South of Pucon

After Pucon, we didn't really have any place in mind of where to go next so we continued on our merry way south. We went through Osorno where I tried to pick up the papers for our vehicle, but it hadn't been transferred from the previous owner yet. Once again, things take a while longer down here. We wanted to get these before we crossed into Argentina, but we had signed papers from the previous owner that said we could cross the border. Even though we had these, we knew it was up to the specific border agent whether to let us through or not. We decided to give it a try the next day because we knew the road south in Argentina (the famous Route 40) was nice in this section. Not to mention it was also paved. We stayed at a campground that night that was pretty close to the border. We met a German couple who had shipped a big Mercedes army type vehicle into Uruguay to travel around Patagonia. It was quite the rig, but must have costed a pretty penny to ship it across the Atlantic!



We actually sailed through the border quite easily the next day even with our broken Spanish. Having the guys help us buy the vehicle certainly made this a lot smoother as we had all the right paperwork.






Dead forest killed by an erupting volcano


The scenery was great along the way, but we didn't take many pictures.


We stopped in a small town to grab some money which isn't all that easy in Argentina. The banks only let you take out around $220 at a time and charge you over $8 to take out money. Not long ago, you couldn't even get money out if you were a foreigner. It's a long story but there used to be a huge black market here for Exchanging Money called the Blue Dollar. If you are interested in this sort of thing, just look it up. It is still here but the exchange rates at the banks is now close to the black market so not as prominent. We plan to use our credit cards as much as we can here as to not spend so much in ATM fees. In a perfect world, we would have brought a bunch of cash to exchange but tough to do that when you are on such a long trip.

Later that day, we made it to Bariloche which is basically the Banff of Argentina.
We learned very quickly that the prices here reflect that as well. We checked out a couple hostels. A couple were full and a couple had prices 3-5 times what was quoted in the Lonely Planet. Inflation has been crazy the last year we were told. We had heard Argentina was expensive but weren't expecting that things had gone up this much. Oh well. We decided to keep going south and camp.



Not a bad spot for the night!



We were going to take this road later in the trip so we would check out Bariloche properly in a few weeks. The next day we made it to Esquel where we actually stayed at a hostel. Roberta has been doing remarkably well with all this camping, but it was time for a real bed and a real kitchen. We also had a ton of laundry to do.
After a nice night of steaks, wine, and a warm bed, we headed back into Chile. It was a Argentinian long weekend, so it was a bit busy at the border but everything went smoothly again.



Most of the next 2 days, I spent fly fishing around Futuleufu. I ended up catching a few smaller rainbow trout. The small ones here even seem to put up quite a fight.














Unfortunately I didn't find any big ones like in the magazines, but it was still amazing. It also got us to some amazing places we wouldn't have visited otherwise. Roberta spend most of the time reading. I am pretty lucky to be with someone that lets me do my thing.


Another beautiful spot





Gauchos in training