El Bolson and Bariloche

Big happenings today: I took a four-hour nap. The nap was necessary because the bus I took from Bariloche to here was air conditioned so much that I only got a few hours of sleep, in between waking up to go "my God, it is cold. Why did I think I could leave my sleeping bag in the cargo hold?"

Anyway. I spent Monday and Tuesday in El Bolson and enjoyed it. I did a day hike up past an overlook onto the Rio Azul, to the Cabeza del Indio (Indian´s Head), a rock formation that looks like, you guessed it, a face. It´s pretty neat. The weather was scorching hot and the hike up was lined with blackberry bushes. That night a group of three really rowdy guys got the hostel common room shut down by midnight, so I packed it in then in order to be up in good time for the Feria Artesanal the next morning. There, I bought a few presents for the fam and a pair of really nice dangly copper earrings for myself. For a town the size of El Bolson, the fair was pretty impressive. The aisle of sellers took up the entire south arc of the ovoid main plaza, and there were lots of really beautiful things on sale. Even the yerba mate gourds were nice, and ordinarily I look straight past those because they don´t pass my "will this item look stupid if I use it when I get home?" test. I spent a very happy hour and a half wandering the fair and then departed - I had a bus to catch for Bariloche!

Bariloche was the first place I´d arrived without a reservation, and I had to truck around to a few different hostels before I found one with space. This was no hardship as they were all within about five blocks of each other. Even once I was checked into Periko´s, I wound up hanging out more at another hostel with a few of the girls I´d met in El Chalten. It was quite nice to see some familiar faces, actually, and we tried to go out for a beer before realizing the pub was too expensive for us to ensconce ourselves for the night - we ordered one round and got out ASAP in favour of sitting around playing chess and making fun of Twilight at their hostel. Good fun.

The next day, I took a wander out of town to the Llao Llao municipal park, which is very pretty and is home to the Hotel Llao Llao, reputed to be the finest in Argentina. I wouldn´t know about that, but it certainly looked nice from across the bay. I spent a pleasant few hours rambling around on the pedestrian trails, wondering whether there was any way the pervasive bamboo was native (Dad?). Waiting for the bus back to town, I was forced to buy 100g of mint chocolates by a woman who was not operating under traditional methods of pricing by weight increments.

Thursday and Friday were a real highlight of the trip so far. I hopped on the Club Andino Bariloche transfer out to Pampa Linda, about two hours west of town. Accompanied by a friendly New Yorker named Johnathan whom I´d met on the bus the day before, I hiked up one of Mont Tronador´s glacial valleys and ascended the steep valley wall. One last hour´s walk up a rocky ridge between two valleys got us to Refugio Otto Meiling, which is located between two glaciers and has stunning views of both the summit of Tronador and the country to the east. The refugio itself was much nicer than I expected. The kitchen, staffed by the only two male vegetarians in Argentina, turned out amazing food, but I didn´t buy any because I had been anticipating ski-resort-style food, i.e. overpriced and underwhelming, and had thus schlepped all supplies up the mountain myself, right down the the instant coffee. However, I was able to cadge a piece of chocolate walnut whiskey torte and oh mama was it good. There was also a champagne toast to a nice young Californian couple (Troy and Angie) who had gotten engaged on the way up the mountain. Not bad for a place so far away from anywhere that the stove had to be helicoptered in when they were building it. The mountain division of the ejercito (army) is headquartered in Bariloche, so there were a bunch of soldiers up at the refugio as well, doing some kind of mountain survival training. This is awesome, for the sole reason that Troy and Angie now get to tell people they spent their engagement night sleeping with the Argentine military. As for me, I spent a very comfortable night courtesy of my decision to bring along every bit of warm clothing I had, and exhaustion from six hours of hiking.

A very pleasant surprise awaited me in the morning: affordability! In El Calafate, glacier trekking was in the neighbourhood of 300 pesos: yowza. At Tronador it was "only" 120, so I jumped on the opportunity and spent the morning strolling about between crevasses. Our guide, the fabulous Maurizio, also top-roped us one by one to rappel into a crevasse and climb back out again using our crampons and two ice-picks for traction. A rainbow was hanging over the glacier almost the entire time we were out there. It. Was. Great.

The hike down was a little rainy, but not too bad, and I joined Angie, Troy, and Johnathan for quesedillas at the only Mexican place in Bariloche, Dias de Zapata. After that, there was a house party at Hostel 1004, which is on the 10th floor of the civic centre and has great views over the town and the lake, so I stopped in there and enjoyed some time travel thanks to 1004´s wicked 1970s decor. And that... well, that brings us up to now, because all I did after that was pack up in the morning and head for Mendoza. I nearly didn´t make it, though. The tendency of Argentine bus companies to have several different names simultaneously means that your bus can be kind of hard to spot. I had innocently lined up in front of the only Andesmar bus in sight but fortunately, about three minutes before my bus was due to depart, I asked some the old woman in front of me whether it was the bus for Mendoza. She looked at me as if to say "oh, estupida gringa" and directed me to the correct bus, which had an entirely different line name and no Andesmar insignia. Huh. Anyway, I am now fed, showered, and siesta´ed and feeling much better about life. I have only one complaint: I would like people to stop stealing my instant coffee and tomato sauce. The aforementioned items have been jacked from me twice now, along with a kilo of dried fruit purchased for hiking. Whoever is responsible for these incidents is cordially invited to jump off a bridge.