Happy New Year from sunny Argentina!

We have made our way back into Argentina.  From Ancud we spent a night in the port city of Puerto Montt.  There is not much to do in this town but we stayed in a lovely little hostel/home-stay run by a local women who on top of being very welcoming and enthusiastic had a good dose of eccentric, waking us in the morning with blaring music and dancing in her kitchen, I liked her. To say fair well to Chile we decided to change things up and go out for dinner, we went to a recommended seafood restaurant.  The tiny restaurant had four tables and overlooked the water, after taking our order the waitress/cook ran downstairs to the fish market to get our dinner before throwing in the pan, can't get more fresh than that! 

The next day we took a eight hour bus to Bariloche, Argentina.  The town in only kilometres away from a huge volcano to erupted 6 months ago and still billows ash on a regular basis. As a result it can get hazy at times and everything has a fine layer of the ash if outside too long.  Despite the ash, Bariloche is a great town with tons to do in the area.  Yesterday we hiked a small mountain and took in some views before wandering along the quiet rural roads that run along the lake.  We visited Argentina's equivalent to our Banff Spring Hotel, I don't think they like people just coming in to snoop so I took advice often given to me in my childhood, 'just act like you belong' and toured through the corridors, restaurants and shops.  

For New Years Eve the staff at the hostel organised a potluck which was a lot of fun as most people made things traditionally eaten in their home countries which resulted in a tasty feast.  We transformed the living space in the hostel into a dance floor and decided to check out the local bar scene which at 3am in Argentina is just getting started.  Today we, all 30 of us, are nursing our hangovers but we had a blast.  R