Skiing in the Andes

Ahh.. What a weekend. This weekend I had the pleasure of traveling to one of the most naturally beautiful places I have ever seen. Bariloche, Argentina is located in the Patagonia region and is approximately a 22-hr bus ride from Buenos Aires. As you'll see in the picture, the ride was made much easier through my decision to pack a bunch of beer! Luckily, it's also a 2-hr flight, so you can guess which option I chose for the return trip to BsAs!

We arrived on Friday evening and proceeded to check into an amazing hostel. For the equivalent of about $8 per night, we had a room for 4 people with a bathroom and had use of the on-site bar, which, of course, was ridiculously cheap. The hostel was filled with cool people, most of which were in a similar situation as us - adventuring in Argentina.

After a late night on Friday, we woke up bright and early to be at the mountain for 9am when it opened. Well, that was our original plan, but, as with everything in Argentina, things take longer than you think, so, after we finally rented all our equipment, bought our lift tickets and took the gondola up the mountain it was about 11am. Luckily, we had about 6 hours until the slopes closed, so it still made for a great day of skiing.

Our first day of skiing was absolutely gorgeous. We were surrounded by mountain ranges as far as the eye could see. Unfortunately, none of us brought a camera up the mountain that day, so we don't have any pictures! The next day, we all brought our cameras, but, as luck would have it, it was overcast for most of the day, which made for better skiing but worse pictures!

The following day I had a bit of a skiing miscue. I wasn't paying attention and, as the ski lift moved close to the ground (midway through the ride up) I got my ski poles caught in the ground and ended up bending them beyond repair. Of course, I figured I could just bend the pole back - which I quickly figured out was not the right strategy when it cracked off in my hand! Of course, I wouldn't let it get me down, so I skiied for a few more hours with broken poles and then explained what happened (in my broken spanish of course!). Amazingly, they didn't charge me to replace the equipment. Well, I think they didn't - hopefully I won't get a surprise on my next credit card statement.

Anyway, I opted to snowboard for the rest of the day. Unfortunately there's no pictures of that because I was smart enough to leave my camera for safekeeping as I attempted to figure out the sport.

This weekend we're heading to Cordoba, Argentina, which is about a 10 hour bus ride away. There's about 12 of us going to the biggest Oktoberfest party in the country. Apparently this region has a huge German immigrant population. Makes me wish I brought my Lederhosen!