Route 40 - El Calafate to Bariloche (3 - 12 April 2008)
Already time to cross over to Argentina? Yes, we decided to see the South of Argentina while we are in Patagonia. Argentina is such a huge country that we might as well take up the logistical opportunity (sounding a bit like an engineer, aren’t I?) and cover ground here. We entered the Argentinean border from Chile via bus on a bitter cold and windy day. Thank goodness that we did the ‘W’ trek in Torres Del Paine before this horrible weather struck!
We arrived in El Calafate’s bus terminal and walked just around the corner to our hostel, Albergue Lago Argentino. This was a cosy little place with a spectacular heating system (very important commodity in this area it seems!) Then we skipped off to an ATM to acquire some Argentinean currency. What a frustration - we could only withdraw 320 Pesos at time. So we did some multiple transactions at a R20 transaction fee per withdrawal (yes, how does this system make sense?) and popped into a restaurant. Eon ordered a steak and I ordered ravioli. I had to laugh when the food arrived. Eon’s steak was a spectacular piece of beef, but it was steak and only steak and nothing else but steak! No salad or french fries, just STEAK. Not that this bothered Eon in the least, he was smiling from ear to ear, indulging in his first Argentinean steak. And he reported that it was a top class steak.
Speaking about good food, I discovered a very bad thing here in Patagonia. It is called Dulce de Leche (translated as “sweet milk”), but I think they should have called it Dulce delicious! It is the type of caramel that we use in South Africa to put in between layers of cakes or in some pastries. Here they sell it in tubs and people eat it on bread like we eat jam on bread. Well, we just eat it straight from the tin! So if you notice that our cheeks are a bit rounder, you know what to blame!
The next day it was off to the Perito Moreno glacier, the biggest glacier in the area. It stretches over 30 km in length and its surface height above the water is 60 meters! The terminus of the Perito Moreno Glacier is 5 km wide, with a total ice depth of 170 meters. At its deepest part, the glacier has a depth of approximately 700 meters. So you can only imagine how excited we were to lay eyes on this sight. Unfortunately, it was still bitterly cold and the wind was terrible and to top it all off, it also started to rain. We fought through the icy conditions for about two hours and then retracted into the nearby cafeteria for a hot coffee. Of course, at this stage, we did not know that this weather would persist for following weeks to come.
We decided not to stay in El Calafate for too long, seeing that we were stranded in our room most of the time and besides the glacier, the town had not much to offer. And so we booked a bus to Bariloche via El Chalten. We planned to do some trekking in the Fitz Roy area in El Chalten, but alas, no sun, icy winds and rain, rain, rain! It was a struggle to walk out of the hostel to the nearest supermarket. Then in the hostel, in the middle of the day, the bedbugs launched an attack on me (again). We were stuck between a rock and a hard place - it was either inside the hostel with bedbugs and an American girl that was in love with her own voice and without notion of her decibel-distortion OR it was outside in the wind, cold and rain…. So we dragged ourselves to the supermarket, bought some goodies for a gorgeous pasta and a nice bottle of red wine. Yip, the wine did the trick! The bugs still had a party on my exposed skin (neck and face!) but I didn’t feel it and didn’t really care 
Seeing that we could not even see one single mountain from our rain-covered hostel window, we decided to move on to Bariloche in hope of better weather. So we never even got to see the famous Fitz Roy mountains, what a disappointment!
The bus to Bariloche takes 26 hours! Day one stretches from El Chalten to Perito Moreno (12 hours) and day two is from Perito Moreno to Bariloche (14 hours). Spending two consecutive days in a bus with foul-breath, loud-mouth Israelis is not my idea of fun! I really do not understand how the second most annoying nationality in the world wants to try and be more like the most annoying nationality - Israelis attempting to talk with an American accent. Okay, let me not be this judgemental, we have met some really nice Americans on this trip…
At one of the few stops along the way to Bariloche, there were two seemingly tame llamas. Two of the older ladies in the bus proved the opposite when the llama jumped up onto them and knocked them over. One was quite badly injured, she nearly fainted and had a bloody wound on the back of her head. Of course, watching the action from a distance proofed to be far more entertaining than the two ladies would think. And after the llama knocked them over, it started chasing some of the other bus companions around. It was quite hilarious seeing a girl run around the bus in a flat spin with a comical llama bouncing after her And then we had to make a run for the bus - everyone pushing and shoving to get through the door at the same time, with the llama short on our heels.
We arrived in Bariloche at around 22:00 and roamed the streets in search of accommodation. We found a room for the night in a well kept hotel. We only realised the next morning that the hostel we were looking for was right next door to the place where we stayed. So we checked out and moved to the La Bolsa del Deporte youth hostel. The hostel was great and we had a nice room with a big TV and Wi-Fi. We had so much laundry to hand in, we had not even done laundry since we returned from the ‘W’ trek in Chile (besides for some undies here and there). I literally took the clothes from my body, shoved it into the bag with the rest of the laundry and walked off to the laundromat in shorts and a raincoat. Oh, have I neglected to mention that the weather was still horrible?
Bariloche is a medium size town in the Lake District and serves as the gateway to Patagonia. It is also Argentina’s chocolate capital with many shops lining downtown’s streets, luring suckers like me to their den with the most delectable aromas. But besides the chocolate, Bariloche is also home to one of the country’s top ski resorts and it offers various activities in the surrounding mountains like trekking, mountain biking, fishing and climbing. And even though it sounds like there is so much to do, we were again limited by the weather conditions. Really, we are not wussies, it just isn’t fun being outside in 6 degrees Celsius, wind and rain.
And just when the weather could not possibly get worst, we woke up the following day with a brilliant blue sky! It was still a mere 7 degrees outside with an icy wind, but we just had to grab the sunny opportunity. We took the local bus out of town and rented bicycles to tour the Circuito Chico, a 26km circuit amongst mountains and lakes. My hands were freezing and my thighs were aching from the cold and strenuous uphill combination. But it was bliss to have the sun on my face for a change and the views were amazing.
On collecting our laundry, I had a near heart attack! All my underwear was a faint orange colour and they lost one of my hiking socks. I tried to explain to the woman that my clothes are not supposed to be orange. “Es no blanco” I said in my best Spanish. But she just got upset and told me that I should have washed it by hand. So whose fault is that?! Then I showed her that I only have one sock. Damn it, those socks are the only whole hiking socks I have left and they cost more than the expensive fee we were paying for the laundry! She argued that I only gave her one sock, but I know that this was not true as I took those socks right off my feet in shoved them into the laundry bag. I then refused to pay the whole fee for the laundry and her eyes nearly popped from her head. I stood my ground, hoping for a discount of some sort and then she said, shoving all our laundry into Eon’s arms: “Adios!!!!” So we left, my heart pumping in my throat, without paying a cent.
The last day in Bariloche (back to unbearable weather) was spent in the town - we did some chocolate shopping and then took the 20 hour bus to our next destination, Mendoza. No, this town has no relation to the African singer…
Click on image below to view El Calafate to Bariloche gallery: