Saturday in Bariloche

I enjoyed a leisurely breakfast in the hotel with Carolyn and Harold from Utah and Beverly from Rochester, NY¸ all of whom will be on the tour. This is the fourth Argentinian tour for Carolyn and Harold. Later in the morning, I ran into Doug Darby, a fellow alum from last year’s tour in New Zealand.

This morning I strolled around the center of the city, taking a few more pictures and doing some window shopping. I had lunch in a very pleasant Italian restaurant (the vast majority of the restaurants here are Italian). I got through the entire meal without a word of English (and feeling quite good about it) until the waitress brought the bill and informed me in English that “the tip is not included.” I do find that a lot more people here speak English than was the case in Buenos Aires.

In midafternoon I went and got my bicycle set up and did a very short test ride. The bike seems to fit well, so I don’t anticipate any problems. I met our tour guides Maria Elena (from Experience Plus’s offices in Colorado) and Javier, as well as a few more of the tour participants.

Tomorrow we will bike about 56 miles to Villa La Angostura, our first and only stop in Argentina. Then we will cross into Chile. It was suggested that we buy some Chilean pesos today since it will be difficult to do so for the next couple of days. Unfortunately, today is Saturday and you can’t buy Chilean pesos in Argentina on the weekend. I suspect that I will get by just fine with dollars and credit cards.

I am unlikely to have internet access for the next several days, so this will probably be my last post for a while.