Buenos Aires to Bariloche

What a travel day!

We assembled to leave the hotel at 7:30, to catch a bus to the domestic airport nearby. Our plane was scheduled to leave at ten, so plenty of time. Check in and security went smoothly, and we regrouped around gate 9 near a board that listed gates for all departing flights. Ours was listed but did not have a gate yet, but we didn’t worry.

The domestic airport was people friendly, with many small stores for snacks or meals and all kinds of other things. Lines were short because of the large number of stores. Really nice.

We started noticing something was amiss when the announcements, like plane now boarding at gate number whatever, but there were no people at that gate. And, to our knowledge our plane was not assigned a gate number on the board. But, there were some announcements in Spanish; our fearless leader kept us updated. Plane now at gate five. So we went. Plane at gate nine. Ha! Where we started, so we went. Plane now at gate fourteen. So we went. From 14, we took a bus to the plane, which sat on the tarmac for a long time, eventually getting refueled, before we left, more than two hours later than planned. Sigh.

View from the plane window of a beautiful volcano in the Andes, possibly Volcan Lanin

Most of us were hungry by the time we landed in Bariloche and took a bus to the town itself. So, we went to a gelato place for a snack (dinner was scheduled). Delightful!

Then we took taxis to a local park to climb in a forest for beautiful views of the glacial lake and surrounding mountains. So refreshing after the hassles of the airport. Just what we needed!

Map of the park where we hiked. We went up the trail that did not allow bicycles, but had four viewpoints to look at the lakes and mountains.

We hiked the Miradores trail, which was quite steep. There were many mountain bikers descending on an adjacent trail. We learned about the trees, which were mostly planted here, and took pictures at viewpoints.