In Barriloche I stayed in a nice cozy hostel that had an awesome common room where meeting other travelers was very easy. I met a bunch of people from Argentina and Paraguay who used the Easter holidays for a hiking vacation in Barriloche.
One of the people that I met was Luisina (Lu) who spoke really good English which made communication a lot easier. She taught me a lot about Argentina and its people and we did a lot of hikes around Barriloche together. Sadly she had bent her ankle on the first hike but she did not let that deter her from doing more hikes.
I also met Dimple, a girl from Western Australia that was also travelling around South America albeit without a car. It seems like getting around by public transport works really well down here as well. It makes bridging the long distances between places much easier if you don’t have to drive them yourself.
She brought along an English guy from Manchester that joined us on our first hike on top of Cerro Otto. After the long drive from Barreal it was quite refreshing to hang out with a bunch of other people again.
Cerro Otto
The hostel was fully booked on Tuesday of that week so I had to move to a campsite for that night – I returned to the hostel the next day. The campsite was really close to the shore where we made dinner and it was a really beautiful campsite with lots of dense trees and nice amenities.
The next day, I spent in a café in Barriloche and did some planning and finance related bookkeeping. In Argentina I spend way less money than I predicted which gives me a good buffer for any future expenses and makes me worry about my financial situation way less.
Cerro Goyo
Lu and I went on another trek. We got along quite well and hiking alone isn’t always the most exciting so we started this one together.
The view from the top was great but the alternative way down was really exhausting. It was really steep and rocky and I lost the trail 3 times. Without GPS I would have been very lost. I was very happy when I was back at the car.
Circuito Chico
There is a peninsula not far from Barriloche that has a nice view and is part of a larger road circle that you can explore by bike with multiple smaller lakes and adjacent nature reserves. We went out there planning on renting a kayak and doing some boating but the wind was too strong so we just explored a little on foot.
Another foodtruck (the Bruncheria) had great coffee and Alfrajores. Alfajores are an Argentinian specialty pastry. It is like an Oreo but much denser and very sweet.
In the town
At the hostel – through Lu – I met some other travelers. They were mostly from Argentina but some were from Paraguay. We made Pizza, played Uno, ping pong and Jenga, drank beer shared Yerba Mate and had good fun. Communication was hard of course but we managed and I learned more Spanish! Lu would also translate sometimes of course.
Lu introduced me to the Argentinian love for ice cream and boy do they take their ice cream seriously. She said the good places usually have more than 50 different options and you can buy whole kilogram buckets of it for taking home. And of course it is delicious af.