Bariloche in Patagonia

Would you believe that surrounded by forests and lakes, lies a quaint Swiss-like village 2 hours South of Buenos Aires? We finally hit a climate requiring more than t-shirt and shorts. Bariloche is a beautiful Patagonian ski town in the winter, and lake town in the summer. Since it's now summertime, the weather was just starting to warm up but was still about 55 degrees Farenheit when we arrived.

The town features a number of Swiss and local cuisine restuarants as well as modest hotels and B&Bs. For me, however, the most appealing part of Bariloche was the chocolate shops lining each of the streets. Think about a store the size of Rite-Aid filled with window displays of every possible kind of chocolate. I was in heaven.

We managed to pack in a little adventure as well (see photos of canopying below). We took a car up to the mountains and signed up for an afternoon in the forest, literally swinging from the treetops! It was incredible to glide across the cables that connected platforms deep in the middle of the forest.

As was the case in other parts of our Argentinian journey, we met wonderful people everywhere we went. Even with the language barrier (tourists from Brazil who speak Portuguese travel frequently to Argentina), we managed to make friends at the restaurants and exchange both emails and photos. We've already received dinner invitations in Chile and Brazil! Our taxi driver, noticing my interest in Ricki Martin's song in Spanish, gave me his copy of the CD. Truly, there is something in the water because we faced kindness with every turn.