We arrived in Bariloche after a relaxed and gorgeous couple of days in San Martin, driving through a series of cozy little mountain towns, all with uniformly spectacular views of lakes and the Andes. Our little (too short) jaunt along the Camino de los Siete Lagos included a brief stop in the very promising and quaint Villa Angostura.
Bariloche might be the closest thing in Argentina to a popular hill station town, not unlike Simla or Manali. It's a bustling little place, geared towards tourists and packed with them. Even its streets look like those around the Mall area in a Simla or a Mussoorie. Consultations with our trusty LP revealed some decent sounding hostels, all of which were full and booked for the foreseeable future. Disheartened and close to being resigned to either an expensive or a bad room, we lucked upon a jolly hostel owner who was kind enough to direct us to another hostel, a little off the main strip, owned and run by his girlfriend. Thus we got a room in the warm and hobbit-hole like La Bolsa del Deporte. A TT table and climbing wall in the front, a raucous crowd of international and Argentine tourists, and some lively evenings - where we partook in our first community mate session (and learned the power of mate as a social drink), exchanged notes on Galeano and had melt-in-your-mouth home made tortas fritas (delectable fried bread coated with sugar). We also had a large and tremendously hobbit-esque room to ourselves.
Bariloche is also the starting point of the famed, rugged and sparsely populated southern stretch of Ruta 40. A road seemingly straight out of badass frontier dreams, with miles of open scrubland, barely any access to the rest of civilisation, nestled at the foot of the Andes in their rain shadow, with inhospitable wind and cold and a history of hiding legendary criminals. Nowadays of course, you can get the guided tour version. A 2 day bus ride from Bariloche to El Chalten which we wanted to take and imagine what it would've been like for the never found Butch Cassidy and Etta Place. Politics was going to foil our plans though. There are very few towns in between on Ruta 40 and they were booked up for some sort of political event which we couldn't quite understand. So instead we booked ourselves into a less gruelling 36 hour haul to Chalten cutting East, South and then West again. Our compensation - getting 2 seats cama and bumping into our sunny Spanish comrade, J, who was visiting friends in Bariloche along his travels after spending some fun times in Salta.
In the regular course of things, there is mostly one major to-do around Bariloche (besides lounging about) and that's getting spectacular views of the stunning Lago Nahuel Huapi from on top of the Cerro Campanario just a little ways outside town. A half hour bus ride and you're at the base, followed by a confusing but rewarding hour's walk up (unless you're feeling like a short cable car ride) and you're at the top - with awe-inspiring views of Nahuel Huapi and buffeted by strong and chilly winds. And it's not just the one massive lake, there are others all around the Campanario and a view of Argentina's atomic research facility. Gorgeous doesn't quite do justice to it.
Of course, we weren't in the regular course of things. We landed up in Bariloche for the once in sixty year blooming of the coihue cannae. On our second day there, we trekked through cohiue land starting from the plush Hotel Llao Llao (strangely enough named after a local fungus). The dense growth of the coihue fell all over the path and even passed through a patch of araucaria trees. It's exhilarating to walk through a once-in-a-lifetime event, inadvertent as it was. Our jaunt to the coihue forest brought our Bariloche sojourn to an end, and we embarked on our marathon bus ride with fond memories - of course, not before loading up on empanadas.
Bariloche is also the starting point of the famed, rugged and sparsely populated southern stretch of Ruta 40. A road seemingly straight out of badass frontier dreams, with miles of open scrubland, barely any access to the rest of civilisation, nestled at the foot of the Andes in their rain shadow, with inhospitable wind and cold and a history of hiding legendary criminals. Nowadays of course, you can get the guided tour version. A 2 day bus ride from Bariloche to El Chalten which we wanted to take and imagine what it would've been like for the never found Butch Cassidy and Etta Place. Politics was going to foil our plans though. There are very few towns in between on Ruta 40 and they were booked up for some sort of political event which we couldn't quite understand. So instead we booked ourselves into a less gruelling 36 hour haul to Chalten cutting East, South and then West again. Our compensation - getting 2 seats cama and bumping into our sunny Spanish comrade, J, who was visiting friends in Bariloche along his travels after spending some fun times in Salta.
In the regular course of things, there is mostly one major to-do around Bariloche (besides lounging about) and that's getting spectacular views of the stunning Lago Nahuel Huapi from on top of the Cerro Campanario just a little ways outside town. A half hour bus ride and you're at the base, followed by a confusing but rewarding hour's walk up (unless you're feeling like a short cable car ride) and you're at the top - with awe-inspiring views of Nahuel Huapi and buffeted by strong and chilly winds. And it's not just the one massive lake, there are others all around the Campanario and a view of Argentina's atomic research facility. Gorgeous doesn't quite do justice to it.
Of course, we weren't in the regular course of things. We landed up in Bariloche for the once in sixty year blooming of the coihue cannae. On our second day there, we trekked through cohiue land starting from the plush Hotel Llao Llao (strangely enough named after a local fungus). The dense growth of the coihue fell all over the path and even passed through a patch of araucaria trees. It's exhilarating to walk through a once-in-a-lifetime event, inadvertent as it was. Our jaunt to the coihue forest brought our Bariloche sojourn to an end, and we embarked on our marathon bus ride with fond memories - of course, not before loading up on empanadas.
A sleepy, little town, Neuquen has little to do except visit the dig sites and museums around it where lie a plethora of fossils. Thanks to rich sedimentary rock formations at the site of a water body which receded, there are enough fossils for you to practically crunch underfoot. Neuquen's moment in the sun arrived when the bones of largest carnivorous dinosaur (the aptly and imaginatively named Gigantosaurus Carolinii) were discovered here.
We arrived in Mendoza in the morning, after an overnight bus from Cordoba. Based on Lonely Planet's recommendation, we took a taxi to a hostel called Damajuana, but found it to be above our budget for the day, although it was a lovely place! We walked along till we found a hostel we could afford, although it was considerably less lovely (Hostel Itaka). The only saving grace was our first view of the lower Andes from our window!
Argentina's second biggest city is home to seven universities. Besides being young, vibrant, fun, it is an important intellectual and cultural hub. I personally also wanted to visit Cordoba to see the hometown of Alberto Granado, Ernesto 'Che' Guevara's buddy and travel companion on his adventure through South America, chronicled in the book and movie 'Motorcycle Diaries'. I strongly urge anybody who hasn't watched this movie to do so..immediately!We reached Cordoba after a 24 hour bus ride from Puerto Iguazu. We were given the best seats on the top deck of a luxurious double decker bus - the front ones, with a gorgeous panoramic view. We were served hot vegetarian meals as requested, sparkling wine, red wine, coffee, snacks, and a generous dose of hilariously bad Hollywood films dubbed/subtitled in Spanish (2012, Twilight, or Back-Up Plan in Spanish anyone?). That's how I learned my first few swear words in Spanish. We were really spoiled!
Cordoba was our first brush with the phenomenon of siesta. We arrived around 11 AM at the bus station, spent an hour planning our next leg of the journey (which bus to take out of town etc.), walked the half hour to the hostel we had selected from Lonely Planet, checked in, showered, washed our clothes (we were running out!), and finally set off to have lunch. To our dismay, everything in town was closed shut. Starving, and bereft of much Spanish, we pointed our way across town and finally reached a strange restaurant run by a old waiter. The food was bad, but it was food. We quickly realized that vegetarian restaurant food in Argentina was going to be pizza or pasta, and that we had left the land of sucos (fresh fruit juices of innumerable flavors) behind when stepped across the international border. However, there were naranja jugos (hoo-goes) to be had! Literally, fresh squeezed orange juice.
The next day was spent walking around town, particularly, the University of Cordoba campus, the Palacio Ferreyra (an art museum) and the Parque Sarmiento, a beautiful large green space in the middle of the city. We ended the day of exploring with a free guitar orchestra performance by a bunch of high school kids in the Paseo del Buen Pastor, a beautiful free performance space. Dinner was fairly bad ravioli with our first bottle of Mendozan Malbec!
The next day we took a bus out of town to the hometown of Alberto Granado, Che Guevara's travel buddy. The sleepy little hill side town of Alta Gracia was gorgeous. However, it was a municipal holiday and so everything was shut. We took pictures of Che's house from the outside fence, and ate empanadas at a tiny restaurant run by a very friendly Cuban couple. We also chanced upon large old mulberry trees and MFTree (reminded by the mulberry trees in her primary school in New Delhi) spent considerable time plucking handfuls of mulberries and eating them straight off the tree! Our sneakers were a royal purple mess as we walked away from the trees.