BARILOCHE (It's so Pretty!). 10 things to do in Winter. 53 972 Km

From the time we arrived in Bariloche two things occurred repeatedly. The first is we were unable to walk around town without saying "It's so pretty" at least 10 times a day, and the other was that we were repeatedly told that there isn't much to do in Bariloche in winter except skiing "which is very expensive". The thing is, we found loads to do whilst here for 2 weeks so I have compiled a list.

1. Eat Ice Cream

It may seem a little counter intuitive to be eating ice cream when you're surrounded by snow capped mountains and the temperature barely gets above 5-degrees outside. But when the houses and shops are so warm, you can't help yourself. On our second night in our homestay we were treated to Rapanui Ice cream by our host mum for Children's Day (yeah that's a thing here) and we had to keep eating it thereafter. You could spend weeks here trying different types, flavors, and shops.

2. Go to a Tea House

Everyone has their favourite. And being Argentinian they will tell you exactly which one they know is best! We made our way out to two of the more spectacularly set ones. About 25km from the centre of town lies hotel Llao Llao, at the edge of the national park, where you can stop off and have tea and cake. We forgot about making a reservation but the scenery is enough to come for. Another favourite is Bellevue, which opens after 4pm, and again has a magnificent backdrop to gaze out at whilst eating cake and drinking tea/coffee/hot chocolate.

3. Punto Panoramico

There are only 2 roads out of Bariloche, the low road by the lake and the high road that passes closer to the mountains. The load road splits about 18km from town to do a large loop around and through the national park. Taking the bus to the split in the road and then walking down towards the tiny town of Colonia Suiza, you go past this place. Punto Panoramico. Walking down the road rather than taking a car or bus gives you about an hours walk of beautiful scenery, lakes (where you can stop for lunch), mountains, and snow. But bewarned, many Argentinians thought it was a strange choice to walk there. "There's not really anywhere to walk to in winter".

4. Lago Gutierrez and Cascadas de los Duendes

It another anomaly here. Most of the locals are convinced that you can only really go walking in summer to the refugios. The idea of doing small walks, particularly to places you could reach by car or chairlift, seems a little odd. But if like us you want to get some walking in winter then this is a great half day out. Sitting a little further out from town and the Rio Negro lies Lago Gutierrez and some short day hikes. If you had the time you could do a number of trails over the whole day but arriving in the afternoon after language school we really only had time to do a a short walk to the cascadas de los duendes (Goblin cascades) and up the hill to look over the lake.

Whilst a number of other tourists drove to the start of the trails, only a few of them left the beach to walk the 100m to the cascades and almost no one else came on the 4km walk to the view point.

5. Llao Llao National Park

Taking the bus to Llao Llao Hotel, there is a series of walks just a little bit further up the road. For those adventurous enough it is possible to link all the walks to complete a circuit of about 40Km. With only a day, we linked several of the paths together to see some magnificent parts of the park and views like the one above from cerro Llao Llao

6. Take a Chairlift up Cerro Catedral

It's hard not to at least mention the idea of going skiing when you come to visit a place like this at the time of the year when there is snow around. Not everyone likes skiing though, or didn't bring all their ski gear with them on a year long travel trip. Whilst it is possible to hire everything you need for a trip to the ski fields, the locals are right when they say it is expensive.

What is a little less expensive is buy a pass on the teleferico to see the beautiful view whilst eating some lunch and/or drinking a beer. With a paucity of easy runs due to the little availability of snow lower down, we spent a couple of hours in the afternoon going up higher simply to enjoy the views.

7. Centro Historico and the Artesenal Markets

Literally in the centre of town lies the reconstructed buildings from the old town, prior to a "lagomoto" that wiped out many of the buildings. Admittedly there is not much to do there after taking some photos and visiting the museum, but not far away is a very good artesenia market that is well worth a look.

8. Cerro Campanario

There are a number of hill tops on the outskirts of town, which 3 of them offer a chairlift up to the top, complete with confiteria to buy cake and coffee. Like everything else, there is debate about which is best and we randomly chose Cerro Campanario. With 360-degree views of the lakes and mountains it was a great choice. It is possible to walk up this hill as well but we were strongly advised not to by the Argentinian locals on account of the mud. It turned out this was probably more along the line of the not really walking when you can take transport thing.

9. Drink Beer

We love a little bit of beer. We love a little bit of craft beer. In the entire time we've been traveling in South America we have found a number of places promising craft beer but almost none really delivering. Bariloche is not most places. There are a number of genuine craft beer houses in this area both in and out of town.

Our first stop on the Craft Beer crawl started out in the kilometers. The kilometers is what the locals refer to as out of town because the roads have kilometer markings which also serve as an address. For example I live at 4360, that is my house would be 4.36Km from the centre of town. Anyway, we started off at Blest and next door at Berlina at kilometre 12. In reality we did our beer drinking over a few days but if you were keen you could walk to the next one down the road at kilometre 8 (Kuntsman), and then continue into town.

We walked between all these places. Just not in one day. Beer wouldn't allow it.

The other advantage of doing the leg work between the pubs is you get to stop and enjoy beautiful beaches like this along the way.

And last and most important of all.....

10. Eat Chocholate

On this topic, the locals get more fired up that any other. The best chocolate is heavily debated and really the only thing you can do is to promise to try all of them that you can. Be warned, you may need some hot chocolate to wash down the chocolate samples you were given why you are trying to make up your mind about a) what chocolates to get and b) how many you can carry home (or on the continuing travels). This activity can and will take you weeks if you want to do it right!

There are of course many other things to do in town that I haven't mentioned. You can learn Spanish, eat at a parilla, watch the beautiful sunrise and sunsets off the snow capped mountains, walk around the lake, visit little wooden churches, eat choripan, or simply chill out by the fire with a book.