El Chalten to El Bolson; a 26 hour bus ride North. Really convenient time-table. You leave El Chalten on the Bariloche bus at 10.15 PM and eventually arrive in El Bolson the following night at 12.45 AM. At that point you have to enquire in your best Spanish as to the whereabouts of a Camp Site. No doubt the closest Camp Site, which is situated about 2km from where the bus stops, is well aware of the strange arrival times of the Bariloche bus, as by the time we got there it was close to 1.30 AM and they were open for business! To be quite honest we would have just set up tent in the first available space had Camp Patagonia had not been open!
Twenty six hours of travel reminded me of those endless train journeys to school, Johannesburg to Cape Town in about the same time. Those endless miles through the sweating Karroo with the windows wide open to get some semblance of air, which was also accompanied by a reasonable amount of soot, which had no problem sticking to Humphrey Powers ginger beer which he had so proudly made before boarding the train and so neatly stored on the top luggage rack, but had completely overlooked the effect of a rocking train on fermenting Ginger Beer. It explodes. It finds its way into every crevasse. Every time you walk, your foot comes out of your shoe as the soles stick to the floor.
On the Bariloche Bus there was no such incident, but I certainly made sure that the overhead luggage rack stored no leak able items. In getting to El Bolson, the country-side and the villages however, were comparable to the Karroo for most of the way. The villages consist of low-rise buildings with hand-painted signage advertising their mode of business. Covered in the dust kicked up by the passing traffic and blown into and over the entire town by the wind. The dusty streets are wide; I imagine accommodating the turning circle of horse drawn carts. Horses are very much part of the village life. The berets, boots, scarves, bandannas are wore with pride by the Gauchos, and it is not unusual to see them riding in the villages with their bereted young sons
As before, there is a sudden change in the landscape, the flat barren land abruptly changes as you start twisting into the mountains, where the melting snow and glaciers create turquoise Lago’s and rivers of icy water too cold for Ewa to swim in!
El Bolson is a really picturesque laid back little town sitting in the bowl of surrounding mountains. It has a real ’60 “Flower Power” vibe to it, with a really lively craft market, which made Ewa extremely happy! There are a number of things my wife REALLY likes and craft markets have to be pretty near the top of that list along with chocolates and ice-cream. Imagine arriving in a town with all three of these things! It is strange really as milk and butter are not widely used commodities, yet ice-cream and chocolate are very much at the forefront of Argentinian life, along with slabs of beef, but you don’t see any cows? Don’t you need cows to make little cows and bulls? If so surely milk is a by-product? Do you get cows that produce “Long-life” milk?
We have now been travelling in the Southern parts of Argentina for a little over three weeks. We have only come across delightfully friendly, helpful and humble people, and their dogs reflect these characteristics! There are dogs everywhere, really laid-back dogs that wander the streets with no particular agenda, never growling, not unfed, just wandering dogs. That is in daylight hours. Night time is a whole new ball game, they bark. Not a little bark here or there at a passing stranger, they bark most of the night. As you lie there desperately trying to sleep you start identifying the various protagonists promising that when dawn finally breaks you is going to identify the dogs and their owners and deal with both of them in a suitable manner. We have had this dog problem once before and that was in a camp site in Ocuweronga in Namibia where the camp site was located not far from the local township. In both cases the local population seem absolutely oblivious to cacophony of sound. The barking is a real reason to locate yourself in an establishment as far away as possible from urbanisation. It is a real problem.
Besides the dogs all other aspects of El Bolson were most agreeable and provided pleasant breathing space before heading off once again on only a two hour bus trip to Bariloche.
Bariloche we are told is the largest ski resort in South America and with this comes all the trappings of a tourist destination, the only difference it is set in a National Park and surrounded by absolutely spectacular scenery. So much so that the one view site is apparently rated by National Geographic Magazine as one of the top ten sited in the world! Not sure of the others but this particular view is mind blowing. It is a 360⁰ view, so you can’t really photograph it and even if you could stitch individual shots together it would be impossible to feel what you are looking at, but here is shot which gives you an inkling of what it is about.
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| 20 Degrees of view |
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| The two of us |
We located ourselves away from dogs in a magnificent camp site from where we walked ourselves silly for two days in weather that can only be described as perfect. We enjoyed Bariloche and if time prevailed we would have spent a week in the area exploring the area, which is what we said we would do at the beginning of the trip, but the arrival of my motorbike in Buenos Aires has necessitated a tighter timescale and as I write this we are on yet another 21 hour bus ride back to our BA base where I pray we will have an uneventful time in clearing the bike, and I will also have further blood tests to check my liver which has not seen a drop of alcohol for over a month. Quite honestly, I have missed the odd glass of wine, but having lost about 6kg I am really feeling on top of the world.
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| Loaded up |
In retrospect, it would have been really useful having independent transport in some areas, but having seen and bussed our way about I am not that sorry we were without it. The distances are vast, barren and windswept to a large degree and would have surely tested our endurance. As it is we are now heading for greener pastures as we venture northwards, and will take a very much more leisurely trip.
The one activity I sadly was not, and am not prepared for, is fishing. It would appear that we have just passed through some of the best trout fishing rivers in the world. There was many an occasion when I REALLY wished Butch Baker was alive. Horses, mountains and fishing that would have been a very special trip to have done with him. Better live your life while you can.
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| Trout waters from the bus |
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