Bariloche chocolate and back to Buenos Aires

Bariloche is Argentina's chocolate capitol.  That's pretty much all we did.  Well I guess that's a bit of an exaggeration, but we did do a lot of chocolate eating and sitting in cafes drinking mate and reading.  We later found from people that live in Argentina that you should visit Bariloche BEFORE going to Patagonia.  That way it all seems amazing and beautiful, then Patagonia does it to you again.  However, we did it in the reverse order and were slightly disappointed.  I mean you saw the last post, right?  Those places were unbelieveable.  Bariloche just couldn't stack up.  Yes the mountains and lakes were nice, but it was just underwhelming.  I guess we were a bit jaded.  The town was all cutesy in the main square with alpine architecture, log buildings, even St Bernards with barrels around their necks posing for pictures (most of them looked maltreated, so we refused over and over to have our picture with them, it was so sad to see them all dirty and the sales guy constantly yanking on their chain moving them around, they looked so tired, and one dog just peed where he was sitting.)   Bariloche seemed like it was nice in 1975.  All the buildings were a bit ragged around the edges and past their prime.  Now it's a touristy town and popular with graduating high school students.  The town is set on the edge of beautiful Lago Nahuel Huapi, but you can hardly see it because of all the tall buildings vying for a view.

Literally the chocolate was the best part.  We bought chocolate 3 of the 5 days we were there.  Mamushka and Benroth were by far the best although we visited like 8 shops. 

Mint cream, cashew, peanut butter, hazelnut, cherry, peanut, almond, orange peel, white chocolate, hot chocolate, etc etc.  We tried all those and some I'm sure I forgot to list.  We ate too much and I think we got drunk on chocolate or something.  Each day we ate chocolate we took a different picture with Mamushka's webcam kiosk.  We titled these pictures Mine!, Reverence, and Drunk.  haha

Coraleigh also bought this really nice mate gourd and bombilla from a local artisan.

One day we decided to risk renting a car again.  Haha this time I used Avis and was a little more careful with the car.  We drove into the national park Nahuel Huapi and up to Cerro Tronador and by some lakes and waterfalls.  It was, overall, a good day, but again it was a little underwhelming.  It was still better than just hanging around in Bariloche, though, so we were glad to get out.  The lakes are another different color here and they vary from dark blue to crystal clear with easy visibility to 20-30 feet deep to a light blue color.  It all depended on the depth and how the light shined on them.  It made for a good drive.  Cerro Tronador (Mt Tronador) was pretty interesting because it had glaciers sitting on top with waterfalls coming down its sides.  There was also a black glacier that we stopped at (picture below, I'm obviously not impressed).  The ice was just really dirty so it looked black.  We did a few small hikes too.

One definite cool thing were the flowers along the roads.  They were loaded with lupines and these yellow flowered bushes that looked like snapdragons.

Something else we did constantly while in Bariloche was hit the ATMs.  We needed to pay for our entire apartment's rent and damage deposit with CASH!  The ATMs here have a limit for around $200/withdrawal and about $500/day.  Let's just say I'm glad I got a debit card from Charles Schwab before we left.  I did some research and found they don't charge for international withdrawals and they refund 9 ATM fees charged by the machine per month.  If I'd used Bank of America (where I normally bank) it would have cost over $300 just in fees.  Bank of America sucks; I didn't even bring their card.

We did not wait in this ATM line...

After we finally got all the cash we needed we were ready to leave Bariloche, but not for the bus ride.  It was another long one at 25 hours.  Another one where we couldn't get the seats that lay flat.  It was really awful, but at least our dinner wasn't ham and cheese.  Lunch was, but we loaded up on medialunas (croissants) from this awesome bakery and ate those instead of the chalk sandwiches.

We finally got into Buenos Aires 25.5 hours after leaving Bariloche 1600km before.  Traffic was horrible as we arrived at 6:30pm.  We got a remise since they charge a flat rate instead of a taxi which uses a meter and went to our new apartment in Palermo.  Its only about 3 miles away, but it took 40 minutes, so we were glad we got the flat rate of 40 pesos (~$10).  We arrived at our apartment to a confused security guard that didn't speak English and didn't have our names on the roster.  Finally the bonehead from the apartment place showed up and we went upstairs to our place.  This building is literally brand new.  There are only a few units occupied in the whole place and we are the second renters of this one (before us was only a week rental).  It is on the 5th floor and is soooo nice.  Hardwood floors, a large balcony running the length of the apartment overlooking the courtyard, all modern furniture and kitchen, two bathrooms, walk-in closet, huge rooftop pool with an amazing view over the city, wifi, jacuzzi tub, etc etc.  We are paying about $50 a night.  Sure beats a hostel for the same price!

Our neighborhood is really cool and reminds me of the upper east side of Manhattan.  There are lots of restaurants and small shops selling their own designs of clothes, shoes, lamps, and art.  We haven't done a lot yet except do what we've most missed.  That is eat something we're used to.  We found SALAD DRESSING!  It was almost 10 bucks and there was only one flavor in the special import section of the store, but it was totally worth it.  It is Newman's Own light italian dressing, so its still leaning toward the oil and vinegar that you get at restaurants but it has so much more flavor.  We were pretty excited about that.  We also bought chips and salsa from the special section as well as a cheddar-like cheese.  They only seem to have watery white cheeses or super dry hard cheese here.  We also bought this powdered tomato soup packet (it tasted like the top ramen of tomato soup) and had tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch today.  We got cereal and milk too; they only had about 4 different kinds to choose from.  I got the Choco-Krispies with a weird elephant on the box.  They also had Kellogg's Zucaritas with Tony el Tigre.  haha  The milk comes in plastic bags in either 3% or skim so we had to buy a container for that.  We bought lots of things missing from the apartment like black pepper, TP, paper towels, and laundry soap.  It was all relatively cheap except for the import products; probably around half price of home.  It is so nice to be able to cook for ourselves and not have to rely on restaurants for everything.

We did some shopping for new shoes in Palermo too since both our flip-flops were falling apart.  I got some Quiksilver ones and Coraleigh got really cool Hush Puppies.  They are both nice, but were still cheaper than home even with American labels.  The malls were so packed, but I think its because of Christmas.  Although, people here shop like you wouldn't imagine.  They even offer payment plans in clothing and grocery stores.  "3 cuotas sin interes!" is posted everywhere which means 3 installments with no interest.  Crazy to buy like that, but they seem addicted.  They all wear the latest fashions just like New York or Paris.  The amount of shoe stores was insane.  People here love shoes.

We were invited out tonight to a friend's house in the suburbs.  She knew we were alone here in the city so she's bringing us to her house with her family and friends for dinner and going out on the town tonight.  The traditions aren't the same as home and apparently going out drinking is a big thing on Christmas eve.  This is my kind of country, haha.  It should be interesting.  :O)