South America - March 9th - Puerto Varas to Bariloche

I learned that in it is really hard to write emails without the @ symbol. You see, the keyboards in South America are different than those in North America. The letters aren’t in the same place because they have different letters all together. You know, the ones with the tildas on top. The @ symbol isn’t on the 2 either. In fact, it wasn’t anywhere. Somewhere hidden. Clearly, this was some sort of conspiracy to decrease the productivity of people from the USA while in country. Some sort of tricky idea to send us into a recession (opps, I said the word). Don’t they know that these colors don’t run.

March 9th was a travel day from Puerto Varas, Chile to Bariloche, Argentina. The easiest way to do this is to get on an airplane and fly over the mountains (with this option there is always the possible of our plane crashing and having to eat each other like in the movie ALIVE!....I would have no problem eating Sara). Often, the easiest way to do something isn’t most fun or most adventurous way to do something. So we decided to take a boat across the Andes. Nick, are you stupid. When there is water around mountains those mountains are called islands. Nope, not stupid. Since Chile is so unstable (Ring of Fire, earthquakes, and such) lakes are created in weird places. So, the journey we took involved taking 4 boats and 3 buses along the way. We made a stop to a national park before starting the trip and got some awesome pictures next to some crazy whitewater further upstream than where we rafted (If you haven’t looked, there are new pictures from the trip if you follow the link on the right side of the page). All the boat trips were really relaxing and a cool way to hang out, read a book, and check out the scenery. The bus trip across the Andes was wild in that you could tell the bus driver had driven this route a million times and new every turn. Consequently, he didn’t need to slow down on the blind turns along a one lane road. No matter even if we were driving right through the middle of the farm (“The horses will move”). Halfway through our journey we stopped at this tiny hotel in this tiny town (the only people that lived in the town were people who worked at the hotel or worked for the bus/boat company). We ate the fastest lunch ever eaten because we had to catch the next bus and had zero time. It was super stressful. But funny. Really funny. I felt bad for the people working in the café. Our journey didn’t go without injury though. As we waited in customs in Argentina, swarms of bees attacked the group with fury. People were taking shots to neck. To the arms. Generally, just wailing and gnashing of teeth insued.

We arrived in Bariloche at sunset and watched the sun go down over the lake while driving to our hotel. We checked in, changed, and headed out to dinner at a Swiss restaurant (there is a great deal of Swiss and German influence in Bariloche) called Familia Weiss. We ate lots of cheese and fondue and goloush and steak and it was all delicious and awesome. Early to bed.