Jannis & Martine

We are going to leave Bariloche tomorrow, so here are some general impressions…

First of all, we only had planned to stay here for a couple of days as this area is supposed to be something you should not miss, but is also THE place where all of Argentinia´s rich go on a holiday. So, as we thought it would be very expensive to stay here, the plan was to have a quick look around in Bariloche and then move up north.

This all changed when we arrived in Bariloche and noticed that the hostels over here are not too expensive (at least no El Calafate/Ushuaia-like prices) and are of very good quality, with a very nice staff, good big kitchens and even offer great views on the mountians.

One of the other things that makes Bariloche great, is the hiking in the mountains around here, but Martine will go more into this subject in the next post.

The other thing which makes Bariloche a great place to stay is the food. As across the border in Chili, lots of Germans have moved here, but the good thing here is that it there are not only Germans and Spanjards here. Lots of Italian people live here too. And this you immidiately notice after you arrive from Chili in the…

…food & drinks.

I have never had any better icecream than here, there are Swiss/German-chocolate shops everywhere and I again had some really good coffee here.

But the best food experience we had was when we went out for dinner, the night before we were going on our 2-day mountain hike. We first only wanted to eat a little bit in a tiny restaurant which serves only very small dishes, as it is a sort of a Tapas-restaurant but with non-Spanish dishes, such as curry and lasagna. After having a taste of a marvellous and very difficult to prepare risoto-lasagna, we ended up ordering more than six dishes. This really was the best place where we have eaten in the past 5 months.

To make things better, there are not only great hostels here, great food and great outdoor activities, but Bariloche also seems to be the place where all the nice and interesting travellers end up.

The first day we met Fernando and Gulaya, an American couple, who asked us to come along on a horse riding tour, which we did, but only after they had moved over to our new hostel with its Hilton-like views on the mountains. In return we invited them on a biking trip through the mountains and made them a typical Dutch dinner:

´hutspot´…

They returned that favour by preparing a delicious trout&salad-dish, so we offered them a free place to stay if they visit Holland during their 1-year round the world trip, as we still owed them after they had prepared us such a delicious meal…

As said, Martine will tell much more about our activities here in the next post, but in the meantime you can check Fernando´s and Gulaya´s blogsite for the things we have done with them, including lots of pictures. See the Page (see the upper right corner of this website) with the title Sites from people we know for a link to their blogsite.

Another interesting person we met was Jonathan Human who is travelling around for a couple of weeks.

Jonathan is not only a very good & creative cook (he made too much salad & desert yesterday, so we had some) and a gifted musician, but he also has some very original ideas. He, for example, changed his surname to ´Human´ after having gone trough an indian-ritual-thing a couple of years ago. Check out his websites for more on the Page (see the upper right corner of this website) with the title Sites from people we know.

After having seen & done great things here and met some great people, we will move up north to San Martin tomorrow and than cross the border to Chili,

to change country again.

Jannis.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009 at 7:28 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.