Travelling north to Bariloche

Home > Diaries > 2019 > 811

WE'RE BACK in the truck today and we're travelling over to Bariloche which is a good three hundred kilometres from where we were last night. We've now passed over a little pass in the Andes and crossed the border at the pass. So, we're back in Argentina now. I've lost count of how many times we've done the border crossing now. As you can see the terrain is very different. We're crossing a dry river bed now and very little water here on the lee side of the mountains so this area doesn't get much rainfall at all. The mountains are very dry and the clouds look spent. We're on sealed road now. There's a bit more traffic but it's still very quiet up here. It's another couple of hours to Bariloche where we're going to stay for a few days under some big mountains apparently. In the meantime, there's a lot more scenery with very dry vegetation. There's quite a bit of forestry plantation, one of which we're passing now. Otherwise it looks pretty barren out here.

Well we're getting very close now and we've entered the lakes district of Patagonia. There are quite a few lakes we've been passing over the last few minutes. It is raining here and most of the mountains are all covered in cloud but you can still see some through the haze. So, we're nearly there.

Well we're arrived in historic Bariloche and the rain has just stopped falling. There's a big rainbow over there so hopefully this means things are going to clear up for tomorrow so we can do some exploring. It's really cold actually with a southerly having just come through from the Antarctic (also we are at 800 metres above sea level). It's going to be pretty cold. Just this evening I'm going to have a little walk along the lake and tomorrow I'll do a bit more exploring. It's quite a charming town actually and here it is historic. Apparently, it has a reputation apparently a lot of Nazi leaders fled to this town at the end of World War II. It has quite an interesting history to it. So, I need to find out a bit more about it and I'll do some exploring and have dinner and then I'll just relax and tomorrow will be another big day.

Well I've just had a bit of a surprise here. You'll probably recall in Ushuaia just for a joke I decided to do a search for where the nearest McDonald's was, and it was about 2200 kilometres up the road. Well guess what, I've just found it whilst wandering up the main street. So, it's back to the land of corporate greed again. So, there we go, we're 2200 kilometres north of Ushuaia now. It is a bit hard to track how far we've actually come up because the roads are very winding going backwards and forwards between Chile and Argentina. Anyway, I've found it, not that I'm going there. I'm going to have some local cuisine before heading off to bed.