Last night we (me, Kat, Jelle, JP and Vanessa) head to Antares for a
nice sit down drink then we lost Kat to a warm bed and went to Konna
then Malabar where we found the basement after way too long.

Vanessa’s throat was playing up so we went back upstairs and got to
watch two people trying to lick each others face off in the corner,
and not in the food way. Blurgh.

Just when you think I’m too old to be having late nights it’s 5am and
we’re chatting in the hostel kitchen.

Then when I finally head up to bed I opened the door to the dorm to
find the guy from the bunk above mine standing in the doorway, “Oh
shit!” I whispered. And then he shushed me! No, “I’m sorry for scaring
you”… no, he fricken shushed me! Annoying!!!

Last night I stayed up chatting to a Dutch guy (whose name I now know to be Jelle) until 2-ish and this morning I met a couple from French Canada. Jelle ended up heading to Rapanui in search of good coffee and Kat, JP and I ended up following him there leaving Vanessa at the hostel to recover from sickness.

This time I passed on the ice cream and opted for a frappuccino which
was less sweet but still tasty.

Tonight we had yet another asado. Sadly I had another disappointing
piece of meat so didn’t finish it all but we went out for drinks which
made it all the more fun.

Most of today was spent in bed trying to feel better before our
stretching class and reggaeton class. It worked though coz I made it
to both and man am I glad I did! Reggaeton was so much fun even if I
kept mucking all the moves up, haha.

What a day to be ill. After heading out last night for a happy hour
beer – who has happy hour from midnight to 1am?! – I came back and
went to bed. And woke up ill. It feels like what I had almost exactly
a year ago in Malaysia so I’m hoping it’s a 24 hour thing. And of
course I didn’t want to miss out on Body Combat so I went along and
just took it easy. I told Charly beforehand that I wasn’t feeling well
so he didn’t go too hard on me.

The best thing we could’ve done today we did. We went to a Body Combat class and decided to extend our stay here until the 9th.

The class was just as I remembered and the instructor, Charly, was
awesome. He even asked if we preferred the class in English or
Spanish. Spanish was fine with me and I kept up just fine. When I said
I was from New Zealand he did the “we’re not worthy” motion… gotta
love Les Mills classes being made in NZ!

Tourist-y things always seem to have us dragging our sleepy butts out
of bed at ridiculous hours of the morning. Yesterday was a 7am alarm… it turns out that both me and Kat were playing snooze chicken with each other without even realising it. We eventually woke up and got ready to catch our bus to the port.

The lakes

Setting off from Puerto Pañuelo we boarded the catamaran through Lago
Nahuel Huapi. It was cold and windy outside but nice and toasty
inside. The boat trip was only about an hour and a half and we docked
in Puerto Blest.

Lago Frías

We had the option to take a boat trip out to Lago Frías for $80 but we
passed on that and opted to walk the 3km to get there.

Whereas Lago Nahuel Huapi was really blue, Lago Frías was really green.

We head back and got a hot chocolate from the restaurant and it was
pretty much time to get back on the boat (after taking a few photos,
of course).

Back to Bariloche

The trip back was actually warm and not windy at all. We sat outside
for the majority of the time which was nice except for the people
insisting on holding up pieces of bread and crackers for the seagulls
to eat. I’m surprised we didn’t get pooped on… ick, birds.

Empanadas

We got back to the hostel in plenty of time to help Pablo make empanadas.

We made two types: one with cheese, tomato and oregano and one with
MEAT! The meat one had minced beef, garlic, onions, tomatoes, olives,
spring onions, hard boiled egg… I think that’s it.

In between the preparation we played with Emma who is still so smiley
which always helps you feel less like a monster when you deal with
babies!

Flor came in to show us the intricate art of folding the empanadas up.
Just when I thought I was going okay with it Tom (an Aussie guy who is
here with his girlfriend) came in and completely kicked my ass. His
empanadas were SO pretty!!

After they were baked we tucked into them with some wine and got
really full and nicely happy.

Of course I brought up “You Don’t Mess With The Zohan” and asked the
Israeli guy if he’d seen it. And then we proceeded to reenact the
whole movie for Kat.

Then we went back to Konna for some drinks and found a dog under our
table. I can now tell you that if you are a little tipsy and you are
speaking to a guy who speaks Hebrew as a first language and you have
“You Don’t Mess With The Zohan” fresh in your mind you start laughing
at him and to question him about whether he’s putting the accent on or
not… he wasn’t. Oops!

Today we took a break from the eating and took a bus out to Cerro
Campanario and walked the 30 minutes to the top as opposed to getting
the $50 chairlift up. Pablo had warned us it was steep… it was
steep.

I’m not usually one for pretty scenery but it was amazing once we got
to the top. Just looking out at the lakes made me wish I’d done the
parapente today.

Luring small children

We sat eating our healthy lunch of crackers and gomitas when a small
child and his dad came to take photos of the view. We felt so bad for
the dad because he positioned the kid (who was about three years old)
in front of the gorgeous view, went back to take a photo and the kid
just starts pointing at me and my bag of lollies. I held the bag out
to offer him some and felt a little bit like a predator luring small
children with a bag of sweets. He toddled over and I gave him some
lollies to which he said, “Gracias!” So cute!

The hills are alive, with the sound of… meowing

For some reason on the walk down we started singing “Trouble” (one of
the many theme tunes for this trip) then we got on to meowing out
various songs from the Sound Of Music.

Last night the Israeli guy we had drinks with caught us meowing the
Sound Of Music in our room and I tried to explain by saying, “Oh, we
were just singing songs from the Sound Of Music as cats.” He replied
with, “Yeah, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Sounded about
right.

Pro tip: don’t try and negotiate a steep, downhill, sand-covered track
while pissing yourself singing songs from the Sound Of Music as cats.
You will most likely trip and near-injure yourself.

Note: I’m 99.9% sure that Kat and I are the only people who found this amusing!

It’s an easy ride

We walked the 800m to the bike rental place and got shown the route,
signed some forms and got fitted with an orange reflector, helmet and
bike.

Kat’s been wanting to practise her Spanish more so we got the guy to
do it all in Spanish. Thanks to context I got most of what was going
on. Anything I missed I knew Kat could fill me in on later.

We set off on a ride that was meant to be easy bar a small uphill
section. It wasn’t easy.

We ended up walking uphill a lot and I’m sure my legs will be dead
tomorrow. Due to the uphill there was also a lot of downhill. After
seeing a horrifying bike accident on Nat Geo last night I rode the
back brakes the whole way down!

We decided to drop the bikes off 7km short of the end (which was an
option). Apparently the last 7km of the 27km route was uber packed
with traffic so we decided that living was a more attractive option -
heading back on the bus we saw that it was really bus and with no bike
lane we knew the drop off was a good option!

It was only an extra $15 to drop the bike off there and we got a 20%
discount at the start anyway so all in all we spent $95 on the bikes.

Food!

Back at the hostel we cooked up our veges which had sat waiting for us
and then caught up on some geeky stuff. Pablo popped his head into our
room and asked how we’d feel about helping make empanadas tomorrow and
then having an asado the day after… ah, it sounds awesome!!!
Argentina just keeps getting better and better.

After going to bed at 2-ish I stupidly woke up at 8:30am.

After just fruit for breakfast we went to a place for lunch that
boasted “Authentic Mexican food”… sure… we’ll see if that pans
out. It didn’t.
What the restaurant did provide was two awesome walls in front of
which we took some posey photos which now serve as our Facebook
profile pics.

The saving grace to our meal was the dessert: apple crumble with
cinnamon ice cream. Drool.

Rapanui – take two

At 18:30 we head out again to Rapanui and got a waffle basket each
containing three scoops of ice cream. I had lemon meringue pie, triple
tenacion and chocolate with dulce de leche and meringue.

We had planned on having our yummy veges for dinner but after three
scoops of ice cream in a waffle bowl topped with chocolate sauce and a waffle heart… you just don’t feel like eating. So we’ve been sitting
in the common areas with our noses in our laptop/iPhone in an attempt
to be social. So far the most social I’ve been is cuddling Emma, the
baby, for a few minutes. And now it’s time for bed!