Bariloche - Argentinian Lake District - 17th - 21st January

Sunday 17th January (My wonderful husband's birthday!)
We arrived on the bus around 10am waking up to a glorious view of the Argentinian lake District, framed by the snow capped Andes. We stayed at Hostel 1004, which was a recommendation from another backpacker we met in Rio, what a fantastic place it was! The hostel is on the 10th floor of the tallest building in Bariloche centre and looks out over the Lake Nahuel Huapi. Our room was beautiful and airy with the same spectacular view!

We spent the morning exploring the town and planning our activities for the next few days, in the afternoon took a walk along the lake and went for a birthday drink! We bought a few bottles of good (and unbelievably cheap) red wine and some tapas style nibbles for dinner and settled down in the lovely common area with several other backpackers. Later in the evening the hostel staff treated us to some live music, mainly celtic tunes and a special rendition of 'Happy Birthday' for Señor Henderson!

The next morning we headed off to hire bikes and cycle round the Ciruit Chiquito. This is a 30km loop which takes you through the Nahuel Huapi National Park, provided some great vistas of the areas en route. The circuit turned out to be fairly, no make that VERY, hilly and it wasn't long before Mrs Henderson lost her sense of humour about the whole thing! However, we had started so we would finish. It was worth it in the end though and the views, beautiful weather and wildlife soon won Lynne over. We arrived back at the hostel a bit weary but with a sense of achievement, a great opener to our Patagonian adventure. We spent the evening in the hostel exchanging stories of our day with other guests over some wine and risotto - a great end to the day.

Tuesday morning was spent hunting down some fresh local fish and practising our spanish in some of the local shops. We had arranged to go kayaking in the afternoon and were collected after lunch with the rest of the group. There were 10 of us in total on the trip accompanied by two instructors. As it was quite windy we set off from a more sheltered lake (Lake Moreno) to ease us into it. We had a two man canoe, David went in the back, taking charge of steering (probably a good idea given Lynne's sense of direction) and Lynne took the place up front. The kayaking was great fun and with the windy conditions gave us a bit of a workout! We got back quite late and enjoyed some more banter with some of the hostel guests.

On Wednesday we made our way to the 17.7km point to do a short but very steep walk up to the top of EL Campanario, a spot which is rated by National Geographic in the top ten views of the world. It was quite a tough trail up the mountain but luckily doesn't take too long and we were rewarded with a panoramic view of the beautiful crystal clear blue lakes and lagoons and mountains. We picnic-ed at the top taking in the sight for as long as possible then headed back down the trail. In the evening we bought some steaks to cook ourselves (ridiculously cheap) and of course a bottle of red wine to accompany them, delicious!

An early morning bus will take us on the next leg of our journey to Puerto Montt where we catch the three day ferry trip to Puerto Natales.