Everyone has that list of places they gotta get to at some point in their lives and I'm no different. The funny thing about these lists is that they constantly evolve. I had always known about Patagonia and wanted to go there, but until I actually touched down in Argentina it wasn't a major priority. After going there, I don't know how it wasn't in my top 3. It is a "whoa" type of place meaning I found myself saying whoa A LOT!
On Tuesday, my buddies Chris and Trevor from Oregon arrived in Buenos Aires with their friend Josh after two months of traveling through Colombia and Peru. Once they landed they came straight to mi casa so we caught up, I showed them around and then we went out for dinner at the parilla up the street. Obviously, their first meal in this country was steak, but not just that. We were all starving so we chose the parillada para 4 personas.
The old lady that works there gave us this look like, "you guys aren't nearly big enough to handle that" so she convinced us to do the same but para 3 personas. This ended up being a good call. The other parilladas I have had here have been at semi-fancy places so they come with recognizable meat products. This being a typical neighborhood parilla meant that we were getting a few surprises. There was of course some asado (beef ribs), vacio (flank steak), and chicken. Even the morcilla (blood sausage) at this point doesn't really phase me. What we weren't expecting however were the cow hearts and chinchulines (small intestine), and in such quantity. Trevor and I were the only ones to try the chinchulines, and aside from the texture, they weren't horrible. Fortunately there was enough "normal" food to get us all sufficiently full. Maybe some day chinculines won't phase me either, but I won't be ordering them any time soon. After dinner I hooked them up with a hostel not far from my place on Avenida de Mayo. Everyone was pretty wiped so we all stayed in and planned to meet in the morning around 10:30 to head to Retiro Terminal de Omnibus to get our bus tickets to Bariloche. We had no real plans for when we got there, but we had ideas.
To my surprise I actually got up at 10 a.m. very effortlessly. That is early here. Very early. After heading to the supermarket to pick up food and whiskey (a recurring theme for the next week) we hopped on the subte to Retiro. A couple stops before we got there, Trevor caught a guy with his hand in his cargo shorts pocket trying to rip off his digital camera. Had he gotten away with it, Trevor would have officially been that "bad luck" guy. In Colombia, he got his wallet, passport (which he eventually got back) and first camera stolen. In any case, we got to the terminal around noon and quickly found a couple companies that ran buses to Bariloche. One for 225 pesos (full-cama) and another for 150 (semi-cama). We opted for the cheap one, and caught the next bus at 1:00. The bus is advertised as having leather seats and making the trip in 22 hours. Naturally, there were no leather seats and the trip took 25 hours. But hey, who cares about details? The trip was fairly effortless to be honest. The bottle of whiskey was a huge bonus. The looks of jealousy on everyone else's faces were priceless, even the people working on the bus. To
stay busy we played poker with paper for chips. Busses here also play movies, that is when the the electronics actually work. After a couple botched attempts at our in-ride entertainment, they finally got the movie "Che" to run. A couple things about this made me laugh. Ernesto "Che" Guevara de la Serna was from Argentina and is somewhat of an idol here to put it lightly. Why the bus company decided to show a movie about this guy with Latino actors from the States speaking English with Spanish accents is beyond me. The acting was also terrible. Other highlights of the bus trip were passing through Bahia Blanca (Manu Ginobili's hometown) and sleeping. What's really funny is tha
t of the 25 hour trip, about 20 hours are spent driving through the Pampa, Argentina's version of the American Midwest. Not a whole heck of a lot to see. The last few hours of the trip were stunningly gorgeous though.
We arrived at around 11ish I want to say, on Thanksgiving. The city of about 90,000 is beautiful. It's like a Swiss village built on Lake Tahoe where the people speak Spanish.
First item of business was finding a hostel. After striking out at this place 1004 with absolutely incredible views of Bariloche, we headed to Hostel 41 Below, which did indeed have space for us. Very chill spot run by a Kiwi who has been living in Bariloche for years now, skiing, hiking and doing all kinds of other outdoorsy stuff. I learned on the bus trip that these guys' priority in Patagonia was to go fly-fishing, because apparently this part of the world is a fisher's mecca. In the States, it's pretty common to have rental shops in fly-fishing regions. Here not so much. The guys quickly found out that in order to actually go fishing they were either going to have to buy all the gear they would need (estimated at about $1000 US) or go through a fishing lodge at about $600 US a day. Plans quickly changed which ended up working out in my favor, as I know zilch about fly-fishing. We ended up finding an outdoor store that sold a sleeping bag/tent combo for about 200 pesos, roughly $60, so we decided to venture into the wild for a few days. After going to the tourist office to find out good routes, we were told that there was a fair amount of snow and that we probably needed snowshoes. After speaking to the guys at the hostel we found out that it wasn't actually necessary to get snowshoes. We went with their opinion. Plans figured out, the next item of business was to find a good place to get Thanksgiving dinner the Argentine way: you guessed it, steak! Everyone recommended a local staple, Alberto's, so that's where we went. Holy shit was that a good steak! Best fries I've had here too. We got 4 half porciones (Vacio, 2 Bife de Chorizos, and a Lomo), 2 orders of fries and a large salad. This would be a meal that would be talked about the next few days while eating salami sandwiches or carrots.
Friday: Day 1 of backpacking
We woke up, went to the supermarket up the street to get our supplies for the next few days: bread, salami, crackers, tuna, apples and oranges, carrots, granola bars, chocolate (Bariloche is a HUGE chocolate town) a bottle of red wine, and 3 fifths of Hiram Walker's whiskey. My guess is that we all had at least about 70 lbs. in our packs. To get to the starting point of our backpacking trip, you have to take a bus with no number to Cerro Catedral (in the winter, it's a huge ski resort). This bus supposedly comes every hour on the :15. If there is one thing that Argentines are good at, it's being late. We get to the bus stop at about noon so we figure perfect timing. Once 12:45 came around and no bus showed up, we started wondering if we were in the wrong place. I went around asking people what the deal with the bus was and got 4 or 5 different answers. Some said you catch it here, some said you catch it 3 blocks from here, some said it comes every hour on the :30, etc...I think it was at about 1:30 that we caught it, 3 blocks from where we were. I guess the proper strategy is to ask a lot of people the same question and then follow a combinatio
n of their answers to succeed. After a 30 minute ride past enormous cabins along the lake we arrived at C. C
atedral and the journey began. The first day was easily the easiest of the four days we would be in the mountains. The day was spent very peacefully except for when we were hiking close to a couple of Israeli guys blasting really horrible Israeli pop out of external iPod speakers. We walked along beautiful dark, dark blue lakes, through bamboo forests, and along rivers for about 4 or 5 hours until we got to Refugio Frey, our first campsite. The place was ridiculous, the campsite was right next to a good sized mountain lake with giant icebergs floating in it atop a ridge. This was a perfect vantage point to check out all the Andean condors flying around, they are fre
aking massive. After we all took our first celebratory whiskey pull, we made camp, ate some food and played poker. We were of course finishing a bottle of wine and our first fifth of whiskey. This led to Trevor naming his tent Abigail, it was weird. Josh and Trevor's tent site was wind-protected, but the spot Chris and I put ours had by far the better view. Before falling asleep we all chilled up at the lake and saw by far the longest lasting shooting star I have ever seen.
Saturday: Day 2 of backpacking
After a pretty restless sleep because of the wind we packed up camp and headed to our next site which at the time we thought was a placed called Lago Jakob which according to the map this was going to be about 7 to 8 hours of hiking without any real breaks. Before we actually left the campsite though, we all had a good laugh watching a couple climbing a huge rockface. They were having serious domestic problems, the husband wanted to climb fast, the wife was taking her time. All we could hear was the guy yelling at the top of his lungs "FUCKING CLIMB! I NEED MORE GODDAMN SLACK!! CLIMB!!!" It was pretty comical. After hiking straight up snow and maneuvering creatively up boulders, we made it to the first pass, where we found an
other lake, Laguna Schmoll. Not only did the hiking require a fair amount of strength and technique, the scenery was breathtaking, there was no need to rush. We chilled up at the lake, tried to stand on the icebergs (the water was very shallow) and had some grub. After another, even bigger vertical snow/boulder field, we made it to the highest pass of the day. Literally one of the best views of my life. The mountains, lakes, and rivers a site to see but what is so unique to Patagonia are the jagged huge rock formations. We got really lucky with weather, maybe a bit too lucky, it was really hot. The hot sun on the snow is so sneaky, you don't realize you are burnt to a crisp until it's too late. We didn't really think about sunscreen until the middle of the second day. I look like a tomato, but it could be worse. From this ridge we looked down at a huge meadow and forest that we would have to trek through to get to Lago Jakob (our originally planned 2nd campsite). To get down there we had to get down a very steep snow field which we all slid down on our asses (except for Chris who managed to walk/ski down it).
After the snow field came the steep loose rock patch. That was fun. Not! It was like walking down a hill that looked like a mixture of Mars and Afghanistan. Josh hyper-extended his knee rafting in Peru so it really sucked for him. No new injuries from this hill fortunately. After we got dow
n to the meadow we walked along the trail in the forest and found an absolutely ideal spot next to a waterfall and stream to make camp and break up the long day. It was a brilliant idea. In the Refugios (legal campsites) you are surrounded by lots and lots of other people. This spot was technically off-limits for camping but there were fire-pits everywhere and even the guy at the tourist office suggested breaking up the second day in this meadow so we risked camping there and having a fire
(pretty sure we would have gotten fined if a ranger came by). We set up camp and headed for the river (it was hooooot!). I think I might have lasted about a tenth of a second in the river being that it is nothing but snowmelt. The night once again consisted of drinking a bottle of whiskey and eating salami sandwiches. This time however it was by a fire next to a waterfall. Life was prettay, prettay, prettttay good as LD would say.
Sunday: Day 3 of backpacking
Definitely woke up feeling the past couple days. This was the first time I had exerted myself this much in what felt like years. Since we had broken up an 8 hour day in two, we didn't really have to rush. I don't think we got out of that campsite till about noon. Once again, we had another day of climbing up vertical snow. On the way up through some brush, a couple of the guys saw a rabbit that was so big they thought at first it was a deer. Bummed I missed it. Made it to the top of another ridge where we met a Swiss couple that moved like they were mountain goats.
In a way they are I guess. Our destination this time really was Lago Jakob and after 3 and a half hours, we made it there, after another really steep annoying loose rock field. The nice thing about breaking up the two days was that we got so much sunlight in every site we made it to especially since the sun doesn't set till about 9:30. At Jakob we got there early enough that I was able to get a two hour nap in and enjoy 4 or so hours of sunlight.
We had staked out our campsite and were kind of put off when this guy traveling by himself set up camp 2 feet from my tent. It ended up working out fine though, he was a nice guy from Herzliyah recently out of the army and traveling South America for a year. We found out he was doing our trip in reverse. After going DOWN those loose rock fields, the thought of going up them sounded like the most unpleasant thing in the world. Finished our last bottle of whiskey (this time it was a bit more forced, we had to get rid of the weight) and hit the hay.
Monday: Day 4 of backpacking
According to the map, our last day was geographically the easiest to handle. As it turned out, it ended up being easily the longest day of them all. For the majority of the time we were following (or crossing) a river. At times when we had to cross, we either had to hold a rope line set up to keep you from going over waterfalls or cross Indiana Jones-style bridges that feel
like they're going to collapse with every step. We found a beautiful spot along the river to have lunch and go for a swim. This time the water felt a lot better for some reason. At the end of day 3 we all began talking about how much we were looking forward to another Alberto's steak but tried to stop thinking about it. At points on the last day, that juicy hunk of beautiful cow meat was the only thing keeping us going. A lot of the hiking this day was nothing more than walking on hot, dusty roads for hours so it wasn't the most pleasant. To get back to town we were told to follow the river to a service road which we would have to follow until we get to the main, paved road where we could catch a bus. Following Latin American standards, this service road had a couple of forks in it with no signs. We guessed which way to take both times and were fortunately correct. After finding the bus and disturbing all the clean passengers with our lovely stenches for half an hour, we made it back to town. Alberto's didn't open for 3 or 4 hours so we showered and chilled at the hostel and decided to all drink a bottle of wine each before getting to the restaurant. I don't know if I've had a better meal in my life. Alberto is the man.
So now that we were back in Bariloche, the next plans needed to be discussed. I knew I was going to head back to BA because I'm paying rent here and being gone longer than a week is really hard to justify, The hostel we had stayed in for the nights before and after the trip didn't have room so they guys went back to 1004 to see if they could bunk there. Not only did they have room but they offered pretty cheap, all included daily fly-fishing trips. Everything worked out for everyone in the end. So now after a very long bus-ride back with more dysfunctional DVD players and bad movies, I am back in BsAs. Good times.
all pics at:
http://www.pbase.com/afirestein/bariloche
for people in the region. We got in a cab (which are all cream colored brand new Mercedes' by the way) and headed to the hotel/hostel. As we drove further and further away from the downt
own area and into what looked like the forest, I could feel Hana's disappointment radiate from her being. Oh man I thought, I really hope I didn't blow it. We arrived and were immediately greeted by Rodrigo, the owner. This guy would become one of the strangest people either of us had ever 
met. He
gave us a tour and then gave us a map to look at to orientate ourselves. When shown to our room there was a standard skeleton key sticking out of the key hole but you could tell it wasn't the right size or anything. We asked if it worked and got a classic response from Rodrigo, "oh the room doesn't lock, no one steals things here." Luckily he was right, we never locked our room and nothing got stolen. The city really isn't very big and it turned out we were a 20 minute bike ride from the farthest point of the city so it ended up being really nice location-wise. His longtime girlfriend who he had a kid with then came out to explain the map to us. This was a funny situation because Hana really had to go to th
e bathroom and this woman was blatantly stoned. She moved very, very slowly and kept talking about all this stuff that we couldn't care less about. All the while Hana is like, ok lady, HURRY UP!! She survived though. After getting settled in we went down the road to rent bikes. Each of us got a beach cruiser for 3 d
ays, which came out to about $5. The great thing about Punta del Este is that it's like the St. Tropez or South Beach of South America but at discount prices. Our days basically consisted of riding around all over the place on our cruisers, chilling on the beautiful beaches, and eating good food. There's not really much else to do out there.
I had locked my bike to Hana's, facing the opposite way, so there was no way one of us could just ride back to the shop and get a backup key or have them somehow break the lock to at least get it free. I ended up staying with the bikes as Hana went to this bar up the street to see if anyone had anything to cut the lock. No one did, but she found this guy who had pliers and a sledgehammer. Him and I carried the bikes, in their jumbled mess, to a place where he could try to break the lock. After placing the part of the bike where the lock was up on a trash can, he held the lock chain with the pliers and smashed them with the sledgehammer. To my amazement it actually worked.
