Patagonia 🇦🇷🇨🇱

Bariloche is a picturesque mountain town, full of chocolatiers. Our favorite place was Mamuschka, the dreamy chocolate store where you point and a waiter with tiny tongs places exquisite chocolates into a pretty box. Let’s just say we were regulars. It was Easter week and the festival of chocolate, so the town was hoppin.

Another chocolate place called RapaNui had a little ice rink. So the Cosgroves laced up and took to the ice. In Canada, we enjoy the occasional recreational skate. In Argentina, we are basically Tessa Virtue, Scott Muir, Elvis Stojko, and Patrick Chan. Doing leisurely laps, novice levels at best, we saw families and lovers on a date wipe out A LOT. I’m talking splits and hard falls, classic Bambi legs, and always laughing it off. The general inability and resilience were equally impressive. 

We took a side trip to El Bolson, a small hippie town in a valley. We bought cozy hats at the market and hiked up a mountain to a forest filled with carved statues. A highlight was also our accommodation, Earthship Patagonia, an evolving site with an earthship, tents, and yurts. There were horses munching the grass nearby and five cats looking for snuggles. In the shared kitchen we had fun hanging out with other travellers. The kids were especially happy to have more people to talk to (English and French). It was fun to be immersed in the backpacker vibe again for a bit. 

Our next destination was Puerto Varas, Chile. We took a combination of buses and boats through the beautiful lakes. In that town we could see the Osorno volcano. We met artist Paulo Freire in his interesting house-museum. After a few days we rented a car to go explore the island of Chiloé. 

Chiloé was a treat. We met fun travellers (yay! new buddies), explored another quirky house-museum, and visited Chiloé’s UNESCO wooden churches. On a visit to a deserted beach we saw dolphins playing in the surf. 

Now we’re back in Santiago, and spent the day at Pablo Neruda’s waterfront house in Isla Negra.  We are about to leave South America mainland for Rapa Nui. What an amazing continent!

🇨🇱🍱🍣🐬🦅🐴🦌🐂🐄🐑🦙🐈🐩🐇🌲🌴🎋🍄🍂🌻🌎🌈🍎🥑🍕🍷🚗🚕🛥✈️🇦🇷