The walk from the hostal to the bus terminal was freezing. Only about 20mins away, the early morning cold pretty much froze my hands into numbness until I warmed up with a coffee from the nearby petrol station. It was unfortunately a Nescafe machine made coffee, but it was better than nothing at 7:30 in the morning.

On the bus we made our way north and then east toward Argentina. While the border crossings in Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia were a fairly informal affair, Chile and Argentina actually take leaving and entering their countries seriously. After
waiting a good hour at the Chilean border we were finally allowed in to get our
exit stamp. Back on the bus we trudged on through the forest and snow for half
an hour to arrive at the Argentinian border control.

Each bus had to wait their turn, and when we finally were called up to enter the
Argentinians had some strict controls on what you weren’t allowed to bring into
the country, most notably types of food and vegetables were banned. Everyones
bag had to go through the xray scanner and about half a dozen people had their
bags pulled aside to be searched, including my own. I have no idea why or what
the border security saw in the scan, but as I waited for my bag to be searched
I watched as everyone else had bottles of condiments examined and even one guy had some cheese that was confiscated. After a while the security asked where I was from, and upon hearing Australia he decided not to bother with my bag and
waved me away. I took my bag and loaded it back on the bus, wondering to myself what had looked suspicious in my pack.

There was, however, a black plastic wrapped bag in the cargo that no one claimed ownership of. This lead to our bus being delayed for another hour while they decided what to do. The bus conductor was far from pleased by this delay and I’m pretty sure he was accusing some old guy on the bus as being the owner, to which he denied. Its times like this that I really wished I understood what exactly the conductor was saying, because he was certainly super pissed off.

Eventually the bus was allowed to leave and we continued on through the snow capped tree lined road, now officially in Argentina. At one point we stopped and the conductor came back and announced something quite important. This was meet by the guy next to me exclaiming “Yes!” and doing a couple of fist pumps.
Obviously it was good news regarding the mysterious black bag, and when the
conductor finished his speech everyone on the bus applauded. It can only assume
they’d caught the owner of the bag and the only thing I could make out was the
person wouldn’t be leaving Argentina any time soon.

With all the delays we didn’t arrive in Bariloche until about 7pm. At the bus terminal I scouted around looking for an ATM or a money changer, but alas they didn’t have either. Jumping into a taxi and I had to explain I had no Argentinian pesos and had to stop at an ATM first. After withdrawing  a few hundred pesos we were almost at the hostal when then car behind rammed into the back of the taxi. After pulling over the taxi driver inspected if there was any damage, which there didn’t seem to be, and off we continued to the hostal.

The accommodation in Argentina is expensive. Everything is either a dorm or a double room, so I knew that I’d be staying in dorms for my time in Argentina, and for the same price back in Chile you could get a private single room. Thankfully while the hostals were the most expensive on this trip, the food and drink are less expensive than Chile, and the quality far exceeds that of Chile, which isn’t that
difficult when you take into account the national food of Chile is the humble
hot dog!

That night I headed out in search of food. All I had eaten throughout the day were some biscuits served on the bus, so I was pretty damn hungry. Argentina is famous for their steak, and with this in my mind I settled on a restaurant and ordered a tenderloin steak. The steak was huge and their reputation of amazing beef is wholly justified, with the steak perfectly medium cooked and delicious. I even began to question whether Argentinian beef was better that our Australian beef, and I had to concede that Argentina wins out due to how much cheaper it is – that tenderloin cost around $14AUD whereas you’d pay at least $40AUD back home.

Bariloche is the snow lovers mecca in Argentina, if not all of South America. And with it being winter, it was high season here and that meant the price of everything doubles. There was a Brasilian girl in the dorm room who explained that Bariloche is mostly overrun by Brasilians this time of year and I found this to
be quite true. Most restaurants even have a Portuguese menu, which oddly I was
given once, much to my confusion as I don’t look Brasilian!

With it being the high season, Bariloche is filled up to the brim with tourists. Nearby is the largest ski resort on the continent and it was fairly common to see the hoards of people wandering around wearing matching tour agency jackets armed with skiing equipment. I wasn’t interesting in skiing, despite never trying it,
I was more concerned with not spending too much money and trying to get back on budget. With only a few months left of this trip you become much more aware of your money situation and start acting like so many other back packers I’d met
along the way and carefully weigh up whether you want to spend those extra
pesos.

Argentina in general has a strong Italian influence, and in the south the Welsh were the first to settle the Patagonian region. This makes for an interesting mix of
food and drink. The Italians gave the Argentinians a love for coffee, pasta and
pizza. In fact the coffee is fantastic here, and even in bus terminals you get
a proper coffee rather than the usual Nescafe rubbish. Drinking coffee in the
morning and in the evening is the ritual here. No one eats dinner until after
8pm, to the point restaurants don’t even bother opening up before then, however
around 6pm you can find everyone in a café with an espresso and slab of cake.

This is the Welsh influence coming through, an undeniable love for all things sweet. Bariloche must have at least a hundred chocolate shops that are packed with people eager to pick out their favourite selection of artesian made chocolates. Pastries and cake reign supreme as dessert, but you have that before dinner – so coffee and dessert in the evening, followed by dinner at night, and then around midnight is drinking booze time. It’s a painful adjustments to make as I’d become so used to having an early dinner, but the loading up on coffee in the afternoon sure helps staying up late!

Tea is immensely popular here, called matte, and it’s unique too. Argentinians can always be found with two very important items; a thermos of hot water, and a strange cup they use to drink their matte. The cup resembles a bong, it’s loaded up with the matte herbs, hot water is added, and you drink it through what is
essentially a built-in straw. There is a culture and ritual to drinking it in a group, making sure it is passed around the group and each person finishes their given amount. I tried this back in Ecuador with the Argentinian girls on the Amazon tour, I just never considered that every single Argentinian would have one of these gourds!

Near Bariloche is a mountain called Cerro Otto. It’s a popular destination and I
caught the courtesy bus to the base where a cable car takes you to the top.
With its popularity the line for the cable car extended out the door. After waiting in the slow moving queue for about half an hour, I soon realised that this line didn’t go by the ticket office as I first thought, and there was actually a different line to get your ticket first. With a whole one person serving the ticket counter it took a further half an hour to pay for a ticket. I kept glancing back to the cable car line to watch it continue to shrink in size. When I finally bought my ticket and I turned around to find another bus load at just arrived and the queue was back out the door again. Sighing and returned to the line and waited for my turn to ascend up the mountain.

The views from Cerro Otto were fantastic, giving you a complete 360 degree view of the surrounding area and overlooking the lake and town of Bariloche. There was also a healthy about of snow covering the lookout building, where kids ran around collecting snow to throw at each other, proudly building snow men, and taking a ride down the snow slope squealing.

After three days in Bariloche I decided that I needed to head further south to the town of El Calafate. It was here that the famed glacier was and it was on my must see list. I questioned myself whether I would be able to deal with the cold and if
I should buy from gloves and warmer cloths. With Bariloche being so expensive I
figured I’d stop along the way in some smaller towns and check out their prices
for winter gear.

The girl at the hostal called the bus terminal and confirmed for me that the bus to El Calafate stops in the town of Esquel, which is where I was hoping to catch it
from. With that knowledge in hand, I arrived at the bus terminal and bought a ticket to my first stop along the way to El Calafate – the ecofriendly town of El
Bolson.