On Saturday we packed our stuff and finished some unfinished business while we still had the facilities of the hostel, baked an amazing apple pie as a thanks to Eugenia and Diego and did the last bits of climbing on the hazardous but great climbing wall of Los Coihues. It was sad to leave but we were happy to have been there!
Last morning
Climbing wall of Los Coihues
Enthusiastic climbers
Diego's skills
We made an apple pie for Eugenia and Diego
So tastyWe did some big time grocery shopping while we still had the chance at the massive supermarket of Bariloche and started driving way too late in the evening. We had a stopover in a hippie village of El Bolsón where the handicrafts market was just closing down. Because of the popularity of El Bolson and the many happy campers, we thought we’d be better off by driving a bit further away from the city to find a more tranquilo camping ground. Someone had recommended us a small village called Epuyén so there we headed! Until a broken bridge and a river crossing stopped us.
El Bolson and a market
El Bolson with ChrisYeah, no. With the rental car we didn't dare to cross the river although surprisingly many cars did. And surprisingly many cars there were, on this small dirt road!? We didn't pay too much attention to that though back then but started driving back to the main road and further. Soon we figured out that there was another way to the village and happily we stopped at the first autocamping, it started to be a bit late and it was getting dark already. Hah, so much for that. Apparently there was a huge village festival at Epuyén that evening and the whole of the tiny town was fully booked out. That explained the abundance of cars driving into this two road countryside middle of nowhere village. Never mind then, off we went, to the next village of Choloila about 40 km away.
Cholila looked even more dead but after one closed camping site we found another one. A hillbilly youngster working at the site told us in the craziest hillbilly accent of Spanish so far, to drive to the left (towards the lake Lago Mosquito, hmmm…) while all the time pointing to the right (?). First thing I saw when taking out the head torch and hopping out of the car to the dark campsite were some old bones lying on the ground. Nice. There were supposed to be some toilets but the creepy looking, half standing shack didn't look too inviting. Anycase, at least we had a place for the night, a fireplace too and some food so why not.
I woke up in the morning by the thunderous sound of a herd of sheep running around the tents. Chris took his chances with the “toilet” and got stung by a wasp in the nipple. We started off again around noon since last night had been so late and we met the owner of the campsite who turned out to have German parents and some Swiss origins (quite common in this land of European colonies). The conversation between Chris, him and I was held in an odd mixture of German and Spanish, with some English as a filling too.
Sheep in the mo A/C wasn't working, we soon noticed, in the heat of the afternoon sun. Instead of route 40 we took a little detour through a beautiful mountainous National Park Los Alerces with many crystal clear and torque coloured freezing lakes. We dipped our sweating bodies in one of them and enjoyed a light lunch on a beach. The unpaved dirt road was slow to drive and since we started quite late, we decided to continue quickly towards Esquel and back to the route 40. The scenery started changing more and more to a flat desert type with barren hills instead of green lush forest mountains. Also, there was not much happening between the small villages on the way. Yet again it started getting late and to find a camping site proved again to be difficult. Gobernador Costa didn't look like the place to have a campsite so we continued to José de San Martin which was even less the place for one. So back to G. Costa we went where we got pointed to a strange public campsite, Camping Municipal.
Parque Nacional de Los Alerces
Swimming break
Camping municipal10 pesos per person, showers were 5. Alright! The toilets were excellent and the washing place clean with drinking water coming from the tap. Our neighbors were a superfriendly older couple from BA whom were about to head to Chile with their bikes, 600 km driving on a bicycle and some other campers with a guitar and the nicest singing voice, not bad! We cooked excellent dinner, opened a bottle of wine and slept well enough.
Third day we started earlier, around nineish and already around five pm (after one short stop) we came to our destination: Lago Buenos Aires which was located in the border with Chile (half of the lake is in Chilean side). That day the scenery was truly quite unchangeable, the road turned out to be in many parts just dirt road and the wind outside was insane. We got our money’s worth of the window insurance as well, and not even on a dirt road! In front of us, on a paved road, a truck was driving with some rocks as a cargo. One of them rocks made a loud snapping sound and a pretty little ditch in our window. Everyone hurrayed!
Los Antiguos, the cherry capital of the country, was not a highly interesting city as we soon figured out. Lago Buenos Aires brought some nice change in the scenery, this big lake looked more like the sea with its large waves and the snow-capped mountains in the horizon were refreshing after the flat and dry desert. Along with the lake and the mountains came some strong winds.
We found another municipal camping, a lot more expensive and a more conservative one this time. Since we were quite early this time, Laura and Matti went for a jog while me and Chris took a stroll around the city where hmmm there was not much to see. After showering and snacking on a massive amount of the most juicy and sweet cherries, we still went out for the only open bar/restaurant for some beers before bed.
Fourth day we knew would be long so the idea was to wake up early again. Ideally that would have been 7.30 but a dead mobile phone delayed us with 1,5 hours. We continued away from the lakes, back to the desert where suddenly herds of guanacos (llama animals) and flocks of rheas (ostrich’s relatives) appeared on the road sides. Such cool sight these exotic animals, just running around! A bit more gruesome sight were the carcasses of the guanacos rotting on the long (and pointless?) barbwire fences. The rheas seemed to have maaany chicks, already somewhat big but not yet (if ever) smart enough to be cautious next to the road. Some 20 rhea chicks suddenly run in front of our car on one stretch of the ruta 40 but gladly Matti was quick enough to break and let them pass safely.
More excitement to the day was brought to us by a village with no gas station and the possibility that we would run out of gas before the next town. Fortunately Gobernador Gregores provided us with this necessary liquid and also other kinds of important liquids like coffee as well as freshly baked empanadas and other lunch things.
Our destination for the day was Tres Lagos, so that the next day we’d be somewhat close to El Chaltén. Chaltén is one of the trekking capitals of Argentina with its world class sights and hikes like Mt. Fitz Roy. Since we’ll go our separate ways with Laura and Matti after El Calafate, and they probably won’t be returning to Chaltén (like we will, hopefully) we planned on doing an easy two day trek there. On Wednesday we’d drive to Chaltén as early as possible, trek to Laguna Torre and then next day do some side treks and hike back to Chaltén. On Friday we’d drive towards El Calafate, spend the night there, drive with the car to the famous Glacier Perito Moreno on Saturday morning and return the car around 15.00.
Fata morgana
No overtaking
Indian Jesus?
Guanacos
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