{"id":1044,"date":"2009-11-24T12:52:42","date_gmt":"2009-11-24T16:52:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cajunchefryan.rymocs.com\/blog2\/?p=1044"},"modified":"2009-11-24T12:52:42","modified_gmt":"2009-11-24T16:52:42","slug":"bon-vivant-part-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/cajunchefryan.rymocs.com\/blog2\/travel\/bon-vivant-part-ii\/","title":{"rendered":"Bon Vivant Travels, Part II"},"content":{"rendered":"

Southern Argentina including the Lake District of Bariloche and Calafate Patagonia<\/h3>\n

In this installment, our Bon Vivant traveler Mike Addison finally has the camera virus issue resolved and included a host of photos to share. Mike shares some of his foodie finds along the way as he ventures his way through southern Argentina with some mountain biking in Bariloche, and then hiking adventures through the Perito Moreno glacier. Along with some good beer, tender steaks, and rich dark hot chocolate, Mike also finds time to enjoy the tastes of South America too.<\/p>\n

From:<\/strong> Michael Addison
\nSent:<\/strong> Tuesday, October 27, 2009 10:23 PM
\nSubject:<\/strong> Southern Argentina – Bariloche (Lake District) and Calafate (Patagonia)<\/p>\n

Hello Everyone,<\/p>\n

Sorry this file is so large, but\u00a0I have some photos to share with you. I lucked out with these, as\u00a0they are the only\u00a0pics that were not lost from the virus.\u00a0I was able to upload them and send to a fellow traveler before the virus hit. So actually, this is a forwarded note, without the text.<\/p>\n

So,\u00a0last Sunday (October 25, 2009) I\u00a0caught a flight from BA to Bariloche,\u00a0about a 2-hour flight southwest towards Chile.\u00a0I chose Bariloche because it is renowned\u00a0for its\u00a0beautiful lakes and mountains (my fellow travelers also “highly” recommended it).\u00a0I arrived around 6:30pm local time and\u00a0waited for\u00a0the bus shuttle that I was told would\u00a0pick up at 7 pm. Nada…no bus for a half hour. One woman and her kids were getting exasperated as they were also waiting. We started talking (Habliendo espanol\u00a0es\u00a0facil ahora!\u00a0\ud83d\ude42 and she told me she\u00a0would call\u00a0a friend who has a private cab service. She\u00a0offered a ride to me…Si Senora!\u00a0Like I mentioned in my previous email, the Argentine people have been very nice.\u00a0Her name was Roxanne (after she told me I wanted to scream, \u00a8ROOOOOOOOXANN\u00b4!\u00a0like the Police song…kind of glad I didn\u2019t, might have been walking to town :). Her friend gave me drive up curb service to\u00a0my hostel (can\u2019t beat that). Roxanne gave me a kiss (love this custom) and I got settled.<\/p>\n

I checked out the second floor of the hostel–totally dedicated\u00a0as a bar and\u00a0dining hall…not bad for a hostel.\u00a0I popped in and immediately saw my friend Cyril (Swiss guy) who had been at the same hostel in BA. He was with some absolutely fun, off the hook guys from the Netherlands, Israel, and Ireland—all laughing and having beers. I joined them and we all just gelled so quickly. Then I found out we were all in the same room.\"Bariloche<\/a> I\u2019m not sure I\u2019ve laughed so hard in 3 days as I did with these guys.\u00a0After\u00a0dinner, we went to a local bar…I\u2019ve attached a\u00a0pic—left to right; Omer, Enri (he was hammered, if you can\u2019t tell), Marten–so freakin\u00b4funny, Jeremy—good dude from S. Africa, and Cyril, the Swiss guy.\u00a0That night we had a blast and decided to get together two days later for a mountain biking ride through the lakes and mountains.<\/p>\n

\"Dinner<\/a>So, Monday I had open, and Jeremy told me he had met some German and English travelers who were going to do a major trek (5 hours one way)\u00a0with an\u00a0overnight stay up in the snowy peaks. That sounded awesome, so I joined them\u00a0and we all left Monday morning. The group shots show us\u00a0just before we ascended the mountain, then one\u00a0where we are finally approaching the top (you can see the cabin and outhouse), and then another group shot when we had finally made it. It got quite cold that night,\u00a0with some snow\u00a0and ice pelting the windows. However, we\u00a0were fairly cozy–as you can see in the dinner pics–and really enjoyed the\u00a0experience. Its one thing to\u00a0look out a window and\u00a0view snow covered peaks in the distance; it is quite another when you\u00a0look out the window and you are “on” the peaks. I felt so badass\u00a0\ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
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\"Sunrise<\/a>I did not want to miss biking with my boys the following day.\u00a0Since we were to meet back in town at 11 am for the ride, I\u00a0started trekking back down the mountain at 6 am the following morning.\u00a0The final pics are from that morning…one of the orange sunrise hitting the face of a nearby peak, adjacent to where we had trekked. Man I\u2019m glad I stopped at REI outfitters\u00a0in Houston before I left–they set me up with the right gear…otherwise I would not have been able to do the trek.\u00a0I made great time down the mountain,\u00a0but I could not find a bus back to town, so I approached a\u00a0guy and negotiated a ride for half the\u00a0cost of a cab! He told me my Spanish was great.\u00a0He \u201chad\u201d to be\u00a0drunk.<\/p>\n

\"Barry<\/a>So,\u00a0Tuesday was\u00a0a beautiful, sunny day\u00a0as we all went on the mountain bike ride at 11:30am The circuit we rode was about 25 miles, with some challenging uphill grades, but that made it fun too. After we returned\u00a0to the city center of Bariloche, we all chowed on the free dinner the hostel provided each night (a freakin\u00b4 deal). Then we downed the beers. Needless to say, we all slept well that night.<\/p>\n

Wednesday was a rainy and gray day, but that allowed us to check out the city. So, we did some window-shopping and I booked a flight at an agency for Calafate the next day. Oh yeah, I stopped for a cup of hot chocolate at a local cafe. I was told Bariloche was \u201cthe\u201d place for chocolate…and man, this cup was the best \u00cd have ever tasted. Thick, sweet, hot, and pure chocolate flavor. That night we all went out for an Argentine steak dinner. We found a superb place that served meat like those in the nicest chophouses in the U.S. but not as pricey. I requested a half order…glad I did, because I got not one but two delicious, thick tenderloins (a \u201chalf\u201d order!). We also had bottles of Malbec wine at the table. Good people, food, wine = a very good evening.<\/p>\n

\"Perito<\/a>Thursday another fellow traveler–Yarif from Israel–and I grabbed our flight to Calafate. It is another 2-hour flight, directly south of Bariloche. It\u2019s in the world famous Patagonia region of Argentina. Mountains, steppe, glaciers, lakes, rivers, wildlife, etc. It\u2019s another world. Yarif and I did some hiking up to the base of an amazing peak called Fitz Roy (like nothing I have ever seen before). We—along with another fellow traveler, Diane from Colombia—went to Glacier National Park and trekked over the Perito Moreno glacier http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=tIfHurcBn9g<\/a>. We were fitted with ice shoes (serious spikes for traction). We were given a quick lesson on how to stomp into the ice in order to gain a decent foothold. This experience is up there with my first parachuting and hang gliding experience—it was that cool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
\"Perito<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\"Perito<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\"Perito<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\n\n\n\n\n
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Time to hit the sack…getting up at 5:30am\u00a0to cross the border\u00a0into Chile\u00a0to see\/trek Torres del Paine peak. Then Thursday flying to Ushuaia, the southernmost tip of S. America (they call it El Fin del Mundo).
\nBuenos Noches,<\/p>\n

Mike<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Join Mike on his next installment of the Bon Vivant Travels when he reports from Ushuaia, Buenos Aires (again), Iguazu Falls, and Mendoza, Argentina.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

That night we all went out for an Argentine steak dinner. We found a superb place that served meat like those in the nicest chophouses in the U.S. but not as pricey. I requested a half order…glad I did, because I got not one but two delicious, thick tenderloins (a \u201chalf\u201d order!). We also had bottles of Malbec wine at the table. Good people, food, wine = a very good evening.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[545,544],"tags":[676,678,256,2104,679,682,684,677,681,558,680,683,685],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/cajunchefryan.rymocs.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1044"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/cajunchefryan.rymocs.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/cajunchefryan.rymocs.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cajunchefryan.rymocs.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cajunchefryan.rymocs.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1044"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/cajunchefryan.rymocs.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1044\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1051,"href":"http:\/\/cajunchefryan.rymocs.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1044\/revisions\/1051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/cajunchefryan.rymocs.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cajunchefryan.rymocs.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cajunchefryan.rymocs.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}