We took the opportunity to put some clothes into the hotel laundry (more of this later). Once luggage was back in room, we decided to find somewhere for lunch and settled on a pizza, which was nice, with the tastiest tomatoes I have ever had, then back to hotel for a siesta or just vegging out watching tv for a few hours before heading out to find somewhere for dinner. For a fairly large town (bigger than Wokingham, which boasts more restaurants than it probably needs) there were few restaurants and we thought we may end up eating at La Nonnina again, however, we did find another eatery and enjoyed our meal. Have been surprised how late they eat here; restaurants don't get busy until at least 10pm and fairly young children stay up late too.
The next morning we picked up our laundry, but were shocked to find out that this had cost us nearly as much as our room! The laundry back in Cuzco had cost us about £6; our fault for not asking price and as it turned out some underwear was not dry and all washing needed airing, so we should have got a discount, well you live and learn!
We set off to drive to the lakes, a journey of about 5 hours. The first part, the scenery was fairly bland, flat and fairly uninspiring and was like desert. We stopped for lunch about halfway and also to fill up with petrol (you can go for miles without seeing a petrol station or civilisation for that matter).
After this stop, the scenery became much more interesting, with mountains and lakes, it was quite a dramatic change from the miles of flat plains. We stopped a couple of times to take pictures.
We arrived in San Carlos de Bariloche about 5pm and parked in the centre of town to find a cafe which had Internet access so that we could check out hotels. We were quickly successful and chose La Cascada Hotel, just on the outskirts of the town. We have a lake view room with a kingsize bed and the views of the lake are stunning. We quickly settled in and after a glass of wine, as the hotel did not have a restaurant, we went across the road for a meal. I had chicken again (will be laying eggs soon, eaten so much of the stuff!) and Dave had steak. Portions are large, so could not eat it all. I feel I need more fruit and veg or will end up with scurvy! Wine is very nice though, does that count as one of my five a day?
Breakfast next morning answered the fruit question and there was a good selection.
Typical of lakes (think lake district) in that it was raining. On the hotel's recommendation, we went for a drive round some smaller lakes, along the side of the main lake. Views were stunning and it was a shame the sun was not shining. This is a lovely part of Argentina.
We stopped at a hotel by the lake for a cup of hot chocolate for me and coffee for Dave.
We continued trip back into Barchoile and returned to the hotel for Dave to get a new memory card for his camera and to put on long trousers.
We planned to go up to the top of the mountain in the cable car; they have two different ones. The first one was closed as it was Sunday, but the other one was open, so we decided to go on this one. Now I have been on a few cable cars in my time and had no issue with them. However, this one for some reason was not to my liking; it was quite a small cable car and the ascent up the mountain was very steep, it swayed a bit and once you got higher up you could hear the wind whistling!
We made it to the top and it was freezing; Dave had the right idea about long trousers, I had on knee length trousers and I was really cold! The wind was howling, but the views were amazing, so we took lots of piccies before we froze, also the weather was closing in and to be honest I was keen to get off the mountain!
We joined the queue for the downward cable car trip and while we were queuing, for some reason the cable cars were switched off. No reason was given and no-one looked worried (apart from me probably!). However, after a long 10 minutes they were turned back on and we got safely down. By the time we got down, top of mountain was covered by cloud, so we had had the best of the views for that day.
Dave had noted a restaurant from a book given to us by hotel. We had looked for it a couple of times, but had not spotted it. However, we gave it one last shot and came across it; as it turned out it was a brilliant choice and we had a great meal and even managed dessert too.
We went back to hotel to relax, taking the wine from the restaurant we had not been able to finish, and later we went to sit on the sun terrace with a glass each to enjoy the end of day; earlier we had watched the sunrise from our bedroom. Fabulous!
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