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Yesterday afternoon we arrived to Puerto Varas and checked into our excellent hostel Margouya 2 near the city center, and we spent the remainder of the afternoon developing the plans for the next week or so. First up was the plan for today of “canyoning,” wherein participants wear wetsuits and slide down narrow passages of fast running water in a small river. Unfortunately it has rained the past few days here, which made the water too dangerous for canyoning, so today we instead opted for rafting on a Class III portion of the Petrohué river – the water was cool, fast, and fun! Greg’s trip report and a few photos are here.

This evening we’re getting things organized for a 2-day kayaking / camping trip that we have lined up for tomorrow and Thursday. We put in at the bottom of the Petrohué and visit some hot springs on the way to a nearby fjord. With ~5 hours of kayaking per day, it should be a good workout with scenic views.

In a few hours we’ll catch a bus to Puerto Varas, Chile. Our time in Bariloche has been bitter sweet. The bike ride along the Circuito Chico was fun, scenic, and a good workout. Also, I’ve had some of the best steak in my life two nights in a row at El Boliche de Alberto. The ash in the sky put a damper on our day yesterday, but it was nice to have a down day and take a siesta since we’ve been going almost nonstop since I joined Greg and Tiff nearly two weeks ago now.

One evening during the study abroad in Delft, I was hanging out with my Hungarian friend Csaba looking at one of his books that was written in Hungarian. I picked out the largest, most complicated word that I could find and asked him what it was and how it’s pronounced. I chose bevásárlóközpont, which roughly translates to supermarket; ever since then, it has served as an inside joke between us, but on a deeper level it was rather apropos that that was the word I picked – it never ceases to amaze me how much can be learned about a culture through a simple trip to the supermarket / supermercado / bevásárlóközpont.

Yesterday was spent biking approximately 50 kilometers to, from, and around “El Circuito Chico,” which encompasses the protected nature reserve of Llao Llao Municipal Park. I rented a bike and Greg and Tiff rode theirs that Greg assembled in the morning. We stopped for a few hours for some hiking and lunch in the park at a scenic beach.

The morning and early afternoon were largely free of the ash from Volcano Puyehue, and the views we saw were impressive. Unfortunately, the winds changed and towards the end of our ride the ash was back in full force. It coats everything in a fine layer of dust, and gets in your eyes and mouth; I can’t imagine that this stuff is good for anyone to breathe for an extended period of time, yet hardly anyone wears a simple face mask to filter out the dust.

As Greg mentions, we leave to Puerto Varas, Chile early tomorrow morning. In the meantime, we’ll try to make the most of our remaining time in Bariloche, even if that just means taking it easy and cooking our own dinner of cheap beef from the supermarket.

As Greg has already mentioned, we have completed our surprisingly comfortable and quick 19 hour bus ride to Bariloche, Argentina from Mendoza via Andesmar. This afternoon we got settled into our hostel and headed downtown to shop for bike gear (for Greg and Tiff’s upcoming trip to the Carretera Austral) and eat a large meal of beef after the rather tiny breakfast and lunch on Andesmar. Bariloche is nice, resembling a small town in Switzerland, but it’s quite hazy today thanks to Volcano Puyehue that spit ash nearly 8 months ago (and still continues to do so today, but in smaller amounts…).