Tuesday, February 21, 2023

Our family was awake & moving early this morning to travel to El Bolson, Argentina. After months of anticipation, we finally explored Bariloche’s mountains, lakes, downtown/city life, restaurants, and rich culture. And, just like that, it was time to say good-bye to this popular Argentinian city.

Now that we’ve been to Bariloche, I have to say we’re leaving with mixed feelings about this place. It’s obviously a really beautiful city situated on the shores of Lake Nahuel Huapi in the Andes Mountains. Andi did an awesome job finding our family a condo unit that overlooked the lake. Multiple times a day, one of us would look out the window or step out on the patio and say, “Wow!” The stunning views of the lake with the mountains behind it really did take our breath away.

There’s so much culture in Bariloche! We loved observing people hanging out and drinking mate together in the parks. The city’s alpine architecture and German roots were really interesting. The food scene was fantastic — empanadas, steak, chorizo, bondipan, flavorful chimichurri sauces, + chocolate and ice cream shops on practically every street corner.

However, the traffic, sheer number of people everywhere, and the very steep streets were not our favorite aspects. I think Andi and I pictured a relaxed town of about 20,000 people and instead found a city of 125,000 people, plus more due to Carnival (the busiest holiday weekend of the year). Poor timing on our part? Absolutely. But, even without the Carnival celebrations, I think Bariloche was bigger and busier than we expected.

That said, we still really enjoyed our time in this city and had so many neat experiences.

Today, we drove two hours south to the town of El Bolson. Honestly, I didn’t have high hopes for this place as the American expat who we consulted with prior to our trip to Argentina said it was a bit of a hippie town. And since Bariloche was so different than we expected, I didn’t want to set too high of expectations for El Bolson. We have five more nights in northern Patagonia, so Andi and I are thinking we’ll spend two days in El Bolson and then journey further south to the towns of Esquel or Trevelin.

The two-hour drive from Bariloche to El Bolson was really beautiful; exactly what I envisioned when I dreamed about Patagonia: wilderness, forests, mountains, and open spaces. It didn’t take long for the landscape to change to nature once we left the city limits of Bariloche. Andi and I were impressed by the good condition of the highway and really enjoyed our drive south to El Bolson.

We’re booking lodging as we go, so yesterday Andi found us a one-bedroom, two bathroom, duplex-style apartment in El Bolson at a place called Sublime. It’s turning out to be a lot busier in Argentina with less lodging available than we expected. It doesn’t seem like there’s an influx of foreigners traveling though, it’s mostly Argentinians on holiday. This is basically “August” for them since the southern hemisphere’s seasons are in reverse.

Our unit wasn’t ready when we arrived at Sublime, but the property manager said we could drop off our refrigerator items and laundry to be washed while we explored the town today. We haven’t had our clothing washed since we were in Mendoza over a week ago, so everything in our backpacks was dirty. I’ve taken to washing some of our clothes in the kitchen sink and hanging them to air-dry just to stretch the days between laundry. No one else in the family seems to be bothered by wearing their dirty clothes, but I can only handle it for so long.

We stumbled upon an artisan market happening in the town square. It was so lively! There were lots of vendors selling artwork, jewelry, jams & jellies, soap, and mate cups, of course. There were also food trucks and a few vendors selling cakes, but we decided to go to a restaurant for lunch instead.

Downtown El Bolson is a really cute place — very walkable with several restaurants, shops, and a big park in the central area.

We walked to a place called Entre Amigos and found a table on the restaurant’s outdoor patio. It was a beautiful, sunny day in then 70’s to sit outside for lunch. Andi and I decided to order “carne para tres” from the menu — it seems to work well for our family to order a bigger meal and split it amongst the table. While we waited for our food to arrive, we played a few rounds of the dice game, Going To Boston, and War.

Our food arrived shortly thereafter and — wow! — we were not expecting such a big spread. A big cutting board of meat was displayed on our table along with a large salad, macaroni & cheese, and an order of French fries. The meat included three different chorizo sausages, several cuts of beef, and smoked pork chops. Unfortunately, we forgot to ask for the meat to be cooked medium-rare, so the steak was grilled to a crisp. The pork chops and house-made sausages tasted good, though.

We ended up taking half our meal home with us — so much food. By this time, our place was ready at Sublime, so we drove back there to put the food in the fridge and drop off our backpacks. The two-level apartment has a kitchen and living area (two twin beds in the living room serve double-duty as a second bedroom / the living room furniture), plus a bedroom upstairs. We’ve noticed a lot of the airbnbs in Argentina have twin beds in the living room instead of sofa furniture. I’m sure this is how they can advertise that the unit sleeps four people instead of two.

After we dropped our bags, we grabbed our swimming suits and headed to the beach. About 30 minutes from El Bolson in the town of Lago Puelo is a national park of the same name. The property manager at our airbnb suggested a short 2 KM hike in the park that ends at a beach, so we decided to do that this afternoon.

By the time we got there though, it was 82 degrees and really warm outside. Andi and I scraped the hike and decided to walk about 15 minutes down the dirt road directly to the beach. Today is the last day of the four-day Carnival holiday, so the beach was really busy with families.

Tory thought it was funny to sit in the truck of the car to put on her swimming suit.

This beach was interesting because it had green grass. Well, actually, it was more like soft moss surrounding the lake. Andi suspected that the water level comes up higher in the spring and the now-green area is typically underwater. We picked a spot to sit under a tree near a freshwater stream. Farther down from where we sat, there was a sandy beach but it was really crowded there.

There were several peddlers walking around selling churros, fruit juice, and fried bread along the beach. They approached me first asking if I was interesting in buying their treats. “No gracias,” I responded. When Andi returned from walking along the beach with the kids, he couldn’t believe I passed on churros. He ran after the guy and bought a bag for $1,500 pesos.

He and Aden enjoyed a churro filled with chocolate and dulce de leche, then Tory offered the rest of them to a few little boys who were playing in the stream near us. Aden and Tory joined the boys in building a bridge of sticks across the freshwater stream.

We sat by the water under the shade of a tree for about an hour and people-watched around us. It was a peaceful spot. Afterwards, we walked back to our car and drove back to our apartment in El Bolson.

Andi and I were still full from lunch, so I re-heated some meat and macaroni for the kids for dinner. Andi and Tory went for a walk after dinner and returned with a tub of ice cream from Heladeria Las Amores. Tory picked KinderJoy chocolate, coconut, and menta granizada flavors.

Tomorrow is Wednesday, so it’s a work day for Andi and a longer school day for the kids & I.