Leaving Argentina
Today we left Bariloche and went back into Chile. We bussed to Puerto Montt then bought a return trip to Castro on the island of Chiloé.
Chiloé
After we got off the bus we went to find our hostel, Torre de Babel. The internet was down at Hostel Achalay so we couldn’t get the address of the hostel. Early in the morning I managed to connect and screenshot the map from my Hostelworld… bad idea. We walked to the map marker and couldn’t find the hostel. We walked to the next block just in case it was there… nope. We figured the best thing would be to go back to the bus station and try and call them.
On our way back I figured it couldn’t hurt to whip out my iPhone and see if I could pick up an open wifi connection and bingo! I found one almost straight away and a quick Google search brought up the correct address. Hooray for iPhones and people who don’t protect their wifi connections!
Short memories
I had been holding off eating any seafood because Chiloé was supposed to be THE place to eat it but the restaurant we went to didn’t really have it on the menu. So I ordered the salmon with papas fritas and Kat (who wasn’t that hungry) got the chorrillana. When they came out her face was photo-worthy. The gigantic portions had clearly slipped our minds and she was faced with a pile of deep fried deliciousness: fries oiled with scrambled eggs, onions and beef. Oh, and a few strips of pepper.
167 days ago
Bad habits
Because we’d stayed in Bariloche for so long we only had three full days in Chiloé but our lazy days in Bariloche had turned us into lazy tourists. I ended up getting up at midday (I’d taken an antihistamine yesterday and it made me drowsy as hell) just trying to catch up on sleep.
Luis, the owner of the hostel, had showed us a few places to eat on a map so we went to try and find food but at the wrong time of day so everything was closing up. So we checked out the cafe he recommended and it was great (bar the smokers inside). I had a choose-your-own-filling focaccia and a bitter hot chocolate followed by a semi-bitter hot chocolate topped with cream.
Shopping!
We walked around Castro for a bit and came across some markets where we made a few purchases.
The first market was a big room with women sitting knitting behind giant tables covered with knitted clothing. We stopped and looked at all the headbands and hats and Kat found an earflap hat that she thought about buying. We doubled back to find the headbands again, I found a funky, brown, handknitted headband and Kat found a brightly coloured one. Having thought about it Kat went back and bought the earflap hat. Success!
A bit further on we found more stalls and I bought three sets of earrings (for the beads) and Kat bought two Chiloé myth books and a pair of green earrings which made her feel girly again. One final stop to buy a pretty green alpaca jumper for Kat and we were done.
Walking back to the hostel we saw some palafitos which are houses on stilts over the water. Seeing them from the street side wasn’t too exciting as they looked like normal houses until you peeked in between the houses and realised that, oh shit, they’re hanging over the water!
Mariscos
Tonight was the night that I was going to get my mariscos! We caught up with Stephanie, an Aussie girl from the hostel, and went in search of seafood. We ended up at El Embrujo which was a little pricier than usual but it smelt good!
I ordered the Tabla Embrujo Caliente which was a selection of five different mariscos and two lots of cheesy crab.
It definitely wasn’t the greatest seafood I’ve had before and it was very salty. This is what you get for being spoiled in New Zealand by awesome fresh seafood! The problem with Chile is there are posters everywhere warning you not to eat raw seafood, it must be cooked for five minutes, no cerviche… So I couldn’t even try the fresh oysters to see how they compare to Bluff oysters.
167 days ago
boozing in Bariloche
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!!!
168 days ago
making more new friends
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.
168 days ago
reggaeton!
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.
169 days ago
the lurgy
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.
170 days ago
kicking and screaming class
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!
171 days ago
I’m on a boat!
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!
172 days ago
Cerro Campanario & Circuito Chico
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.
173 days ago
mexican food and ice cream
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!
174 days ago
