FINAL DESTINATION: BARILOCHE, ARGENTINA

Bariloche is a city located in a state called Rio Negro in Patagonia. The main part of the year it is covered with snow and tourists choose it to enjoy the facilities offered by the best skiing center in South America called Cerro Catedral and a great night life for the young people. People can practice other sports such as: trekking, fishing, horse riding, rafting, sailing and swimming during the summer. However, the water is extremely cold during the whole year.

Bariloche means ‘people from the other side of the mountain’ in mapuche because this is how people from Chile used to call them. Bariloche is actually an hour and a half drive from Chile. It is also very close to other important city called San Martín de los Andes. People are very friendly and they make tourists feel as if they were at home.

This city brings me a lot of memories because I went there for my graduation trip from high-school. We left in the first week of September for a week and a half to go skiing and sightseeing. We were a group of 50 students and it was the best trip ever.  I made really good friends back then and we had a wonderful time.

We went to our different activities during the day and we went dancing at night. Our guides woke us up very early and we had to start getting ready for what was planned for the day. We visited different places such as Isla Victoria which you reach by boat, sailing through the Nahuel Huapi Lake. This is a very calm place and worth visiting in order to admire the landscapes and take some photos. In this same excursion we visited the Bosque de Arrayanes which is the source of inspiration of Walt Disney for Bambi.

We went as well to the Cerro Viejo which has a beautiful restaurant on the top from where you can admire the whole city and its surroundings. We went skiing to Cerro Catedral four days out of ten and it was a great experience. It was actually my first time practicing this sport so I fell down many times but that made the situation so memorable. We all laughed at each other.

However, one day one of my friends decided to try a more difficult ski slope and while she was doing that, she fell down and hit her head really hard with a rock. She cracked her head open and a helicopter had to fly her down so that a doctor could give her some stitches and take some X-rays. She was crying the whole time and it was very sad to witness her going through all this without being able to help her. The rest of the trip continued being awesome and the places we went to were breathtaking but she couldn’t come with us because she had to stay in the hotel resting.

We visited the Llao Llao hotel that is pretty different from other hotels. It is in the middle of a group of mountains and it seems as if we were watching a postcard. From there, we went to a ranch where we did some horse riding, we played some games which involved getting wet and dirty, and finally some of us went fishing and the rest trekking through the forest. We spent that night there camping and the next morning when we woke up we went on a bus to Cerro Tronador which is the highest peak in the whole area and it represents one of the natural frontiers that divide Argentina and Chile. It is 3478 meters tall and there we visited forests, lakes, beaches and cascades.

During our last day in Bariloche we went shopping to fly markets that are very cheap and they offer you all kinds of stuff. You can buy things such as handmade clothes and shoes, typical food and traditional craftwork. We also visited a chocolate factory and witnessed the whole process of producing chocolate and selling it. It was a very interesting place because it was very big and extremely clean. People were dressed in white and wearing hats to cover their hair. We bought here chocolate and cookies to bring to our families.

In conclusion, visiting Bariloche with my friends was a great experience. We had a lovely time together which is captured in many photos and videos. We ate delicious food and we even made barbecues while we were camping. We did different kinds of activities and apart from my friend’s incident, everything went according to plan. We went dancing every night to different discos which were representing different scenarios: one of them was a cave, another was a space rocket, and so on. And when we got back from the discos, we used to gather at night in the hotel to play the guitar and sing along.

Bariloche is a very good option not only for young people, but also for families because children can enjoy the different activities that they can do outdoors. In the meantime, parents can really admire the landscapes and practice some sports as well. Even couples choose this little paradise as their honeymoon destination. Indeed it is a place that offers many options and people that visit Bariloche will definitely love it.