Bariloche 2

Hello again...

I did indeed hire a bike for my last few days in and around Bariloche. The sun continued to roast everything, and the sky allowed it free reign with zero clouds. Just generally beautiful.

The best bike trip i did was a classic route called the "circuito chico", a 60km road route that takes in some cracking scenery of the main lake, and some other lakes sandwiched between the main one and the precipitous slopes of some of the mountains to the south and west. The route itself was generally through gorgeous pine forest, with the delightful addition of a sub-forest of bamboo (!) underneath it. I was surprised to see my favourite type of grass inhabiting the shady forest floor; i suppose i just naively associated with asia... anyway, some cracking cycling was had, and some buenas vistas too. The next day i really felt it in the rear region...! Not having ridden a bike for years certainly has allowed a softenening of the posterior, and the next day cycling or sitting of most kinds had to be kept to a minimum.

Most of the rest of the time i spent walking the streets, cycling in random directions and making up little routes in the area, or relaxing and reading. I´ve just finished a collection of short stories by Haruki Murikami ("Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman"), which i thought was terrific, with some great imagery and lovely writing.

But the time came after 5 nights to move on from Bariloche and head even further north to a city (certainly i´m in city territory now - 1 million human inhabitants!). The city of Mendoza, via another splendid bus journey of the much more manageable length of 16 hours...

By the way, i am waiting until i get enough photos to transfer to a CD, and then i will be able to get some onto this blog.

rob