Bariloche to Pucon

We left Bariloche around 8 am on Easter Day: 4.8 degrees!!!!!!!!The days are nice and hot but the nights are really cold, and it is not even winter yet…

On day 2 in Bariloche we went for a walk in the woods and then spent the afternoon in a SPA place with pool and sauna and had a massage. Managed to get back home just before 9 pm to collect our laundry and then got back to the Rincon Patagonico Restaurant for a second meal (located at km 14 in Bariloche - the campsite is at km 13 - all locations are identified as per their km distance from town). We ate there the first night we arrived and the place is really worth it. A huge building built with shiny huge wood trunks offering delicious food and parrilla.

See www.rinconpatagonico.com

We went back there and had the same grilled provoleta especial – grilled cheese with a mushroom delicious sauce – and lomo con champiñones – beef fillet with a mushroom sauce again and squash mash. We then indulged in a £5 dessert (this is as much as a main course, my heart was bleeding but Gregory didn’t want to have none of it), we could not even finish it between the two of us!!! Very nice, but then we had to face the cold tent and sleeping bags, of which one of the zips has broken and we can no longer shut… thank goodness we only have another 3 nights camping to go with it!!! From Santiago onwards it will be hotels or cabañas of some sort, so we will dispose of the broken bulky sleeping bags altogether, and we are counting down!!!

The 10-hour journey to Pucon was good. We chose the 7-lakes route – much longer and winding but panoramic – however nothing comparable to either the lakes at Torres del Paine or the General Carrera. Pine trees and dark blue lakes everywhere and lots of mountains. The best view was at the border with Chile, with the Villarica volcano and fabulous monkey trees all around it. We stopped for a few pictures there and then got into Pucon at around 7 pm, just in line with the usual trend to get to places and plant the tent just after the sun has gone down and it is pitch black and you cannot see what you are doing. This method has ensured that everybody on the truck has lost at least one piece of equipment along the way – pegs, tool bags, dividers for the rain, you name it. The dividers for the rain are a popular bit to lose, since they are tiny and they easily fall off onto the ground if one is not careful when dismantling the tent. Gregory and I have lost at least 3 of them – sometimes finding them back the next night though, hidden somewhere inside of the layers. On the first night with the new truck we lost the pegs bag, which flew away when we rough-camped ON THE SHORE of the Magellan Strait with gale force +++.

Anyways, first day in Pucon and it is POURING DOWN. Thankfully we have managed to find and put the 2 rain dividers in place in the tent this time round, otherwise we would have been floating in the campsite by now...
We cannot even complain because it has not rained once in these whole 3 weeks, and the west side of the Andes is notorious for its rainfall. Because it is raining, the volcano trip has been cancelled (Gregory and myself were not doing it anyways, £40 to go up a volcano????), so we are thinking of having another SPA afternoon since Pucon is famous for its TERMAS – this is a region full of volcanoes so there are a lot of thermal hot springs to enjoy. Or we might just laze around in some cafe´and do Internet stuff, which we have not had much time to do while on this holiday. One might think that we spend our day doing our blogger, but in fact we are constantly rushing through it.

I have found a way to reduce photos to a very small format so we should have solved our photographic space problem:

Lake view in Bariloche

Dawn in Bariloche - 4.8 degrees...

In the truck after we left Bariloche

Volcano Villarica from the truck

At the border onto Chile