Skiing Cerro Catedral

I got up at 7.30am in the pitch dark and tried to put my clothes on without waking anyone. The annoying American had snored all night in our room and I had been awake since 3.30am despite taking a sleeping pill. I was already feeling drained but some porridge and coffee sorted me out!

Thinking we were getting the 8.45am bus, we found out it didn’t go until 9.15am and that we wouldn’t arrive until 10am. The bus was packed beyond capacity and I was literally standing in the front doorway for 45 minutes, clinging on for dear life. More frustration ensued, the ski hire place we wanted somehow didn’t exist! We waited in a queue with a very stressed woman to pay for our budget rentals at a ski school, then another to get them. Then another for the lift pass, but mine didn’t work when we finally went to the gondola! She had sold me a pass for three days ago. We went back only to be accused of stealing a pass off the ground, despite that she had literally sold it to us less than 5 minutes ago. Despite all of that, we were on the lift at 11am.

The field was enormous, there were so many lifts but only the top half had snow. We traversed our way around. The snow was fairly icy, thin and hard packed. My favourite chair was one called Nubes,
because, despite the longest queue and steepest runs, the snow was the softest. The views over
Bariloche was incredible – lakes and snow-capped mountains in every direction. One run called
Panoramico ran along the ridge across the whole field. The views were great! Our skis weren’t great at clinging to the slopes, I often slid out of corners unintentionally. Around 1am we stopped for lunch at a cafe and ate our sandwiches. In the afternoon we explored the right side of the field, the snow was worse there. Then we made our way back to Nubes and the park. I was so tired I was skiing like a Nube.

A guy called Felix had told us about a party at Lynch cafe so we went there at 3.30pm for drinks only to be told it was invite only. I was so tired I couldn’t get my skis on after, it took me about 5 minutes of laughing and a stranger helping. With our terrible rental gear, mismatched cobbled together ski outfits and my skiing we both looked like terrible newbies, not the experienced skiers we are. Marissa was really good, you could tell she liked park.

So we went back for a really cheap beer at the same cafe we had lunch, then as the sun set crashed
down the slope like everyone else to the lift down. The bus was predictably packed and Marissa
somehow got us to skip the enormous queue. A nice Brazilian brother and sister started talking to us as we smashed into them around corners on the bus and we invited them to Manush, the best brewpub in Bariloche.

We went for a happy hour beer, ran back to the hostel yelling ‘we can’t be late for vegan risotto’, bought another beer from the store, tried to return the bottle for 20 pesos but weren’t allowed, went back to Manush for more beer only to not be let in until the Brazilian sister found us. They were there and magically had a table! There was terrible service but we somehow got a pizza and more beer. The
chocolate milk stout was delicious.