At last check, we weren't sure if we were going to be staying in Bariloche or leaving. Well as the top line of this blog suggests, we ended up staying... although arriving at that decision did take the whole morning.
However, fresh and boisterous for some sights and sounds, we returned our rental car and hopped on a 2 hour bus to El Bolson - a small Lake District town about 90km south of Bariloche, renouned as Argentina's hippy hotspot. In particular, Thursdays marked the town's artesenal market - drawn to our attention (as usual) by the LPG and given an endorsement of sorts ("erm, well it is nice... you can walk around for a while... it's nice") by the cool reception lady in the Marcopolloinn Hostel in Bariloche.
The prospect of some hippy-based banter excited us, however, and the spectacular Lake District scenery on the drive south provided an excellent backdrop for some more Dean-Anna quality time (which, among other insights of varying depth, featured my damning analysis of us males as a gender). El Bolson is as scenic as its descriptions depict - surrounded in every direction by mountains, small buildings fan away from a central area with a classic mountain village church and an artificial lake. Google Images threw up this photo to give a bit of a visual jist*:
The market was surprisingly big, arcing all the way around the artificial lake and full of stalls selling the usual mix of souvenirs, local arts and crafts, speciality foods, jams and sweets and some excellent local artesenal beer. The stuff was all pretty cool, and the stalls were indeed run by hippies, but given we were about half way though our South American travels we were always unlikely to be buying in bulk. Anna - her unique "way with words" a never-ending source of entertainment - summed up the issue nicely - "I wish I had a house - then I'd be able to buy things. I'd buy jam and a drum".
However, being bigger than expected didn't hide from the fact that it was still covered head to toe in about 20 minutes, leaving us 3 hours to kill before our bus back to Bariloche.
Ever the explorers, we went for a random walk away from the town centre and down a few residential streets a few blocks away, but ultimately ended up lying on the grass by the lake, recounting our adventures since we joined forces so that Anna could retrospectively write her diary. It was while we were here that we decided to invest in waffles.
El Bolson Waffles may or may not be a local institution - their proudly displayed website address on their logo (see above) certainly adds some credence to the suggestion. Whether or not they are is, for our purposes at least, totally beside the point - of relevance to us is the fact that they made one hell of a waffle. A good 5 inches by 5 inches in size, half was covered in chocolate, half in dulce de leche, and the whole lot then covered in raspberries with a load of whipped cream on top. Your imagination probably won't do it justice - although an excellent photo of Anna's first bite probably does!
The bus back to Bariloche got us home in time for another free dinner, and our mutual failure to wake up at 7am this morning has meant we shall not be catching the 8am trans-Andean bus to Chile - instead we are settling for the 1pm version. We'll be back, but for now it's goodbye Argentina!
* Apparently my memory card has a virus on it that, while leaving the photos intact, prevents me being able to get them onto a computer without doing a long-winded job with USB cables. So all those *amazing* photos I keep talking about are going to have to remain figments of your collective imagination for a while longer.
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Your "Damning analysis of us males as a gender"?!? - you better watch yourself Dean, there is such a thing as growing a vagina, and i hear too much time mincing about in SA (and in predominantly female company) can cause it.
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