Bariloche...The Switzerland of the South

The view from our hostel
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Well having not been to Switzerland I wasn't sure what to expect of "The Switzerland of the South" but can only assume from our experience in Bariloche that it is full of wooden buildings, pretentious, expensive and full of Argentinean holiday makers.

Well our opinion may be slightly jaded by the fact that after a 23 hour bus ride we then had to walk around for two hours with our packs trying to find a place to stay (our no planning ahead policy just doesn't work in the south of Argentina during summer holidays).  Ended up having to book into a hotel at a price twice what we have paid anywhere else previously and it wasn't even that good!

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Can't say the place is all that bad really, just not a great place for lazy, unplanning backpackers on a budget.  The town itself is quite spectacularly set on a blue lake with snow capped mountains surrounding it.....and it's famous for it's chocolate which went down very well with both of us, probably more so with Jo though.

Spent the first day wandering around town and a had a pretty good steak dinner then decided while we were blowing our budget we may as well do it properly by getting desert, which consisted of a mountain of chocolate ice cream with walnuts, whipped cream, peaches, chocolate mouse and chocolate liqueur all held up by load bearing wafers...best we've ever had and between us we've knocked down a few deserts in our time.  I think we were rolled out of the restaurant around 10pm.

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Next day we got around to the business part of the trip, the inspection of the chocolate factory...everything seemed to be in good order so bought a heap of chocolate and headed back to the hostel and ate it.  Next day boarded our bus to Rio Gallegos the suspension was making some funny noises as we got on..not sure why.