Nov 18

We spent the last 6 days looking at the Patagonia landscape - high desert like, almost no trees, and no mountains. I woke up on our bus around 7 this morning. It was so surreal to look out the window and see the beautiful landscape of the Lake District. Towering mountains, TREES, lakes, FLOWERS. So beautiful. I think the mountains I was looking at are part of the Andes. It's also very strange to see the trees that have recently bloomed since back home the leaves have fallen! The lupine was in bloom. Definitely looks like early spring here.

We checked into our hostel early. They told us that tomorrow would be rain. So we decided to spend the possibly one "good" day biking around the lakes.

A girl from Buenos Aires asked if she could join us. Sure, we said. I guess we should have asked if she had ever done this before! She was a bit slow going at first. Eventually I asked her if she was shifting the gears on her bike. She wasn't exactly sure how, so she just left it in whatever gear it was in. No wonder she could climb the mountains!

The trip that we did was a 26 km bike ride called Circuito Chico. This literally translate to "circle of HELL". This was the set up for our ride: just arrived here after a 13 hour bus trip. It was a cold day - probably around 48 degrees. There was a "nice" breeze blowing off the alpine lake. It was drizzly to slightly raining. We were dressed in almost all black. Most of the time the roads have NO shoulder. At times the edge of pavement - aka edge of traveled way - consisted of more rubble than pavement. Large tour busses do NOT like to move out of the way. A car would rather hit YOU than a passing vehicle. And, finally, I'm not exactly an exercise enthusiast, and this route consisted of MAJOR hills - both up and down.

With all that being said, we did have an adventure and the scenery was picture postcard beautiful. We were sore, cold, and wet when we got done. The sight of the rental store was beautiful. The hot shower at the hostel was nothing less than a religious experience!

So this hostel includes free breakfast and dinner - which is likely why Nicole chose it. We just finished our first dinner here. I'll try to list everything that they served us at our free dinner - mashed potato (likely from powder) and something "like" chicken fried steak. I think that was it. Yep, that was it. Green vegetables are NOT part of the diet down here. We visited the local market and will supplement our free dinner!