Stepping out of the taxi I felt a bit weird. After the beach life in Rio getting to a place that resembles a village in the alps was not what I expected. The city is placed at a lake surrounded by hills on one side and the mountains of the Andes on the other. But not only the landscape looked a little familiar, also the architecture and culture. Mountaineering, trekking, skiing, climbing and many other outdoor activities are the main thing here as well as chocolate and other food. There was even a restaurant called ‘Der Tiroler’ with Schweinshaxe and Spätzle on their menu, I resisted the temptation to go in there 😉
Der Tiroler
I spend a few days in the Hostel 41 Below, Leo the manager was keeping the place very clean and comfortable. He also made fresh homemade bread every day which with the also homemade jam made very good breakfast. There were also the very kind and friendly Mathilde and Stephanie, two french girls who temporary worked for the hostel, that made the place even more enjoyable. That and some nice fellow travellers I met there made me wanna stay for a much longer time, but the mountains were calling and I went on a three day trek in the Huapi National Park. I was amazed by the beauty of the landscape and got very gelous of the rock climbers around refugio Frey. Rüdiger also had a funny experience when he met Max, a travel companion of two americans.
Max had a very similar history than Rüdiger and all of us became friends very quickly, which ended in having a steak and a few beers together once we came back to Bariloche. You can find pictures in the gallery for Bariloche and the trekking.
An interesting thing I learned in Bariloche is why there are so many people on the streets screaming ‘cambio, cambio’. When I saw them first in Buenos Aires I thought how can so many people make a living by exchanging money, but then someone explained to me what is going on. In Argentina it is not allowed to purchase foreign currency officially, apparently to protect the Peso. But if you want to buy something big, like a flat, you have to pay in Dollar or Euro as the Peso has a very high inflation. So what Argentinians do is to buy foreign currency on the black market to crazy rates which means if you have Dollars you get up to 150% of the official rate, which makes traveling in Argentina affordable and also increases the inflation even more. So it’s good for foreigners but for the country it’s very bad. Unfortunately I did not have a lot of Dollars left so I had to be ok with the official rate and could not enjoy the advantages of the so called ‘Blue Dollar’.