South America: Bariloche January 23rd

We arrived to Bariloche from the 20 hour bus ride around 10 AM. It wasn't a bad ride at all. With the current exchange rate the ride cost about $115, only $15 more than the regular bus that didn't have the reclining lounge chair seat! I'd say it was well worth it. They also gave us meals: a snack, dinner (including wine!) and breakfast in the morning. We of course could not eat any of it except for the wine, but it was still neat to see a meal service on a bus! Along the way our scenery consisted of endless miles of GMO corn and soy fields! We know they were GM crops because the seed brands were proudly displayed on the fences, Dow, Syngenta, and DuPont! It was a bit depressing.

We stayed at the Tango Inn Club Hotel, where we were able to get a triple room with a private bathroom for only slightly more than it would cost to stay in a dorm, so we decided it would be worth it. We are also traveling during the peak of the Argentine summer and having to complete with both foreigners and locals for places to stay. When when booked the place a few days earlier on Hostelworld, it was actually one of the only options! Bariloche is one of the most popular vacations destinations for locals. The Hostelworld listing made it look super fancy, and although it turned out to be not so fancy, it was nice enough (no bed bugs!!). We had a view of the lake from our room on the 4th floor and the people at the front desk were very helpful. Breakfast was included, and it was pretty elaborate when compared to the offerings at most places; yogurt, milk, juice, tea, coffee, sweet bread, cereal and eggs. We have been eating a lot of brown rice cakes and peanut butter (we brought 5 jars from home since it's impossible to find down here!) and fruit for breakfast, but we did have plenty of the free tea, so we could feel like we got our moneys worth!

We spent our first day in town figuring out our general plan for the rest of the trip, buying bus tickets and making reservations. And it was a good thing we did, because the wifi in our hotel stopped working later that day and didn't work again the rest of the time we were there!

I used Happy Cow to locate some restaurant options and found two good ones Naga Kesara (20 de Febrero 545) and Ren (San Martin 298), both of which were "buffets" like the one we went to in Buenos Aires, where you pay by weight. There were actually quite a few veg options in town but we just kept going back to those places because they were cheap, easy, quick and had enough vegan options. We probably liked Naga Kesara a little better because there were more vegetable choices.

Some general information about Bariloche: It's considered to be the principle destination in the Lakes District (a string of towns situated in an area of abundant glacially carved mountains, lakes and valleys), and is also the biggest town. It has a beautiful location on the shores of Nahuel Huapi Lake and is also located within the National Park of the same name. 6,000 ft + glacially carved mountains ring the town, which makes it a very popular winter destination, with many nearby ski resorts. And in summer there is tons of hiking, water sports and other outdoor activities. In addition to the largest lake (Nahuel Huapi) there are many other lakes in the area, all glacially carved. Of all the towns in the Lakes District, Bariloche is probably our least favorite, probably just because of how big it is and how popular/crowded it gets. But nevertheless outside of town is real nice!

On day two we did a bicycle ride know as Circuito Chico (Short Circuit), which is a loop ride along the shores of several lakes, along the base of many mountains and through a forest reserve area called Llao Llao (also the name of a super fancy hotel in the area). We took a bus a few miles outside of town to get the bikes to make for a shorter ride. It could be done from town, but about 10 miles would be added. The loop is a little under 20 miles and is made to seem leisurely. The bike rentals were pretty cheap, around about $15 for the day. It took us about 5 hours to complete with some stops and side trips, however, it was anything but leisurely! The scenery was very beautiful, but we were all ready to drop dead by the end of it from all of the endless ups and downs and from being zapped by the sun! We were quite hungry as well since we never got a real lunch, just granola bars and fruit that we brought along. There were no vegan options along the route! On the way back we stopped at Cerro Campanario which has a chair lift, purely for going up to a viewpoint, there is never any skiing done on this hill. You can hike up the mountain, but as we were already dead we opted for the chair ride. The ride was fun and the view was spectacular. We were able to see the whole area in which we rode bicycles. Once back in town, we were very grateful for vegetarian buffets and feasted at Ren.

(View from the top of the chair lift at Cerro Campanario)

Our remaining 4 days in Bariloche were spent on a multi day trek from one mountain refuge to the next in Nahuel Huapi National Park. The terrain was much more difficult than we could have ever imagined! Very rocky, lots of loose scree and dust, plus a great deal of elevation gain and loss. (Gorgeous weather though!, they haven't had rain in over a month!) We would often come down from a descent and look back up in wonder of how and why a trail was ever put there. The first day was the easiest and the only day of hiking we could really recommend to anyone else. We started at the base of the Cerro Catedral ski area and hiked along Lago (lake) Gutiérrez up through a river valley to an alpine lake and mountain refuge (Refugio Frey) at the base of the Cordillera Cetedral. It was about a 5 hour hike. We were surprised to find out upon arrival that the area was a rock climbing mecca, with some of the climbers camping out in the area for days at a time. We brought camping gear and did not need to eat or sleep in the refuge, but it was a cool old building that was put up in 1956, and it's open year round! As for cooking we have been using Jeff's MSR Reactor stove, which is similar to a JetBoil, only the pot is bigger. It boils water almost instantly and has been very useful for many different types of food with its large pot. I was able to cook brown rice pasta (brought from home) in it the first night, a savory oatmeal concoction of oats, peanuts, olives and carrots the second night and freeze dried backpacker pantry meals (also brought from home) on the third night. The second day of the hike brought us up and back down two different but very steep mountains. The descent from the first mountain was almost entirely on scree and reminded me of Mt Marathon in Alaska, the second mountain was not much better. This was definitely a one way only trail as there was no going back up! After about 8 hours hiking we arrived to another mountain refuge (Refugio Jakob) on another alpine lake. Kirianne opted out of the third day in favor of hiking out the river valley away from the mountains and back into to town. She was a little freaked out by the terrain of the second day and the third was supposed to be worse! And indeed it was! Jeff and I continued along with an Argentinean named Emmanuel and a super fast Italian named Andreas. Few people do this hike, as most of the year it's got ice and snow and is usually only possible for ice climbers, but since the past winter yielded less snow than normal and no rain had been seen for over a month, the conditions were perfect, plus no clouds or wind! The way we saw it, a once in a life time opportunity! The park rangers try to scare you and say you can't make it without a guide, and make you check in upon leaving one refuge and arriving to the next. We had to do a few hundred feet of climbing (level 3) with our big backpacks on, which was a little tricky, but the rest of it was not too bad. We went over one mountain and traversed along a ridge onto another mountain, which we traversed along and then up to a high point at the peak of Cerro Navidad, which had awesome views of the Andes looking into Chile and of one prominent volcano on the Argentinean side, Mt Tronador. The hike was great up until we began the long decent off of Cerro Navidad, which started with several hundred feet of steep scree field, followed by several hundred feet of snow field which we skiied down on our boots, then another couple hundred feet of steep rock field, and more snow field and then hours climbing down rock ledges along side water falls and river and in and out of thick brush, criss-crossing back and forth over the river with steep rock walls and cliffs rising ever higher above us. It was beautiful but extremely physically exhausting! By the time we reached the bottom of the valley we were ready to kiss the ground! At that point we had the option of climbing 1000 feet almost straight up to Refugio Italia or continuing along out the valley to civilization. We opted to camp in the valley and hike the rest of the way out on the last (4th) day. We camped along side the Arroyo Goye about 3 hours up the valley from the trail head, and as we were sitting in the dirt having our dinner, Jeff noticed movement in the buses. We couldn't figure out what the heck it could be, but finally a family of 5 cows showed themselves! We can't figure out if they were just lost up there or if ranchers are allowed to let their cows graze in national parks, but we were sure surprised to see them! We then got to listen to them crunching twigs (and logs!) under their hooves and mooing all night outside our tent! The 4th and final day was thankfully pretty gentle terrain for our tired feet and legs!

The hike in total would have been 5 days, continuing over the mountains to one more refuge, but we are on a bit of a time crunch, because Kirianne has to be in Ushuaia on the 13th for a flight back to Buenos Aires. Luckily for us, each refuge has an alternative access trail, so we can pick up the hike where we left off when we come back this way in a month or so (in the fall!).

Coming off the trail put us in the very touristy little town of Colonia Suiza just outside of Bariloche, along the Circuito Chico (where we rode bikes a few days before). It is an area that was settled by the Swiss, but these days there is nothing Swiss about it. There were lots of shops and restaurants and most exciting we stumbled upon a vegan food kiosk while we were lost looking for the bus stop. It was called Prema Comida Natural, which means natural food! So we got to enjoy salad, roasted veggies, corn on the cob, berry smoothie, salad and lentil burgers with beet dressing as soon as we finished our hike! It couldn't have been better!

From Colonia Suiza, we had about a 45 minute bus ride back to Bariloche. We had just enough time back in town to get some vegetarian food to go from Ren. Even though we liked the other veg buffet better (Naga Kesara) we kept going to Ren because it was across the street from our hotel. Both places had Asian style food. We also changed some money in a t-shirt shop along the main tourist street: Mitre. Guys just stand outside shouting "cambio!" and you go into whatever shop it happens to be and change money at the "blue dollar" rate, which happened to be 13.15 pesos per dollar on that day (the official rate is only 8.5!) Lastly we returned to the Tango Inn to retrieve our excess stored baggage, meet up with Kirianne and head to the bus station for our 5 pm bus ride to El Bolsón, 2 and a quarter hours South.

This blog post may provide too much detail for some, but one of the main reasons I write all this is to remember where we have been for future travel planning!