Bariloche, flip flop trekking and a return to Chile.

Nice to meet you too.

The flip flop trekking hero! Look how strong she is!

Seeking repentence for the flip flops?

Definitely worth it.

As we'd heard, Bariloche turned out to be a bit of a tourist town. Although not a bad one at all. The surrounding scenery was really magnificent and the town itself had the feel of a Swiss Alpine resort to it. All new old wooden buildings. The town is also famous for its chocolate so we inevitably had to try a few from here and there.

As I'd mentioned in the last post, we'd been keen to do some kind of organised trip from here and the hostel had various organised activities available. We decided on doing a bit of kayaking in the end, we thought it would be fun in one of those double sea kayaks bombing around seeing waterfalls and the like.

'Pleasant' is the word we'd use to describe the kayaking I think. Turned out there wasn't a waterfall to see so it was just a matter of kayaking around the edge of the lake for a bit before turning back to shore for a coffee and a biscuit. We didn't exactly earn the coffee and biscuit but if they're 'free' then get as much of them as you can.

We had less time in Bariloche than we'd first anticipated as the bus for Santiago was leaving at 2.30pm the next day (we'd hoped for a evening bus), so it was up early on our last day for the 'must do' part of the town which is the view from one of the chair lift stations up in the mountains. Now you can either get a 10 minute chair lift up to the view (which costs 5 pound return) or you can walk it. Of course, with us two now being 'highly experienced ramblin' hikers' after our experience down south we opted for the walk. Kat was so confident that she went up in flipflops. Turned out that it wasn't that easy and it definitely got the heart pumping again and flipflops definitely weren't the ideal choice of footwear but Kat battled on in her pink dress passing descending walkers with all the gear with a cheerful 'Hola!'. This girl is unstoppable!

We reached the top and sure enough the view was worth it. Bright blue skies and the sight of the snow topped Andes miles away was magnificent. After snapping away with the camera and catching our breath, a bit of sweet talking from my lady got us a lift down on the chair lift for less than half price for the both of us. Flip flops going up the mountain might have been ok but going down would not be good. Most importantly though, we had a bus to catch!

So now we're back in the very kind company of Hubert and Agathe in Santiago. We had a little excursion with them to the beach yesterday and today we're heading back to the coast with Kat's friend from the newspaper. The plan is to stay in Santiago till Saturday before heading up north towards La Paz. The weeks are rolling by now, we'll be back in the UK before we can say 'Bloomin heck it's cold'.

Sorry for the delay in the posts too. Will give a little update before leaving Santiago.