From El Bolson we traveled north to Bariloche for a few days. It is a quaint town with some of the best chocolate in Argentina. It is typically known for adventure excursions you can do, but Ben and I did absolutely nothing for the five days we were there - it was great! We just sat around, ate really good steaks, went to a few bars, the local casino, and relaxed. It was our mini vacation while traveling. So after relaxing for a few days we traveled to San Martin. It is a very small town that is supposed to have some of the best fly fishing in the Patagonia. Our first day there was really rainy and crappy but we walked around town and got some options for tackling the river. Originally the plan was to rent a car, but neither one of us are very good at driving a stick shift and wrecking a rental in the mountains was not something we were willing to try. They don't really have any good public transportation to the parks and rivers so we would have to rent a taxi there, and just tell him a time or day to come back and pick us up. In the end we went with a guided fishing trip; it wasn't very cheap.
Our guide picked us up from our hotel at 8 in the morning and it took about an hour to get out to the river we were boating down, after a slight detour of turning around to get our fishing licenses that we forgot to bring. We met our guides father at the river, they run a family business of a fly shop and fishing trips during the summer and ski rental/ instructors during the winter - sounds pretty sweet! After we launched our inflatable boat and started down river, I caught a fish in the first half hour. It was a little surprising because I didn't notice I had one on my line since Ben's fly was caught in my hat which we were trying to get out - but a fish none the less! Normally you are able to see the trout jumping all up and down the river but today we didn't see that many. The first 3 fish we caught were Perch which were not very exciting to catch, they wouldn't fight very hard at all but we were catching fish. Our guide surprised us with a cooler full of beer and even brought himself some whiskey. He was super friendly and spoke English well - he did happen to moon us every time he leaned over for something but that seems to be a common theme here in Argentina which we got a kick out of. The lunch he and his Dad brought was really good: salad, chicken, cheese, chirizo, and wine. After lunch we stopped at a small shoreline where Ben and I cast out a few and caught some trout - yea! I tried casting the fly rod a few times but never caught anything - I don't think my technique is very good but they said I was getting better with each cast (probably more to humor me than anything else). We ended up fishing on the river until 7:30 that night. A full day on the river and about 12 fish between the two of us. Even though it was expensive, it was well worth it.
From here we are leaving fishing land and going to Mendoza to drink wine!
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