Bariloche, Argentina

Bariloche, Argentina. This has all around been the most beautiful place we’ve visited. Beats the Sacred Valley in Peru (sorry guys), Machu Picchu included, beats Bogota and Medellin in Colombia, and we even think it beats the stunningly jaw-dropping powerful view at Iguazu falls. In fact it was just beautiful enough to turn our reservation of two nights at the awesome Alaska Hostel into 11 nights with a camping trip in-between. Next time you’re thinking about a vacation in the Alps, check out Bariloche first. It’s absolutely gorgeous with a quaint ski town vibe, the hostels will run you a whopping $20 a night in the 8-bed but really nice dorm room (much better than it sounds for you non-travelers), and while we couldn’t regularly afford the ten to fifteen dollar all you can eat steak BBQ style parillas, I’m sure it won’t wreck a shorter vacation’s budget. It’s a homey little Swiss cabin-town that wound up in the mountaineous backcountry of Argentine Patagonia.

Seriously, so beautiful!

Too much happened during this time to squeeze into a post (100% not a lazy thing), but we’ll cover the major hits. As previously mentioned, we reserved two nights in a log cabiny-type hostel and headed over on the bus as soon as we got our bearings in town. The Bariloche bus stop sits just up the lake shore from the main “downtown”, if you can call it that. We took the bus through town, and then 7.5 kilometers up the lakeside road to our stop, just downhill of Alaska hostel. It was a 10-minute bus ride and then a five-minute walk uphill to the place, but it was one of the few hostels with availabilities left and we were actually quite keen on the idea of it being outside of the main town area. It’s a log cabin style home in a small hillside neighborhood overlooking Nahuel Huapi Lake. The 360-degree snowcovered mountain view was stunning, and with the sunlight welcoming us from 6:00AM to 11:00PM it stayed cool and crisp during the day and just a bit nippy through the night. The dorm room had great heating and comfy beds and blankets and with great staff to top it off they really made you feel at home, even with the other 25 random guests sharing space and company in a log cabin in the mountains. Better yet was the spacious kitchen equiped with three separate ovens and stoves and two large sinks. There have to have been five-groups of anywhere from three to five people all cooking and preparing meals for New Years Eve dinner, and we never ran out of cooking space. So if you’re ever in town…

Waiting to catch the bus in Bariloche has its peaks!

Ali’s knee started to bother her (it must be contagious) shortly after arriving in Bariloche, and though we got a good first hike in around a short circuit hiking trail in the Nahuel Huapi National Park, right on the lake, we took the next few days to catch up on sleep and just soak in the view. While Ben hiked off on his own and gashed his shin being dumb, our first real adventure had to have been our casual but legit afternoon bike tour.

This particiular viewpoint was absolutely breathtaking!

Bariloche, Argentina.

Bariloche is a town that receives its fair share of tourism, and thus has a significantly structured list of tourist attractions. Though we typically aren’t for the pre-planned and hand-packaged tourism experience, a few of the options still took our fancy. The first was this bike ride. It’s a little over priced, but everything in Patagonia costs 50%-100% more than the rest of Argentina. So we paid just over $20 a person to rent mountain bikes and ride around a recommended 25km loop of the most scenic area on the main peninsula. You spend nearly the entire time on the blacktop, but the majority is lacking in traffic and allows for a smoother ride and a more comfortable way to enjoy the scenery. The bikes are nice, and come with a helmet and lock, which came in handy for stop-off cliffside viewpoints, as well as taking a break to let the rain storm pass while enjoying our included free beer sampler from the local brewery Gilbert’s. Well we tried to let the rain pass. The storm seemed no more likely to pass on by even after our beer sampler, pints and bowl of peanuts. Nor after the empinadas. Sometimes you just gotta roll with the punches. The next hour turned into surely the most uncomfortable bike ride we will ever (hopefully) experience. We still had well over 10km to go, and we were just entering the hilly section. We rode those 10km in a torrenchial downpour on the what could not even be described as a shoulder of the two-lane road in the hillside covered home stretch, in somewhere between 40 and 50 degree temperatures. It was New Years Eve and we were afraid all the grocery stores would be closed by the time we made it to our hostel and back out for dinner supplies, so we also had to stop at one of the few proper grocery stores in the area. We literally mopped ourselves through the store attracting more than a common stare. But we picked up our pasta and booze and sloshed back into the rain. Only the final two or three kilometers remained, and we decided we’d power through rather than locking the bikes and leaving them to bus back in the rain. On our final climb into the neighborhood the clouds split and the sun shone through, and the rain stopped as we trudged up the steps into the cabin. Some things in South America are right on time!

Ali pre-misery.

It’s too bad that the free tasting didn’t include a beer this size!

It’s still only 6:45PM on New Years Eve, and we’re soaked and freezing cold and the sun is far from setting. The night is still young. After defrosting in the shower and lying down for a bit we decided we’d get started on dinner. We enjoyed our nightly Argentine ritual of opening a bottle of red wine (we just open them…we don’t actually drink a bottle each night…), and got to work on dinner. I’ve honestly been thoroughly impressed with our on the budget foreign-food option cooking improvisation, but this one was probably our worst…Overcooked spaghetti and marinara sauce (Ali was not cooking)…But hey, it was 10PM on New Years Eve in Patagonia and the sun was still up, the night was young! By the way, if anyone did not know, as I did not, Patagonia is an area that covers land in both Chile and Argentina, with various cities and provinces within it.

While hanging out in the kitchen we started chatting with Paul and Rebecca, another young couple from the States (Denver to be precise), who (whom?) we had quickly become good friends. They’re even more legit though, and are on a 12-month ‘round the world trip. We’re jealous. We had met up with them for a local brewery’s happy hour a few days prior, and Ali even had a propper doc’s opinion on her bum knee, as this cool couple consists of two licensed doctors. Thanks Paul for your expertise!

We had talked about going out and finding a bar and/or some live music for New Years, but they were on to something better and were generous enough to invite us with. They had met an x-professional snowboarder/professional chef from Italy who had a house on the water and had invited them to join for his private New Years party. Because that happens every day…We were in and were picked up by their mutual friend for a ride to the house. The word house is an understatement, as the man had personally designed and built the mansion himself bit by bit, putting work in to it over the course of 20+ years. It was trully a work of art, and had the lakeside mountain backdrop view to top it off. We arrived not long before the ball dropped, and were shuffled into the open kitchen to join the other 40 local guests for a champaigne toast. That night beers and wine were on the house. Which later turned into our lovely new friends covering the tab.

As the night went on and we had more drinks we started pondering how we would make it back to the hostel. It was a solid five kilometers and the buses weren’t running until 6:00 at the earliest. We got dropped off at the end of the street by a friend’s friend, and as there were eight of us piled in a sedan, I logically rode in the trunk. A younger Swiss lad had offered to let us hang out at his uncles house and have a glass of wine until we needed to leave. We said why not, and were welcomed by nine farming herd-dogs. The five of us sat down, had a glass of wine and plenty of Mate, and attempted to stay up and chat until dawn. But this was the reality:

One of us woke up an hour or two later (maybe 5:30AM at this point) and decided we should better go try our luck. We walked down the long driveway and realized no bus would be passing down this street. But sure enough, just around the corner, came an old pickup truck with two teenagers in the front. We asked if we could hop in and they said sure. We’re hoping they were up early on their way to work…We got back to our hostel around 6:00AM and crawled right back in bed. Twas the most intersting and awesome New Years experience yet. Thanks again Rebecca and Paul.

In the words of Borat, “GREAT SUCCESS!”

Bariloche serves as the base of a ski town in their winter, and during these summer months the lift-side revenue is hiking and biking tourism on the barren slopes. The Cerro Catedral main lift runs (wind permitting…) daily from 8:00-4:30 and every day there were solid lines of visitors wanting a lift to the top. There is a restaurant on top, as well as hiking trails, but most just do it for the amazing panoramic view. We, however, rode it for the ride to the bottom. There is a network of downhill mountain bike trails that they groom each summer, and after hitching a ride to the top with your rented downhill bike attached to the lift, it’s no pedalling and all downhill from here. I don’t think we quite realized what we were getting in to, but it helped clue us in when we donned our gloves, motocross helmets and body armour. Literally. Body armour.

Ride or die!

TGFBA (thank goodness for body armour!)

And yes Andrew, there was a dragon at the bottom that we had to slay.

Ali fell on our first decent, and jammed her already bum knee between the bike and a rock pretty good. She’s obviously a trooper though and rode on with her recently earned goose-egg. Ben delayed his wipeout until later in the afternoon, but definitely won the more dramatic fall. Really not sure what happened there, but the result was a beautifully quick over the handlebars and flat on the back wipeout. The nice external frame of the backpack helped cushion the fall (thanks Dad), not to mention I was, and apparently for a reason, wearing body armour. I got the dirt out of my mouth, stretched, and hopped back on and we continued to enjoy the day. This was also a bit pricey, costing $30 just for the unlimited lift pass (one ride cost $15), and another $80 or so for the bikes and gear, but they were top of the line bikes, and you really felt like you were coasting down the mountain regardless of the rocks and roots that pepper the trails. It was an adrenaline rush and a cool experience. Chalk up another success in Bariloche.

Crash and burn.

Chair lift to the top of Cerro Catedral.

Next on our list would obviously be skydiving. Ben had never been, and we figured that there would be no better place to top the view than falling to Earth in Bariloche. Along with downhill biking, our skydiving attempt was not successfull on our first try due to high winds. But the next morning we returned, and were able to jump. We rode to 10,000ft in the tiniest 1-seater hot-pink plane we’ve ever seen, and after 25-minutes of ascent, Ben was out the door. Ali quickly followed, and the following 20-seconds of free fall were some of the best views we’ve ever witnessed, when tears weren’t streaming across your eyes. It flew by way too quick, but was an absolute rush and worth every penny.

So pumped!

“Time to die” as Ali’s non-English speaking instructor continuted to say.

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all!

Our final big adventure here was looking to be a hike to El Frey. El Frey is a point off around the ridge from Cathedral Mountain, slightly south of the Lake, and is the first refugio along a long network of community run and supported camp site lodges. El Frey was about an 11 km-hike through the beautifully rugged mountain landscape. We passed through three distinct areas of hillside wooded desert, followed by a denser stream-crossed forest, with the final 2km ascent passing up through the treeline and to the small valley-lake on top of the mountain. The area is completely surrounded by spire-topped mountain peaks. After hearing from a passing group that the refugio (large two-storey wooden cabin with a kitchen on the bottom and a big dorm room on top) and it’s surrounding camping zone (free with your own gear) were quite full, and that a very large school-group of kids had just arrived to camp, we decided that we would set up our tent in a nice open area along a stream, about an hour shy of arriving at El Frey. We were happy we did, as the woods were beautfiul as the sun wound down (or really as the Earth spun) and it was as peaceful as could be imagined. The coolness enclosed in the thick surrounding woods however quickly turned into a coldness, and we spent most of the night shivering under our blanket. Never underestimate the cold in a tent…

First part of the hike to El Frey.

The sun was still up and we were already freezing our butts off…

We decided we would wake up early the next morning and hike the rest of the way to the top. How we slept until 1PM in a tent without a sleeping pad we will never know.

We hiked the final hour to the top, and were instantly satisfied with the journey. It really is stunning up there. There is a small circular lake sitting in this tiny valley at the top of the mountains, with hundreds of individual spires of granite rock thrusting up into the sky. It was like a castle wall around our camp, and the stars seemed about as bright as they could have been had we been in a castle that night. Miles and miles from the closes small town and at an elevation of about 1700 meters, the night sky in the Andes is absolutely spectacular. Each camp spot had a hand-built rock wall to help protect it from the face of the nightly wind, but even that allowed for a hurricane experience simulation. Throughout the entire night we went through repeated stages of 10-minutes of light breezes followed by 6-minutes of intense violently windy shaking. We had no fear for our lives whatsoever, but we were fifty-fifty on whether or not we’d have a tent over our heads when we woke up. This video shows a brief glimpse of what we experienced that night.

It was a hike to get to the top.

Can you spot the refugio?

Before nightfall we explored the valley a little, and even went for a brief swim in the lake. But again at this elevation and in 30-degree temperatures and a brisk wind, the 50 degree water was more than a bit nippy. I also got a little overzealous and scrambled and bouldered my way up to the top of the tallest-closest spire. There were a few spots, including mounting the spire itself, where I was actually a little nervous, but the view from the top could not have been more rewarding.

In-SPIRE-ing.

If anyone enjoys hiking and climbing this is the place to go. We hadn’t had enough with two nights, but with less than a week to get down to Ushuaia and head back to Buenos Ares for our South American departure, we had to head back to town and get a move on.

We look forward to the opportunity to visit Bariloche again some day, and highly recommend it to anyone passing through Argentina.