Chocolate Coma

I have awoken from the chocolate coma and expect to make a full recovery. My life has been a training for this past week, hiding chocolate from others, making others hide it from me and then getting angry when I find it. I recall a moment last Christmas when the crazy landlord left us a tin of Quality Street chocolates after her unsuccessful DIY attempt to fix our clogged bathtub. Good thing too because other than that, all she left was a big hairy moldy mess in the tub (which we took knee-high cold showers in for a week). But that's neither here nor there. We asked the tolerant and accepting legend: Matt Conlin/roomate for life to hide the chocolate which he willingly did. We later busted into his room and in a flurry of hysterical womanness found the tin and cleaned it out.

Bariloche, Argentina is the chocolate capital of South America. Any and all travel plans I made up to now were centered around getting there. Every fourth storefront was a chocolate shop, window fronts of truffle mountains, oozing dulce de leche, liquid chocolate fountains and weird mechanical figures rolling pastry (not sure why). The highlights included a maracuya cream truffle (passionfruit) with dulce de leche (a type of caramel) bathed... en-robed in velvety dark chocolate. The other favourite was a dark truffle with poppy seeds on top, to which I comically mis-typed as poopy seed chocolate in correspondence with Joel. The sheer amount of chocolate I have eaten has made me delusional.

The not-so-sweet effects of chocolate coma

Addiction is not beautiful

Besides that Bariloche was a fantastic place to lay low, or climb high, for several days. Although a little built up and touristy, it still had the charm of a Swiss-San Francisco. It sits right on a beautiful shimmering lake with nothing but mountains surrounding it. The lakes around Bariloche are crystal blues and emerald greens, tropical colours. I arrived with friends from the NAVIMAG ship and we set up camp in an apartment style hostel, dining on gourmet oatmeal and stolen jam-packets. Our mescla of people included a Swede, Canadian, American, Peruvian/American and Brit/Moroccan.

The first day we did a quick and dirty hike up to an awesome lookout. It was 30 minutes of steep climbing to a great panoramic point of a million lakes, hidden by green and red forests lit up by golden sunlight. The second day we did a 25km bike ride, that may have been one of the most beautiful I have ever experienced; winding roads through leafy archways, passing sparkling lakes and shady old-growth forests all surrounded by mountains. We stopped for a nap on a white stone beach. The water went out for what seemed like miles and only reached knee height. The second stop was at Lago Escondido, or Hidden Lake which was exactly that.

The others left the next morning and Anouar and I rocked out to some Cyndi Lauper blues (who knew!?), sipping Fernet (bitter herby liqueur added to Coca Cola) and Anouar destroyed me at 6 games of ping pong. Still upset about that one. The lake front hostel was beautiful with great staff who taught me how to pack my first mate gourd. The only downfall was the extremely smelly french man who required the staff to spray an ungodly amount of air freshener around the hostel and shuffle nauseated guests into other rooms. Ah the joys of hostel living.

My final day there I got out for a solo hike to a mountain lake and refugio. The colours in this forest were magical and a little hut built into a cave affirms that there ARE indeed fairies and gnomes living there. I knew it. Met two crazies with a car and we took off to El Bolson the next morning to soak in the hippy scents of patchouli and unwashed hair.