaurant that looked appealing from the outside and decided to park and take a look inside. It looked expensive but pretty nice. They asked if we had a reservation for which we didn’t but that was fine and we were lead to a casual area with a small gift shop for a complementary starter drink. It was actually a very nice way to start the dinner. We perused the merchandise briefly without any coercion to buy anything, in fact, I don’t think anyone even spoke to us. We wandered into the back area of the restaurant area where they had a large fire going in a living room like space along with a pig roasting near the fire! It was a wonderful room that I wish I could repeat at home, though we don’t have the space unfortunately! The restaurant’s claim to fame is that Bill Clinton ate there on his visit to the area. Imagine how many thousands of restaurants claim those kind of things all over the world! Anyway, the dinner was very good and we finished up a great day in Bariloche.
Brooke had a nice fish for dinner.
I love this wine storage!
It was really cool how they mixed the stone and wood to make this bar.
That is a pig roasting in front of the fire.
I want to build a fireplace like this someday. It was awesome.
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