Northern Patagonia, Chile and Argentina

After hitting the bottom of the continent, we have bounced back up and will continue Northward for the remainder of our trip. The area of Northern Patagonia is known as the Lakes District because, well, it has tons of lakes. We flew and bused it to Pucon, Chile, a town very reminiscent of Tahoe City... on a lake, mountains, trees, a few bars, and tons of outdoor activities. My kind of place. One thing it has that Tahoe doesn't is the huge volcano, Volcan Villarica, looming in the background. It looks just like one of those 8th grade science projects, a perfect cone with snow around the top and smoke coming out. We figured why not climb it. The tour companies equip you with crampons (spikes on your boots) which you need on the ice. They also give you an ice axe, which you don't need and I think they just give to tourists to make them feel cool (see picture below). It takes about 5 hours to get to the top. Once there, you can stand on the rim and see down into the crater. We also went river rafting... we were just a tad hungover. Please enjoy the stupid look on all our faces.

The Lakes District hadn't gotten much fanfare in terms of many tourists saying "you hafta go!!", so we were very pleasantly surprised when our bus ride from San Martin to Bariloche (Argentina) turned into one of the more memorable rides of the trip. Known as the 7 Lakes Route, we wound through the forest and many undeveloped lakes and witnessed a pretty sweet sunset. It was so sweet in fact, that we decided to rent a car the next day and drive the full route and the parts we missed. Our. Car. Sucked. I think it was a 2 door Spec, complete with a broken radio, no power steering, and a pool full of stale beer in the spare tire compartment which we discovered when we got a flat. We stopped at a hotel overlooking the main lake and sweet talked the manager into letting us sit on the pool deck and enjoy a $12 bottle of Argentinian Malbec. Life is rough down here.

Over the past three months, I have been able to share my high school level Spanish with the big French speaking Russian. He has learned to converse quite well, mostly around anything involving food or directions. No word has become more important to our trip than "postres", or deserts. It has been a running joke to says "postres??" after every meal, including breakfast. You can see in the picture taken at the top of the mountain in Bariloche that nothing quenches a thirst like a massive piece of chocolate cake.

We are off to the glorious city of Buenos Aires today to meet up with three more Americans who actually came through on the "oh you guys are going to South America?? I will TOTALLY come visit you!!!" claims. We have a sweet apartment lined up, should be awesome. We have completed over 3/4 of the trip, with just one more month to go....

a few more pictures....