Patagonia Pt. 1 - The Lake District

We flew from Buenos Aires to Bariloche, a town known as the ’Gateway to Patagonia’ in the Argentine Lake District - a place similar to something between our own Lake District at home & certain elements of the Canadian Rockies. We were immediately introduced to the highly changeable Patagonian weather with a dose of snow & freezing winds - very different to the weather we had left behind in Buenos Aires only 2 hours earlier.

Bariloche is the largest town in this area, situated on the shore of lake Nahuel Huapi with beautiful views out across the Andes. The town itself is very much like a European Alpine resort in appearance & acts as the main town for the largest Argentine ski resort, Cerro Catedral - at this time of the season pretty much closed except for a couple of runs on the very top of the mountain, but which the bus loads of kids from BA were still seeming to enjoy. There are many small souvenir shops, boutiques, local micro breweries and lots of chocolate shops for which it is famous for all over Argentina.

The best way to make the most of Bariloche & the surrounding area is with a car, so after a couple of days in town we hired a car for a week to explore the area. We spent a day travelling around the ‘Circuito Grande’ also known as the ‘7 Lakes circuit’ within the Nahuel Huapi National Park that encircles Bariloche - (during which Claire‘s camera inexplicably decided to completely stop working, conveniently just out of warranty as well…you can imagine our surprise!?!);

We took another day taking in the ‘chico circuit’ or ‘small circuit’ which takes you through some of the early European colony areas & is also where some of the most panoramic views in Argentina can be enjoyed;

A few days were spent on tour south of Bariloche along Route 40 to El Bolson, a small ‘hippy’ town famous for its artesian beers, crafts fair and a woodland area called ‘Bosque Tallado’. Bosque Tallado is a forest that burned down a few years ago that has been brought back to life by local artists, who have sculpted pieces of work out of the burned trees and logs;

The last few days were spent in Esquel, famous for the Old Patagonian Express narrow gauge Steam locomotive that still runs weekly, and driving through the Los Alerces National Park where we met an Argentine couple (Gaston & Laura) that invited us to sit and join them in one of the main Argentine traditions by the shores of a lake, drinking ‘Mate’ - a herbal drink shared from one cup through a metal straw, which is far more popular than Coffee or Tea in Argentina. We ended up giving them a lift back to El Bolson, as the weather turned bad and their camping intentions quickly vanished. We rounded the week off with a trip to see a unique phenomenon… a black glacier. Glacier Tronador is black in the lower sections due to it running down the flanks of an extinct volcano, & hence the ice collects a huge amount of volcanic sediment, colouring the lower half of the glacier black & grey.

When enquiring about buses to our next destination, El Calafate, we were surprised to learn that it involved a 40 hour bus journey predominantly on an unpaved road… not really fancying that we booked ourselves a 1 hour flight with Aerolineas Argentina. When we arrived at the airport the following morning, we were told the flight was cancelled - much to the annoyance of many of the passengers, but with us not having work or an agenda to keep to and being cheapskate travellers now, we were more interested in what they were offering in terms of compensation….which turned out to be a night in a 5* hotel in Bariloche, seats on the next plane out the following morning, dinner at a nice restaurant in town and breakfast the following morning - all in all not a bad deal…TUI, take note!

After one of the best nights sleep and food we had experienced in a while we made our way down to El Calafate, though not quite with Aerolineas Argentina - the company we had originally booked with, but with a chartered plane from the Argentine Air Force - something of a no frills affair, but quite amusing all the same. The skies were completely clear during the flight and the views on the way down to El Calafate made the cost of the flight worthwhile in itself. Flying down the Eastern edge of the Andes, to our left we had the vast Patagonian steppe and a multitude of lakes of varying colours, to our right the ‘Los Glaciares National Park’ with perfect views over the Andes, the Fitz Roy mountain range and the whole Southern Continental Icefield, the 3rd largest ice mass in the world, after those of Antarctica and Greenland.