Cold weather, Snow on trees, and a beautiful lake... all in Bariloche!

Hello everybody,

After wine and... well... mainly wine in Mendoza, we are now in Bariloche... in the middle of the Andes (I know, it sounds great, doesn´t it??!!).

Bariloche is a very nice town surrounded by mountains on one side and a beautiful lake, massive, on the other side named Nahuel Huapi.

lake bariloche

After visiting the town on our first day, we decided to go and visit the surrounding mountains on our second day...
One of them is not too high (called Cerro Campaniaro) and is quite touristic because of the view it offers on the lake. One of the ways to get to the top is to use a lift (telesiege, don´t know in english!), the other way is to trek it up! Of course, because it is more beautiful (and also much cheaper: free!), we decided to trek!

So there we are, in the middle of the forest, surrounded by all those beautiful trees all covered in snow... and going up...
The hike was not too hard, quite steep sometimes though and only lasted 1h30. It was a real pleasure to walk through the forest, no tourists around (apart from us!) and the most beautiful scenery of winter snow you can find!

Arriving at the top was amazing (even though we had snow to the knees for the last 50 meters) because of the breathtaking view... seeing the lake from the top is absolutely beautiful...

Apart from the view, we also got to see two beautiful mountain birds (which we have almost no idea what is was, though ola thinks that they

beautiful hawks

are hawks!!): nature and wildlife all in one day!!

After enjoying the view for quite a while, we went down through the same way, enjoying to almost roll down in the snow (I said almost!!).

Back to the hostel, we got ready for the next day...

SKIING!!!!!! youoouhhhououu.... yes you heard!! we went to ski!!
This was amazing! Not only amazing to ski but to ski in August, and not only to ski in August but to ski in August in the Andes!!! ok, I know i am showing off a bit there but we were really amazed to do that!!

It was really funny to go down the slopes and also it was great to stop and see the view: from the mountain, you can see the lake of Bariloche and a very long part of the Andes. As the weather was beautiful, we got to see the Chilean part of the Andes!

above the clouds again

Ola of course is much better than me at skiing, but I have to say that I was not as bad as I thought!! AND... he fell down twice while skiing and I did not fall!! (well I did but without the skis on!! I know it is ridiculous!!)

Today, after a long night sleep (skiing IS tiring!), we decided to go to the llao llao parc to walk. It is about 25km of Bariloche. We happily discovered a beautiful forest which had quite the appearance of some

Llao llao forest, red trees

magical forest... Mainly because of the red trunk trees, the Xmas trees and the bended bamboos all still covered in ice and snow...

Well, that is all, we are extremely happy to have done that because it wasn´t in the original plan, but it was really worth it...

Next stop is El Bolson, two hours drive from bariloche...

Lots of freezing kisses from the Argentinian mountains!

Agnes and Ola

written by

agnesola on August 8, 2007 from San Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina

from the travel blog: Baby and Baby's around the world travel...

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