Who would you rather be?

December 8th, 2010

Bariloche, Argentina

After an incredible Bife de Chorizo and Malbec dinner last night, we woke up this morning, (well, late morning) to clear skies and ripping winds. Our goal for the day was to complete the Circuito Chico, the circuit around the seven lakes in Bariloche.

We jumped in our rental car (we'll get back to that in a few minutes) and headed out on the road. Our Casita is just off the circuit, so it made it easy to get going. Our first stop was Llao Llao an amazing state built hotel with panoramic views of the lakes and mountains -we were already impressed. However, as the day went on, every stop we made was more beautiful than the last. The best looking back toward Llao Llao, seeing the beautiful hotel from afar AND all of the panoramic views.

We stopped in Colonial Suiza, or Little Suzy to us, a place we visited on our Big Trip... now almost 4 years ago. The small little town, discovered by Swiss immigrants has grown a lot since our last visit, it now has 4-5 restaurants along the one and only dirt road and even a microbrewery. We visited the campground where we spent two nights and reminisced a little before heading back to the main 'stree't for lunch.

Over lunch we talked about how we never go back to places and do it all over again, we prefer to make new memories. That's true with a few exceptions. Little Suzy isn't a place we want to rush back to, but overall Bariloche has been beautiful and we are happy to experience it in a different season, Spring.

Back to the car, yes we rented a car. This is a true luxury and something we definitely couldn't do on $100/day. We keep finding ourselves going back to that point in time, the time of the trip, when we had to decide to do something or not. Do we pay $20 to ride to the top of the mountain, do we have the nice bottle of wine with dinner? Do we eat Clif bars or grab a real meal? When we were travelers we didn't do any of the extras, but now we are on vacation and can splurge a little more. Who would we rather be?

On the Road...

December 7th, 2010

Bariloche, Argentina

It's truly great to be back on the road again. When I say back on the road, I don't mean on another business trip where I stay in a generic room for a night or two before moving onto the next city. I mean traveling with Marc, something we enjoy doing together.

The pure exhilaration that hits the moment we get off the plane, trying to navigate our way into a new town, or in this case, our transportation to Jorge Newberry airport from the International airport. It doesn't matter how many hours we've been traveling, how exhausted we might be, we have to pull it together until we get to our final destination.

After a grueling 28 hours of travel door-to-door we arrived in the beautiful lakeside town of Bariloche, Argentina.

Bariloche is one of the towns we visited in 2007 for a few days. We knew we wanted to come back and in August we decided to do just that. We found a little Casita on the lake for a reasonable price and booked it.

Today, we are looking out at the lake from a love seat in the Casita. There are bay windows that allow us to take in the view, instead of staring at a television. The weather is temperamental - sunny and clear one moment and windy, overcast with light showers the next - changing the streaks of color on the mountains, evolving the scenery.

An intriguing yellow flower borders the yard and is almost blinding in the direct sun. The various shades of green near us and across the lake on the snowcapped mountains are beautiful in contrast to the crystal blue lake.

As we hiked one of the mountains today,we enjoyed the lake views from a higher vantage point and getting a little exercise. It's days like this that make being on the road worth it. Plus, I can clear my mind and see...