Northern Patagonia Road Trip

We left Esquel on Tuesday the 25^th and headed up to Bariloche by bus with the intentions to rent a car in Bariloche and head North camp, trek and explore some of the National Parks and hundreds of nearby lakes. Just the landscape from our trip up was getting us super excited to travel to the different lakes, peaks, and volcanoes. Our first evening in Bariloche we toured the city and saw the Alpine-esque architecture, Swiss influence (meaning lots of chocolate!!!), and many tourists flocking the ritzy streets. Our greatest find in the city was the Todo Integral Panaderia, which had only whole wheat products without animal fats (a true rarity in Argentina..), as well as Mamushkas chocolateria. After walking the bustling city streets we finally settled on a car rental company and made reservations on a ‘carro economico.’

The White Beast

Wednesday the 26^th we ate a quick breakfast at our hostel and then ran errands for food and other supplies we would need for a week long camping trip. We picked up our super rad Chevrolet Corsa and headed off into the great green unknown. As a note, we learned that a Chevy Corsa is a fine piece of machinery. It has no-power steering, rattles like tin cans behind a ‘Just Married’ vehicle, has 4 inches of clearance, and purrs like an old lawnmower. We revved our 68 hp beast out of commercial Bariloche and headed for the Siete Lagos route (Parque Nacional Nahuel Huapi), which has a series of glaciated lakes and beautiful vistas for many twists and turns of the road.

Lago Nahual Huapi

After stopping at many viewpoints and miradors, we decided to take a ride down a bumpy road, which led us to Villa Traful, which is a small town on Lago Traful. Here we had one of the best campsites for our trip, complete with hot water, fogones, and even electricity that we never used. We threw a pre-cooked rotisserie chicken on the parrilla, opened a bottle of wine, and had it with some pre-made veggie salad prepared by Kristin. Not a bad dinner considering we had no dishes (besides a small Tupperware container) or even cutlery, beside our 3 knives we brought along! In the morning we packed up camp and headed down the dusty gravel road to a short hike to an impressive cascada waterfall.

We continued through the Siete Lagos and saw even more lakes and green mountains set beneath a bright blue sky. Impresionante!! We passed through San Martin, had some yummy tea, grabbed some more food, and then headed off to find another campsite. We decided to stay on Lago Lacar and headed 60km down the road from San Martin. The road was rough on our brave 4 cylinder roadster which clomped and banged down the pitted gravel road at a whopping 40km/hr. A speeding truck coming from the opposite direction suddenly, and without warning, flung a baseball-sized rock (at 60 km/hr) that soared right for Ivan’s head. The rock deflected off the windshield, leaving a spiraling crack about a foot across right smack in front of Ivan’s field of vision (it should go without saying that a creative stream of expletives and epithets where shouted with great amounts of spittle and gusto regarding horrible Argentine driving, shitty American cars hecho en Argentina, and anything else that came to mind). This put us in a pretty poopy mood since we didn’t fancy the idea of putting a new windshield on a plastic box. However, once we arrived at our free campsite on the banks of the Lago Lacar, our moods definitely brightened as we shared a beer on the rocky banks and watched the sun go down over the Chilean Mountain Range (we were 5 km from the border). For dinner, we hill-billied it with some wieners stuck on whittled sticks with a few squirts of mustard. Faaancy and yummmmy!

Free Camping!!

Lago Locar

Roughin it

Alstromeria - nonDutchified

Hidden Laguna hike

The following morning we drove up through Junin de los Andes and grabbed some more groceries and supplies. Junin used to be a logging town, but the “damn” hippies over-ran it, so now it’s a charming fishing town that thrives on tourism. After passing through, we drove to Lago Huechulafquen, now in Parque Nacional Lanin. We found a nice little campsite on the eastern bank of the Lago (once again only a few km from Chile). We accidentally (Kristin, that is) grabbed a can of sardines rather than tuna, so Ivan was left to eat the ‘ewww stinky fish.’ Like a true Ukrainian, Ivan sidled up to the fish Kristin deboned and threw it on a cracker with chunks of garlic and mayo (a bit of a desperate meal…). We turned in early and prepared our bodies for a big day of hiking.

Lago Huechelafaquen

We woke up with frost on the ground all around us and a chilly wind whipping through camp. We were the only ones awake at the ungodly hour of 8 am (most Argentine campers don’t even stir until 9:30 – likely attributed to all the asado they have to digest over the night…). We packed a great lunch, lots of water, and headed down the road to the trailhead. The sun started to come out in full force and it looked like it was going to be a great day for hiking. Volcan Lanin (3776 meters) is the Mount Fuji of Argentina, since it is a near perfect cone and has a cone of ice at the top. We ‘checked in’ with the mate sucking park ranger and headed up the trail.

Lanin

The hike was posted as 4 ½ hours up, which we fortunately did in 3 ½. The sun was very intense and bright, but we were under the diverse foliage and trees for most of the hike (please notice the pehuen ‘monkey puzzle trees’ – the prehistoric looking spikey trees). After 3 hours of walking, the top of the impressive volcano could suddenly be see from over the tops of the trees. Another 40 minutes of walking and we were at the base of Volcan Lanin. We decided to have lunch in the crisp air and stare at the huge white-capped volcano. We could see why the park service required so much gear and safety equipment to summit it. We were perfectly content at the base of it!

There were several creeks snaking down from the volcano, down into the valley that we had just hiked up. Very, very cold!!! Ivan hiked up to the ice and got to see it slowly drip dripping into one of these small frigid creeks. We hung around for a nit to take in all the beautiful scenery and then headed back down the mountain. All in all we walked about 16 km that day, not bad for 2 overfed gringos!! We got back to camp and cooked up some salchichas over the fire and were in our sleeping bags before 9:30.

Hiker's tan

The following day (day 5) we drove back towards Junin de los Andes, had a horrible over-priced slow service lunch at the only diner in town, and then drove 200km down the road to a quaint campsite outside of Bariloche. Wasn’t ideal, but when its 9:30 and freezing out we settled. When we arrived Ivan asked the owner if there was hot water. He replied that there was, and then a little later Ivan asked again (to make totally sure before deciding to stay). Well, he said, if you want cold water you can jump in the lake! Okay, okay, you got hot water. Turns out he was a total shyster and we didn’t have to step any farther than the cramped shower to find freezing cold water (arrghh!). We disconsolately ate some crackers and fell asleep on our off-camber tent site. For breakfast we had smoky veggie burgers (leftovers that had to be eaten to due to no-ice cooler) and tea. We left the site as quick as we could to find a change of scenery.

Out the passenger window...

We only had to go a bit down the road before we decided to enter the Northernmost part of the Nahual Huapi National Park. We paid the outrageous gringo entry fee (Argentines only had to pay 10 pesos, compared to the 50 we each had to pay!). It turned out to be totally worth it since the end of the road the bumpy gravel road led us to and incredible spot. It was pretty cold (really cold, actually), but we decided to brave the hike and see the pristine valley.

Unfortunately Kristin’s right knee got really strained (still not exactly sure how, POOP!), so it was a painful ascent up the hilly parts. Luckily the trail was pretty well groomed and not too hard to traverse. After 2 hours of hiking Kristin decided to turn around and take it slowly down to give her knee a rest. Ivan powered up the hill and went about 3 km more to see his very first glacier! It was perched on top of a cliff and was sending down countless, small freezing cascades to dribble in the valley below. Wow!

Worried about Kristin, Ivan ran down the hill and caught up to her near the base of the trail. Both super cold and not wanting to camp in such a chilly spot, we drove back down the road and found a campsite at the base of the mountain. Ivan asked 3 times if they had hot water, with a promise for our money back if it didn’t heat up our chilled bones. Kristin came back with a huge relieved smile on her face – we finally found hot water!! Hooray! We enjoyed some leftover lunch, hung out in the quincho and had some tea, then crashed early in our bags.

The next morning (day 7) we drove 100km down the road to El Bolson, the hippiest of all hippy towns in Argentina, and had a great time. We walked to feria, enjoyed some local treats, and people-watched at a café. We decided that we could spoil ourselves on our last night and stayed in a nice cabana next to the ‘famous’ El Bolson brewery. The brewery was good (best we’ve had in SA so far, but a far cry from the micro’s back home), and we tried 5 different beers. The ‘ale’ was our favorite, so we got a pitcher of it and paired it with the saltiest pizza on earth. All in all though it was a really fun, relaxing evening. On our walk back to our cabana it started to rain, and we were so grateful to have a solid roof and warm blankets when we got back.

Our last day we drove the 120km back to Bariloche to catch our bus that never showed and pay off the stingy renta car company (A-Open Rent a Car sucks!!). On our way back we talked about all the great things we had seen, and how many adventures we crammed into 8 days. Whew! We think we saw well over 20+ crystal clear lakes throughout our travels!! Our wallets still stung from the inflated Bariloche and surrounding area prices, but it was an unforgettable experience we had with each other.

Well, back to work at Campo Lago Rosario!