Bariloche...

Well, the computer here at my hostel is a pile, I cant get my photos off my camera, so I am going to do a little writing today.
At twenty hours to the south west of Buenos Aires, it sits close to the border of chile and the Andean mountain range I belive creating a nice alpine style mountain town. It had some european development back in the day and now has the "essence" of swiss coulture. However from what I have seen and heard its very much the dirty and diluted south american version. I should say that is only for the city, as for the mountains and lakes it is a beautiful place to be. There are several lakes, all of which are very clear, blue and green, glacial fed lakes. The mountain hiking enviroment is bizzar. Within a few hundred yards you pass from alpine style trees, pines and such to, tropical cane looking things and ferns, to beautiful flower filled meadows. Its hard to imagine snow in this place due to the tropical elements. I should say that there is amazing sking here during the winter.
The first day here I hiked Cerro Otto, well, I should say I took the gondola up and hiked down, it would have been worth every penny to take it back down, the walk down was on an ugly dirt road that seemed to draw on forever. Not fun. As far as Cerro Otto goes it has a nice view of the area and has a revolving restaurant on top and a bizzar museum of fine art, with a very random reproduction of the statue of David, its so weird. There are also a few giant St. Bernards lounging about up there that you can take your photo with for a lot of money. The giant beast dogs are sporting mini rescue supply barrels, complete with red crosses.
Day two I hiked though the Llao Llao area on this funky little jungle trail curcuit that passes through a few lakes and senic veiws and beaches. It was a long day of walking to say the least. I enjoyed it.
Day three, I went out to see if I could do some climbing and had an epic adventure thrashing my way through the forest trying to find the climbing areas. It was hard and the trails are vague and overgrown. The guide book is almost worthless. I ended up on a dead end trail in the middle of the woods and these two scary dudes come out of nowhere and tell me to follow them, I had everything with my, climbing gear and camera, I had that numbing feeling rise to my brain, the feeling you get when you get caught doing something you shouldnt. I was a dead man. I followed them and explained what I was doing and where I was going and they seemed to already know what I was doing and where I was going and kept walking me deeper and deeper into the woods. I was looking for a way out. I just keeped following them and they keeped going deepper and deeper into the woods. I just tried to keep calm and watch for an out. Then they stopped he told me to go over there and then up there and then you are there. He held out his dirty hand and I shook it and he lumbered back into the woods. I was stuck there in unbelife for a few moments. These two dirty scary guys came out of nowhere, tracking me down in the woods and then go even farther out of there way to help me back onto the right trail. I was elated. So I continued on, following the instuctions given by the dirty man, and arrived with some more heavy bushwacking to the wall where I found Scott and Violet. These two had been living in a VW van for over a year traveling south america, going surfing to skiing. Way cool cats! Anyway I climbed with them for the day on some amazing blue streaked limestone walls. I was definatly feeling the month long gap from climbing!
Well time is short, so I will try to be short with the rest, but Bariloche has been fun, trekking around and eating swiss chocolates! I hiked Cerro Campanario which from the top you get a full 360 view of the area and a nice little restaurant up on top. The views are amazing. The lakes are beautiful. This it a fun place. I will write more soon, so little time!
Laters!