What a week it´s been

Hey everyone

Sorry I haven´t sent an update in a little while- my trip is totally different now than it was before. What exactly does that mean? Well the last time I sent an update was before I left El Calafate, and up until then I had mostly been hiking and seeing beautiful views and I was with a great group of guy friends. From there, I took a 30 hour busride to El Bolson where I sat on an Israeli farm for almost a week just relaxing and soaking up some sun, and now I´m in Bariloche, which is 2 hours north of El Bolson, and here has also mostly been relaxing time, though we´ve done some sight seeing also around here.

Both El Bolson and Bariloche are places unlike anything I´ve seen before. The farm in El Bolson where I stayed was designed specifically to be a home away from home for Israelis traveling in South America. How comfortable and homey was it... as soon as we got there we ordered some delicious Israeli food (my friend and I ordered one hummus, one malawach, and one shakshukah, which are three traditional dishes that are just delicious) and the staff of the farm where just the most friendly and warm people I´ve met. They just want everyone to feel at home all the time, and if I had some more time I would have stayed to work there as well. Who knows- maybe I´ll go back for a few weeks if I get a chance (you don´t get paid to work there, but you get free room and food, which is all I really need anyway haha). Actually, the farm made me think about camp because we spent most of our time lounging out on the grass- people were playing soccer or volleyball, some guitar too, and just getting to know each other, and that´s my favorite thing to do at camp so it made me miss home a little bit.

After El Bolson, we headed up to Bariloche, which is a city that´s still considered part of Patagonia but is much warmer than the places where I had been before. The city is surrounded by a lot of lakes (the area is called the Lake District), and I´ve done more sight seeing here in the last few days than we did in El Bolson. One day my friend and I hiked to the top of a viewpoint where we could see a lot of lakes in the are, then we did a 2 day road trip around 7 lakes and went to a town called San Martin de los Andes as well, and then yesterday we did a 30 km bike ride around another beautiful lake area (the same lakes that we saw from the viewpoint earlier in the week). Each place is just more beautiful than the one before, but it gives me the opportunity to have a freshness of appreciation (a term I remember learning in psych 101). Each stop along the way takes my breath away and I say a quick little thank you to God for creating such a magnificent world. Then I think about my brother and how I wish he could explain to me the geological reasons for why the world is the way it is. So I get to think a little bit about everything in the end. Lots of time for thinking down here... lots of time.

Anyway, we´re heading off to Pukon, Chile in the next few days, and there we´ll hike a volcano and do some other fun things also. Ciao, in the meantime.