(Actually, I've been back since Sunday night but.. eh.)
I had a great time. Maybe I did way too many things for my taste, but that's okay... 'cause there's always plenty of stuff to do there.
You see, this city, Bariloche, acts as a sort of hub from where you can go to many places around. Since most places are a few kilometers away you can go to a mountain, for example, in a day and then come back. And that's precisely what we did.
1st day
... We did nothing. Got to my cousin's place, made a small recon around and then started unpacking.
Trip to my cousins house was a bit long (she's 25km away from the city)
2nd day
We headed to the central area of Bariloche (Centro), did some sight-seeing, had some lunch, made some consultations with some tour agencies... and then we ended at the chocolate museum. :E
See, Bariloche is not only renowned due to its location, but also for its chocolates and the many stores around.
The biggest (and first one in Bariloche) chocolate factory, Fenoglio, opened up this museum sometime ago to show a bit about the history of chocolate.

Here's
Richard Charles I (my bad)... and his massive cocoa bean.

Here be some chocolate cups. People back then were so fancy with chocolate, that they had everything prepared.
After the museum, we got to the beach to rest a bit after having so much cocoa shoved in our faces.

This is the beach located downtown. And that in front is Neuquen.
3rd day,
My girl decided we should go to this lake, Lago Escondido (Hidden Lake), which was at about 5km away from my cousin's place.
To get to this lake, you have to circle around this
peninsula, up to that small patch of water you see right before the bay.
So we had to go through the woods.

And we did.

Midway through, we took a small detour and ended up at the coast of the lake facing inside, Lago Moreno (Moreno Lake)
And after some more walking, we got to Lago Escondido


Okay, so we were at the lake... now what? We had to go back, right?
Since getting there ended up being a bit painful, and since there was no transportation whatsoever (at least not at this time of the year... damnit), we ended up going
the other way around, thinking it'd be shorter.
We ended up
here, where you see that little B. That's Colonia Suiza (Swiss Colony).
We ended up walking straight for 8 hours (total) the nice ammount of....
20 kilometers.Called a cab, 'get me back home, damnit', and that's it.
Jesus.
4th day.
Woke up with sore legs and a sore neck. I think my feet are still there.. somewhere.
For this day we decided going somewhere, making sure first there'd be some actual transportation around.
And so we headed to
Lago Gutierrez (Gutierrez Lake)



This was my call, mainly 'cause I wanted to go to a tea house located by the shore, about a kilometer away from the bus stop.
But when we got there, it was closed. :[
Some old hag told us to keep going (!), we'd find a small town and a tea house. That required more walking, so.... no.
We headed back and saw this museum, which was near the bus stop.
Closed too. :[
We rushed back downtown and booked a small trip somewhere, before my head exploded.
5th day,
The tour we booked took us to Isla Victoria (Victoria Island), the biggest island
located in the middle of the Nahuel Huapi lake.

Inside the ferry that took us to the island.



The water at the pier of the island.

Ze woods!

More woods

And some dead pines too.
We actually had a fun time here. Despite we had to do some walking, we were somewhat recovered from that dreadful walk on Monday.
Even the tour guide was actually informative and clever (a rare find).
After we were through with the island, the ferry took us to the other side of the lake, to the Parque Nacional de Los Arrayanes (Arrayans National Park)




Arrayans are a very rare type of tree. They're weak, they don't grow that high, so in order to get to the light, they twist and trust on each other to reach up.
Pretty funky.
And...
I'll get to the rest of the trip tomorrow. Too tired now.