Around Bariloche
Trip Start
Mar 31, 2006
1
24
37
Trip End
Mar 31, 2007
Bariloche,
Argentina
Sunday, November 5, 2006
Happy chappies
We are currently in Entre Lago near Osorno in Chile as we crossed the border yesterday but this blog is about our time in the Bariloche area of Argentina.Bariloche is well into fabled Patagonia, and we thoroughly enjoyed the endless views and crystal clear air. Although it is cold you cannot have all the wonderful snow on the mountains without a bit of a chill. We were very lucky with the weather as we only had one rainy day and we had plenty of sun.
Lynn and Rose joined us in Bariloche and together we mapped out a figure-of-eight route tour centred on Bariloche going north to Traful and then on to Junin de los Andes and then back through Bariloche via Traful again and then south to El Bolson and Esquel.....and of course Trevelin since Lynn is welsh but we struggled to find any welshness in the town other than a wrought iron red dragon! All of it has been absolutely beautiful. None of it stood out as better than other places on the route as the scenery is fairly constant: mountains and lakes and endless views on the edges of the Andes; and off to the east more never ending views with graceful rivers flowing into the horizon and only a few copses of trees, mostly poplars (and many of the men wear berets and look very French). We have hiked all over the place with one a 20km mean-on-the-knees that left me needing Tylenol to get some sleep! I am a bit worried about our next two weeks which will be with friends from Whistler, Stella and Dave, who after seeing us are going off to do the Inca Trail in Peru and are very fit and keen
Lakes around Bariloche
!We are not camping with our friends as we had to store all our camping gear in order to put the two back seats up to accommodate our friends and so we (or me) are getting very used to the luxury of being in Cabanas with comfortable beds and soap and toilet paper and even loo seats! Sheila says I am getting soft and after our next set of friends has left us I am sure I will be in for some toughening-up. We continue to marvel at how "foreign" Argentina seems in Latin America with its sophistication and western appearance but consequently there is no real challenge to traveling which there is in the rest of Latin America; going through the border between Argentina and Chile west of Bariloche was like going through any Western border with the official happily correcting our forms and waving a hand dismissively when we apologized for not having various bits of paper that anywhere else would have caused us endless problems.
So you can see why we find ourselves in a "holiday" mood; but the "mood" was anything but happy when I locked the keys in the car (not entirely my fault but enough that I was held completely culpable and the bruises on the backs of my legs from the flogging are going a lovely shade of yellow); we broke the smallest window but as it is curved it becomes a Toyota spare and only available from some distant centre so we had a piece of Perspex fitted as a temporary measure until we get to Santiago which as long as we do not wash the car looks something like the real thing
Sheilas place in Bariloche
.Our second hick-up was when we went down a lovely little road (and did not stop to read all the signs properly) and after 90km and about to re-join the main road we came across two large bridges partially collapsed and no way through; on the return we noted a sign that said that the bridges were impassable! But it was all through real Patagonian countryside so we did not mind too much.
The whole Bariloche area is stupendous and at this time of the year relatively quiet; but talk about luxury and money with several high-end resorts that looked and felt very like Whistler. If you are camping in Argentina it is quite reasonable as food, beer and wine are excellent and very cheap but accommodation and anything with service attached like a cup of coffee is quite expensive; crossing into Chile gave us quite a shock at the first supermarket as food, especially meat, seemed much more expensive.
So we've bad farewell to Argentina, a beautiful country with vast vistas which we certainly enjoyed and with some regret at not having gone far south. But it would have been at the expense of other countries further north (i.e. warmer) since we can't do everything in only 12 months! I feel as though I am simply rabbitting-on and so we will leave you from Entre Lago on Lake Puyehue in Chile due west of Bariloche and when the sun is shining (not often at the moment) we can see two massive snow-covered, perfectly conical volcanoes.
