Day 2: Bariloche - Esquel

This morning the process was much more smooth and we managed to get out of the room fairly quickly. However we had to change money, finish the blog post from yesterday and repair a broken GoPro mount. So we left at 10:00 once again!

Before we left we met a group of bikers. They were now 15 and lost 2 guys during their trip (went back home), the remaining 15 had a hard time to keep the moral up. It was a cold reminder that our adventure is not for the faint of heart and needs a lot of concentration.

Mijail got the excellent idea to add an extra tour on today's plan and we started with Circuito Chico. It is a tour of the countryside around a mountain called Cerro Catedral. The houses were the same style of chalet that you can find in Switzerland and there was even a ski lift! We played the game on guessing which Swiss lake or mountain was the same as our view.

 
We headed back towards Bariloche to start our actual trip to El Bolson where we had a well deserved lunch -always including homemade Patagonian beer. The weather was hot: 30°C and dry (luckily!) which gave us clear sight on the far mountains but it is also quite exhausting to drive under this strong sun.We asked for a coffee to give us some energy for the drive but the coffee-machine was broken and the waitress said "no tengo, se los debo!". We should integrate this kind of answer in our European life - would make some situations quite funnier!

We slipped back into our quite too hot gear and went back on the road. After 20 km, we were happy to drive off-road. It was the first time of our trip that we were doing off-road. However after one hour we were exhausted and realized that we did only 40 km and had 60 km more off-road to overcome. It was concentration on a maximum level non-stop.

We were then gently guided to stop at a beach, like the first day, and to refresh ourselves. At the sight of the fresh deep blue lake Isabel went directly into the water but Mijail and Hadrien were tired and didn't want to get undressed so they dragged their feet one in front of the other and once in the water the world was perfect again!

The water was greatly refreshing and some thought it was warmer than the first day, others (latino doesn't want to have his name mentioned) thought it was still too cold.

We arrived at Esquel and once refreshed by beers (boys abandoned this modern showering-thingy), we decided not to go to the restaurant tonight but to order pizza instead. It was a good idea since we had some tuning to do on the motorbikes. So we had romantic dinner outside next to the bikes.