Antarctica Adventure #2 - Buenos Aires to Bariloche

Pre-Trip Adventure, Saturday, 13 December 2019

I will continue with our adventure!  So far everything is going great!!

 We woke to a beautiful day in Buenos Aires!  We slept well, but after trying to go to bed early (at least for us! - 11pm!), we were both woken with a start about midnight by multiple explosions.  Assume it was fireworks, we looked out, but didn't see anything.  We asked some others & someone saw some fireworks - we think it was from a nearby soccer stadium.  The road noise - even from on the 12th floor! - was pretty intense.  Overall we slept pretty good, though - bed was great.  Breakfast was included & was a pretty big spread.  Coffee was the regular European style - EXTREMELY STRONG & BITTER.  Did it's job though.  Loved the actual honey comb for serving the honey.

After a 2 and a half hour flight, we arrived at the Bariloche Airport to continue our pre-tour.  This town of about 100,000 is the 2nd most visited place after Buenos Aires.  Used to be known as the Switzerland of Argentina.  It is a resort area for visitors from all over the world & the Argentinians also - both for winter sports & summer mountaineering/hiking activities.  The little airport is very pretty & probably the fastest delivery of luggage we've ever seen.

 It was about a 45 minute drive from the airport to the hotel,  with a small detour through town & along the lake.  Bariloche (officially San Carlos de Bariloche) is actually in a bowl surrounded by the Andes on one side & Nahuel Huapi lake on the other.  It is inside a huge National Park of the same name as the lake.  This is called the Lakes District of Patagonia.

Panoramic view from the bar.

Maria had us walk straight through the lobby to the bar area.  OMG!  We were blown away.  This place is awesome!  Lobby is actually at street level between the 5th & 6th floors.

Then we made our way upstairs to our room on the 6th floor.  We are definitely in heaven.  This will be an incredible 4 nights!

Beautiful roses outside the home across the street - it is Spring here!

Still setting up the Christmas decorations - a maintenance man adjusts the steering mechanism on Santa's Sleigh!

Maria gave us about 20 minutes to get settled in & then we were to head out for an orientation walk.  It was a very short walk from the front of the hotel to the main part of town.   We were very amused when Maria gave us a bit of information about the white Christmas tree.  On the 10th (last week), there was a National Election here in Argentina.  Apparently the previous president was "not loved" to say the least.  He lost the election & everyone seems thrilled with his replacement.  So anyway, a statute of the previous president stood in the Square.  It is now shrouded by the white plastic forming the tree!!!!!!  Too funny.  These Argentinians have a really fun sense of humor!

Questioned the artist & she called these little guys "goblins".  Reminded me of the Gnomes from Norway & Sweden.

Matta cups - a local tea the locals drink - remember it from our previous trip to Chile.  Everyone always drinks it in these round cups with special metal straws that filter out the stems & twigs.  But these cups were just too cute!  Wish I liked Matta!

We took a walk through the local Artisan Market.  This is also apparently a haven for artists.  There were some of the cutest & most inventive knickknacks I've ever seen.  Very enjoyable.  Hope we have time to go back to buy a few little things.

So Barilochi is known for Chocolate & beer.  Tomorrow we will visit a Family operated Brewery.  Today she took us to "her" favorite Chocolate store (there were tons of them, but this one was huge - also named Rappanui like in Easter Island????).  They had every imaginable type & shape of chocolate.  Then there was a bakery/cafe AND an ice cream store!  Amazing.  This is up to par with the crazy ice cream places in Sweden. I tried to get a picture of a young family eating their confections, but there was too much glare.  They each had a full size plate covered with a waffle and that was covered with a 2" layer of ice cream with chocolate & several other types of syrup & nuts on top.  And whip cream of course.  Enough said.

More about the lake later, but did some reading & it covers more than 210 square miles & is 1394' deep.  It is 2516' above sea level & is the largest lake in the Lakes District.

First bird picture!  Southern Lapwings at the lake.

 We left the group & walked back to our hotel via the lake front road.  It was very very windy, which is common for the area.  Temp was about 65.  I realized when I was preparing for the trip, I had looked up the weather for Bariloche & didn't realize there were 2 Bariloches that showed up.  I just picked the first one I saw listed & it is a suburb of Buenos Aires.  Showed temperatures of about 95.  This Bariloche in the Rio Negro province (Argentina has Provinces not states), has temps about 65!!!!  Oops.   Actually love the cooler temps much better.

By the time we got back to the hotel, it was time to meet for dinner.  Tonight was an included dinner at the hotel.  I forgot to get any pictures, but it was pumpkin soup (yummy), a choice of pasta or chicken (George chicken & I pasta) and a lovely fresh fruit salad for dessert.  Included wine & they kept coming by & refilling our glasses!  After dinner, we went on the balcony outside the bar & took a few sunset pictures.  Had hoped to see some stars, but were too tired to leave the room to go look!  Sun sets here about 9:20pm right now.  Love that!  Early morning tomorrow, so bedtime!

Start Antarctic Adventures, Leaving Mesa

Thursday, 12 Dec 2019

Good Morning Friends!  Today I 'll start trying a new type of Travelogue!  Wish me luck.

As usual we had our annual Holiday Dance before we left.  This time we still had a few more sessions before we actually left,  but still wanted to share a few pictures.   Some of the finger foods were really inventive,  like the Santa Bellies & the Reindeer.   Attendance was good and the Blinkies were festive. 

Our sunset on Wednesday was gorgeous as usual.

Our flight out of PHX was easy & uneventful.  Landing in Dallas for the first leg was also a piece of cake.

We just recently acquired a new credit card that gives us access to all airport priority lounges, so we took advantage of The Club at DFW during our 2 hour layover.   Enjoyed our first vacation toast!

Taking off from DFW gave us phenomenal full moon view over the downtown area. Goodbye North America.

After a LONG boring 10 hour flight, I opened my window to a gorgeous view of the Andes.  The scenery continued from the dry high altitude to include glaciers, rivers, & finally Buenos Aires.   We had traveled about 4000 miles SE from DFW.

We arrived at our hotel after an hour bus ride from the International airport (immigration was miserable - took about 2 hours!).  Straight through town. We recognized some sites from before like the building with the likeness of Eva Peron.  Anyway, when we got to the hotel, Maria, our guide was there & already had us checked into the rooms, so up we went.  She gave us 45 minutes to get settled in & we were to meet her back downstairs.  Our room was AWESOME.  Fabulous view of the Obelisk meeting point for the city.  Interesting Espresso maker - Argentine version of the Kureig? 

After our short orientation walk, we headed out to buy our evening bottle of wine.  She had shown us a small local market with a great selection, bought a Malbec for about $5.  The exchange rate is quite good for us, but it's a shock because they use the regular $ sign for their pesos - so the $306 we paid looks pretty scary!  We also bought pizza & beer at a local Kentucky pizza place.  It was a promo & we both had 2 slices with some strange breadish thing on top (we both pushed it aside - Maria said it was made with Garbanzo beans?) & a beer, again the total bill was about $5!!!  We walked quite a bit - there are pedestrian areas in both directions from our hotel.

We headed back to our room for a short nap, by then it was time for our orientation meeting.  We met the other 4 girls in our pre-trip group.  Turns out George has a harem for these 6 days!  He is just thrilled (Ha Ha!).  There will be 2 other groups heading to Bariloche with us, but we don't interact with them much - Lucas has 12 folks in his group and another lady has 6 in her group.  After a short talk about our upcoming pre trip (the best part of the talk was a taste of the Hard Apple Cider that they drink to celebrate Christmas!), we hopped on a bus to go to our first included dinner.  It was in a steak house & a glass of wine was included!  Yea.  I'm beginning to sound like an alcoholic!  Tee Hee.  Maria told us that you never pass a salt shaker from person to person here.  You pass it & sit it on the table & the next person picks it up and so on.  She said it comes from the old days when salt was used as currency & if you dropped it, there could be an argument over who's fault it was.  So it's just bad to tempt fate!

 After dinner, we took a walk along a man made canal.  This area is the newest & fastest growing in Buenos Aires.  Formally an industrial area filled with closed warehouses, it is now a yuppie/touristy hangout full of fancy bars & restaurants.  Maria even timed it perfectly for us to see 3 couples tango dancing in the square as we loaded back onto our bus!  They were quite good & we certainly enjoyed the show!  Reminded us that we are in Buenos Aires!

We made it back to the hotel at dusk & enjoyed the lights as we were delivered back to our rooms.  First full day & a bit more of our vacation!  Tomorrow we fly to Patagonia!

More tomorrow!