Puttering in Bariloche

Today we didn’t do anything special. We just puttered around and eventually went and visited a museum on the history of chocolate. It was interesting because the tour was in Spanish so I had to listen very closely – good practice!  What worked better, was trying to read the signs in Spanish, much of which I could actually understand though it took time for me to read them.

After the chocolate museum, we had to stop for another pint at the Berlina Ceveceria which turned out to be very nice and relaxing and we finished up the day by having a quiche at home for dinner that we had bought at the Todo (grocery store, ‘todo’ means ‘all’).




Wholly giant pot of chocolate!




Our tour guide. I did understand some of what she said.




This sign talked about how chocolate was only the privy of the royals and elite.




The Ancient tools for making kakawa




Early versions of chocolate were consumed as a drink.




A life size chocolate penguin. There was a whole group of them.




They do make some beautiful chocolate here.




Cool lights!




This thing was just pretty.




Brooke getting some nice chocolates.




Me at the brewery again.




My pint.

We used our kitchen  a lot to make dinners.




Supper time!




If they cut back the trees we would have had an even better view.




Making blogs…..




Dead soldiers.

Rafting in Bariloche

There’s not much to write about for the rafting but there’s lots of pictures. It was a long drive there and back, roughly 2.5 hours each way, and it was uncomfortable due to the gravel roads and the dust. We did have a fun little breakfast before rafting at the lodge that they have built for this rafting company to store it’s equipment and have a place for breakfast and lunch for the guests. We got to meet some of the people from our boat at breakfast and then we outfitted ourselves with wetsuits, helmets, and life jackets and loaded back in the van and headed up to the rafting drop off site. The guides gave us a run through on the commands and what he needed us to do to keep the boat in position. Brooke and I paddled right next to each other and our paddling was enjoyably very synchronous – if you are out of time it is horrible because you hit paddles.  The waters are rough but totally fun. You would be hard pressed to get hurt here unless you couldn’t swim. In fact, I went over the edge of the boat twice while we were trying to attempt a little stunt that the guide was having us do for fun. The second time I went over, I went right under the boat. But I didn’t lose a paddle, I held it the whole time!!!! Falling out of the boat twice was my comical contribution to the adventure.

If you get a chance to go rafting someday, I suggest you give it a try. It was a blast, more than either Brooke or I expected and we had a great day doing it.

This is a prettty cool sequence of our first attempt at finding the ‘hole’


We actually made it out in one piece!




Then, we paddled into the hole again to try and surf the wave:



The same run from a different angle

We made two attempts at this and I got washed out of the boat twice!!!!!