Big fish and Chair Lifts

We were awoken at the crack of dawn by a bunch of noisy travellers rising for their free breakfast as if it would be their last meal.

We agreed that our decision to move from this grotty hostel was correct when we sampled the free 'breakfast' which could've made a lifer in Broadmoor choose to go on hunger strike.

Even with Wi-Fi akin to 1998 dial-up, Lauren researched alternative residences and found the "Quillen Hotel" which seemed to be reasonable and boasted non-mouldy shower curtains and rooms that didn't smell like Walter White's crystal meth lab.

We took flight to the Quillen and Lauren negotiated like her life depended on it. We walked out on to the street high-fiving each other as she'd negotiated a small but lovely (and CLEAN) en suite room for just £2 a night more than we were paying at Hostel De Broadmoor.

The rest of the day was spent at travel agents working out what we wanted to do in Bariloche and then clearing out our stuff from the hostel and moving it to Quillen.

The major upside to staying in hostels is that you meet interesting people who are often travelling the same direction as you and you can share journeys together. For us, just as we thought, most people seem to be travelling South America North to South rather than the other way around as we are. This means they have often been to places we are just about to go to and have some great tips of what to do and what to avoid.

With this in mind, as we'd paid for a second night, we decided to join Patanuk Hostel's Wednesday night party before we stunt rolled out of the door un-noticed  to our new, shiny, odorless home for the next 5 nights.

We grabbed some beers and got chatting to Yap from Holland and, let's call him 'James' from the USA.

Yap was a 62 year old pre-retiree who was living the dream. A glider pilot who loved Tango and was travelling the worls. He really was a pleasure to chat with, especially for Lauren who teamed up with him to try and convince me to start dance lessons!

'James' however was a cancer survivor who ran a medical marijuana farm, had just finished a PHD where he got everyone else to do the work for him and owned a chain of incredibly successful hostels and offered Lauren a huge discount for the 'Honeymoon Suite' if she was nice to him. He was also a compulsive liar and incredibly drunk. 

As I said previously, you meet 'interesting' people when staying in hostels.

The live band that they had booked weren't due to start until 11pm so we called it a night around 10pm as we had an early start on Thursday.

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Thursday morning's alarm clock made me jump. It was the same alarm tone Lauren uses for the usual weekday get up so I vowed that needed to change as I stirred, still sleepy, but grateful that this was the first time in nearly a month that we'd needed to use an alarm for any reason.

Today's reason though was well worth it. We were off on a fishing trip!

Now, I understand that this wouldn't be everyone's cup of tea (including Lauren) but I've been fishing since 10 years old when I caught my first fish with a bamboo cane and a bent safety pin (I'm not even joking) from the Grand Union Canal. Right then I was hooked (excuse the pun).

We donned our fishing gear (green and grey, as camouflage as possible, for me, bright pink for Lauren) and jumped into the waiting 4x4 outside our hotel.

The Rio Limay (River Limay) looked beautiful as we approached it and we quickly jumped aboard our boat and were rowed to our first spot by Juan, our guide for the day. 

Me, rubbing my hands with glee at the start of the day

Juan rowed us downstream and anchored us just behind a tree in the middle of the river, where two streams met. He started refreshing my memory on fly fishing techniques and I started fishing.

Within 5 minutes I'd caught my first rainbow trout and in half an hour I'd caught 3 including this 2lb beauty:

Lauren meanwhile was fishing the other side of the boat:

My hot wife without her pink jacket on

The day was out of this world and we left completely satisfied and me, very red faced, as I forgot to put on sunscreen in the excitement of leaving for the river...

That evening we went to a local pub for happy hour and some cheap (but great) food and then wandered back to our hotel.

One major difference between South America and the UK is the way dogs are treated. In South America, Argentina especially, dogs are kept as pets but rarely inside the home. They're left to roam the streets, even in cities, day and night. Incredibly, we haven't seen any fatalities but we've seen some very near misses (why aren't they called 'near hits'?).

As we left the pub we were greeted by this gorgeous retriever cross who literally walked with us all the way to our hotel (nearly a mile).

Lauren fell in love with him, especially when we went inside the hotel and he stood outside the door waiting for us! 

She couldn't help herself and went and petted him some more!

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Friday we knew was going to be poor weather so we'd planned an admin and massage day!

We got loads done and even left time for am hour's massage to ease our aching muscles. At a fifth of the price of a UK massage, it felt even better!

After booking some excursions we headed back to Alfredo's steak house where we ordered a small rib eye, 'jugoso' each.

Argentineans are renowned for their steak. They are also renowned for eating big steaks so, when we ordered 2 small steaks, the chef (who takes the order and delivers the food to the tables for Albertos) thought we were mad! However, a "small" steak is still 200g (about 8 ounces) which is bigger than most UK restaurants serve.

This steak was the best steak either of us have ever tasted so we made every effort (in Spanish) to tell the waiter who genuinely seemed really chuffed.

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After a lie in and some admin on Saturday we got the bus to Cerro Campanario, on the outskirts of the National Park.  They have a chair lift that goes to the top of the mountain.

The 360 degree sights were unbelievable!

Add you can see from Lauren's face, she was petrified of the chair lift!

Pictures don't do it justice

Get a room:

Selfie stick:

After this we headed back to Bariloche, found a gorgeous lakeside Cafe/bar serving local beer and started planning our next stop; Mendoza.

If you'd not noticed the trend; most of our activities contain either eating or drinking, often both!

From there, we collected our latest laundry load and went back to Alfredo's for more steak and then off to bed for another early start tomorrow, the start of our fourth week away! Ten to go!