Yesterday was a travelling day from Ushuaia to Bariloche. This is Ushuaia from the plane.

The plane flew to El Calafate where half the passengers got off and those flying on to Bariloche on Bueonas Aires were told to stay on the plane. In the end though we had to also disembark for 20 minutes before getting back on the plane and flying to Bariloche.

The hostel I’m staying in is really lovely – they have a communal dinner every night and last night was risotto and tonight was tacos.

The people staying here are really friendly too and my roommate, Belen, invited me to join some of them on their trek to Frey. It sounded like a good plan.

Frey is one of the peaks of Catedral which is part of Nahuel Huapi national park. Its a 1700m climb and around 26km. It took us (Julian, Caro, Belen and I) around 4 hours to walk up. The trek was through a beautiful forest and the views were amazing.

We were lucky with the weather as it was pretty sunny, although a bit cold when you stopped walking. When we stopped for lunch I noticed that several bits were falling out of a tree in front of me – it was three woodpeckers. You can just see the red head of one of them in this photo.

At the top we had a hot chocolate and left Julian behind as he was camping overnight and then trekking to another area tomorrow.

It took us around 3 hours to walk down and when we got to the entrance the next bus back to the town wasn’t for another 25 minutes. Luckily a very kind truck driver offered us a lift which we accepted.

It was a really good day but I think my legs may be a bit sore tomorrow. This evening I had some more Mate tea with Caro – delicious.

Bariloche developed from a shop established by Carlos Wiederhold. The German immigrant had first settled in the area of lake llanquihue in Chile but crossed the Andes and established a little shop called la alemana. A small settlement developed around the shop, and its former site is the city center.

These photos are from right by my hostel which is by the beach – Playa Bonita. Unfortunately it’s a little bit too cold to go sunbathing.