I arrived at my hostel without a problem and already I had a good feeling about it. (A pretty funny immediate encounter: When I went down the street to buy a water, the guy behind the counter asked where I was from. I said the U.S., and he said, ´´Ohio?´´ And I said, ´´No!´´ ´´California?´´ ´´No.´´ ´´Miami?´´ ´´No.´´ etc. etc.) When I got back, I met some Argentines right away, but I spent most of the night talking to an Aussie girl, Karla, who had been on my flight from Calafate (and had been to Antarctica before that), and an American guy named Dan. (I think that was his name; if it´s not, that´s what it is now.) Those people (who didn´t know each other before Saturday) have been all over the world and find ways to make it work. They start sentences with things like, ´´When I was in Tibet...¨ or ´´And then I had to hitchhike to get into Nepal,´´ etc. etc.
Since last time I had the first full day in a city to myself, I ended up getting bored pretty quickly, I decided to try something different. There is a popular excursion that tourists do here, called Circuito Chico, which consists of a 65km road course that follows this one lakeshore road to the west of Bariloche. I decided to forego the tourbus in favor of the bicicleta (but I did not do all 65km by bike -- maybe 25km or so). I started off by taking the local bus from the center of town to a place called Cerro Campanario. From there I took the chairlift to a spectactular viewpoint where there was a 360-degree view (then again, what view wouldn´t be 360 degrees if you didn´t want it to be?) of lakes, mountains, trees, nature, etc. I ended up having lunch up there, and it was hard to believe that it was just an 8-minute ride up from the gravel road bus stop. After lunch, I took the chairlift back down and walked 1km or so to the bike rental place, where I had to wait a little bit for the morning rental people to come back. Awhile later (I must say, I am getting much better at signing my life away in other languages), my helmet was strapped on, my water was secured into the front, and I was ready to go.
Near the beginning of this bike route, there is a turnoff to do some mountain biking (as opposed to staying on pavement), so naturally, I decided to go for it. I ended up meeting some Israelis on the path, and we conquered it together, passing some wild boar (perhaps jabalí ) along the way. Later, I biked by the chic hotel Llao Llao and continued past Puerto Pañuelo (a port where boats leave for several nearby island excursions). A few kilometers later, I met up with some other people (a girl from Spain, a guy from England, and a guy from the U.S.), and we all locked our bikes up and hiked to the Lago Escondido (a lake). The Israelis met up with us there, too, and it turned out that everyone knew each other because they were staying at the same hostel. The former three people stayed to go swimming, so I continued on my way. I then went by Bahía Lopez (a bay with a really nice viewpoint) and kept going until ´´the´´ viewpoint that everyone stops at (including tourist buses). I eventually made it back to the bike rental place in tact and feeling no guilt whatsoever when I ate the two (ok, three) chocolates that the bike guy gave me in honor of Easter. I must say, out of all the uphills, downhills, etc. I have two things to note: 1) downhills? funnnnnnnn. uphills? booooo. 2) Circuito Chico? Not that chico when you go by bike.
Later on brought an evening tailor-made for a hostel promotional video. Leandro, a guy from Spain (whom I had met the previous day), ended up making paella for 20 (well, it could have fed 20, but it fed about a dozen of us). And when it was all ready, we all sat around a table and ate, and ate, and ate. Countries represented? Spain, Argentina, U.S., Switzerland, Chile. Number of people? 12. Mmmmmmmm, paella. And we all hung out until the early morning hours, people dropping off one by one as their bedtimes approached. Boy am I glad I met *that* guy. (He only invited people he knew, since he had to know in advance who was coming.)
After a full day of biking on Sunday, I decided to take it easy on Monday. One funny encounter occurred at breakfast between two non-English speakers who were speaking Spanish, so it was easy to overhear. They were saying how they didn´t sleep well for various reasons, one of which was that a girl was talking in her sleep but it was in English, so they didn´t understand a word. At first, they thought this girl was talking to someone else, but then after awhile it turned out she was just talking in her sleep, but it was totally incomprehensible. (I wonder if it was actually incomprehensible or if it was just incomprehensible because it was in English.) Either way, it was funny to hear that because being in such an international environment in hostels all the time, I never stopped to think about these little details that must occur on such a routine basis.
Anyway, that day I had a full-day excursion to go to San Martín de los Andes , a town nestled in the middle of mountains and lakes, like everything else around here. The town lies a few hours away from Bariloche, but the point of the tour wasn´t just to see the town (there´s not much ´´town´´ to see), but rather the landscape you see on the way to the town when you drive along the Camino de los Siete Lagos. In reality, I think there were a lot more than seven, but either way, the full-day of driving to spend two hours in a town just for a quick walk-around and an asado was still worth it. I hung out with a girl from my hostel who hails from Mallorca (in Spain). Our van took a different route back to Bariloche and got back just after sunset. So, I thought that after I had had a full day of biking, a day of sitting in a small van would be good, but it turns out that that´s not so easy on the culo, either! I think it´s better to just change it up, all the time. At night, Jenny (from Mallorca) and I went out for pizza and then hung around the hostel for awhile when we got back. (The hostel has a good atmosphere, so it is a very easy place to kick back and hang out.)
Since I never want to leave a town without having gotten to see what it´s all about, I decided to take part of Tuesday to get to know Bariloche a little bit...you know, take it out for dinner, buy it a drink, etc. After a leisurely breakfast (during which I made a trade with this Argentine guy: I traded away butter in favor of dulce de leche..he said it was like a prison trade for cigarettes), Jenny (Mallorca) and I went out and walked through the streets in town. We walked along the lake to the Catedral Nuestra Señora del Nahuel Huapi, picking up some stray dog friends along the way. Then we walked back toward Centro Cívico , which is the main square in town. Because once we had seen those few things, that meant we had seen the town of Bariloche (we heard the chocolate museum wasn´t worth it), I decided to create my own chocolate excursion, and that was taaa-sty! We knew where there was this one block with several chocolaterías, so we went there, and walked on that block, going into the various places and walking out of each one a little bit more slowly than we had gone in. By the end of the invented excursion, we had visited four chocolaterías, and I had no more room to try anything else, so we rolled on back to the hostel. The rest of the day ended up being a low-key day, taking care of odds and ends and hanging out with various people from the hostel. At night, I went out with Jenny (Mallorca) and Marta (Argentina) and saw some of Bariloche by (dreary/drizzly) night.
It turned out that Tuesday was the perfect day to make the ´´exploring´´ day because Wednesday´s weather was back to perfect, with not a cloud in the sky. I had a mini-trekking excursion lined up for Wednesday, which ended up lasting the whole day. The point of the excursion was to do three hikes within Parque Nacional Nahuel Huapi . The first one led us to a waterfall called Cascada los Césares. We stopped for lunch at Pampa Linda (an area of the park) before continuing on. The second one was a trail called Sendero Natural Saltillo de las Nalcas, where there was another waterfall. The final one (the grand finale) we did was to get to Cerro Tronador, a mountain covered with glaciers. We waited around a little bit for the Tronador (Spanish for ´thunderer´) to do its thing and have some pieces break off and be true to its name, but just as a watched pot never boils (is that how the saying goes?), it never happened. At the bottom of the mountain, there is one black glacier called the Ventisquero Negro. After seeing so many other glaciers that were all the same (well, not all the same, but you get what I´m saying), it was neat to see one that was different. We stopped at a couple of viewpoints on the way back to Bariloche and in general, we ended up having a good group of people from all over the place, really. Lots of English speakers, which was strange to hear, some Spanish-speakers (and one Mallorquín speaker! -- Jenny), some Germans, and one girl from Italy (who is currently living in Barcelona), etc.
At night, we had an asado party at the hostel in honor of Marta (Argentina)´s birthday and for a couple other reasons. I was very glad when I found out that this would be happening because normally Friday is asado night, and since I arrived on a Saturday and I would be leaving on a Thursday, well, you can imagine how disappointed a newfound meat-eater would be after finding out that asado night is Friday. How fun it is when nightlife is brought to you and you don´t have to go anywhere!
Today, Thursday, I leave for Mendoza, and once again I am back on track, with the knowledge that I could have easily stayed more time in Bariloche. Ah well. Such is life. But wine country is calling, and when wine country calls, you just gotta pop the cork and get goin´.
missy
http://andsmilestogobeforeisleep.blogspot.com
No comments:
Post a Comment