Chocolate, pastries, ice cream and horses!

We spent a few days in a lovely town called Bariloche. Bariloche is the Argentine Lake District´s largest town. It sits on the shores of the beautiful huge Lago Nahuel Huapi and surrounded by mountains. This town is especially lovely as it is the chocolate capital of Argentina!

Bariloche literally has a chocolate shop on every corner as well as hundreds of patisseries..I was in heaven!! Suffice to say we sampled a fair few chocolates and pastries! Absolutely delicious! Oh and one of the reasons for visiting (apart from the speactacular national park and beautiful lakes) was that the Lonely Planet stated that the best ice cream in Argentina was made here. So I sampled that a fair few times as well, and yes I can confirm after many many tastings, it was the best!

I was torn away form the chocolate, pastries and ice cream for a couple of days to explore the Parque National Nahual Huapi just outside the town. We took a great horse riding trip which was a fab way to see the park and the amazing views over it. It was a really fun day, we were taken to an Estancia (the spanish word for a ranch) which was run by real life gaucho´s (south american cowboys!) We rode our horses for a few hours in the morning through the park, luckily Chris and I had fantastic horses who liked to go fast so we were often leading the others (at one point I galloped off completely the wrong way and all the other horses followed! The gaucho was not pleased! Was very funny!) We then returned to the estancia for lunch, which was a huge ´asado´-the estancia´s own meat BBQ and a few bottles of the regions red wine...lovely! We rode for a few more hours in the afternoon..which was a much easier after the mornings ride (and the large amount of red wine)! We were quite saddle sore the next day but it was so worth it!