El Bolson Argentina

"Bolso" means purse in Spanish, and so this little valley nestled between massive cordilleras must have looked like a treasure purse to early European settlers making their way through the wilds of Patagonia. Today, El Bolson is a popular tourist stop, mostly for the outdoorsy crowd, folks looking to hike, fish, climb and ski their way around Patagonia. To boot, the town is one of the most liberal in Argentina, banning all nuclear activity and opposing many international conflicts. Woody remarked several times that it was a lot like Eugene, OR, though a lot smaller and without a big University and ugly yellow duck mascots all over the place. In short, as a couple of wandering Seattleites we fit right in.


We found ourselves a room at Refugio Patagonica and stayed a total of five nights. The Refugio made a great homebase for us as we explored the surrounding countryside, socialized with folks from around the world (the typical hostel crowd) and took Spanish lessons. After bouncing around for a few weeks, having a place to come home to felt great.

We had our Spanish lessons each morning at 9 am with Maestra Sussana, who tried valiantly to help us with the new language. We learned about verb conjugations, past and future tenses and lots of vocabulary. Butt most importantly, Maestra Sussana taught us that Argentinians pronounce Ys like Js, that they will drop Ss from their words at will - everyone (including Maestra Sussana) says "ma", not "mas" - and above all never learn Spanish in Chile, which is even worse than Argentina.
On a culinary note, Woody had been craving some real beef and we we decided to go out for some Chorizo in El Bolson. For those who don't know, the term Chorizo translates as "half a dead cow on your plate." Thank god we were having dinner with other folks as the mound of meat required many mouths to adequately ingest it. And even then, we still had enough left over for lunches and dinners for a couple of days. It's truethat Argentinians love their beef, and as far as we can tell, eating it rivals soccer as the nation's most sacred past-time. As we were leaving town, there was a "National Grilled Meat Festival" starting up not far from El Bolson (we're not kidding, seriously, check it out .)



We took a few hikes around El Bolson. One day we went to Lago Peule, a charming lake outside of town, rimmed by mountains. However, other than a couple nice lookouts, the most notable part of the day was meeting a drum teacher from Buenos Aires named Damian, he followed us for about two hours mumbling in Spanish and telling us how lucky he was to find some people to hike with. We didn't really understand him so just kept hiking - Every now and then he would surprise us with some English and we would get back on track about what he was talking bout for a few minutes and then he was off and running on another subject.



We did head out for an all day trip to Cajon del Azul, a gorgeous slot canyon along the Rio Azul. The hike was strenuous, and the bridges were out of a pirate movie, but we were rewarded with a stunning picnic spot next to an ice cold pool of crystal blue water.


We thought we'd have the site to ourselves, but shortly after arriving, about 20 people - mostly women - from Buenos Aires showed up. The group quickly segregated between the sexes - the women stayed by our picnic spot, while the men scampered up some large boulders overlooking the river. The guys undressed to the shorts, stretched their arms several times, looked at the river below them and decided to smoke a few cigarets to impress their female companions. The ladies look disappointed, so Woody decided to strip down to his undies and jump in himself
Now, it was only a little jump from the beach (no risks of injury), but the water was cold and the bold move prompted cheers from the ladies.

The men felt that their honor had been challenged and so decided to jump from the rocks into the river, which was impressive, as there really wasn't much space for a safe landing and based on the way they flailed themselves into the water, they didn't really know how to dive, or even swim for that matter. But they all survived and felt proud of themselves, the machismo evident from their wide grins.



After the hike, we headed back to the Refugio and packed up in preparation for our long bus ride the following day (Friday Feb 3) to Puerto Montt, Chile, which would be our jumping off point to explore the mystical green island of Chiloe.

For more photos, check out our web album.

San Martin de Los Andes, Argentina

After leaving the amazing hot springs at Parque Huerquehue we made a pact with each other to try to find more hot springs in Argentina - our next stop. We boarded a bus in Pucon headed for San Martin de Los Andes, Argentina. The Bus ride took us through National Park Villa Rica with great views of the Volcan Villa Rica and some time to catch up on sleep (for me).

We got to San Martin in the evening and found a hostel that we stayed at for two nights. There we took showers, did our laundry and explored the town trying to find out where our next backpacking trip should be.
San Martin is right on Lago Lacar (one of the largest lakes in the chain of the Seven Lakes district of Argentina). Giovannina spent part of the day at the beach but the winds were bringing in ash from a volcano that was erupting nearby. It irritated her eyes and sinuses so she spent the rest of the day inside getting ready for our trip to the mountains, while Woody wandered the town in search of empanadas. We had heard there where hot springs in National Park Lanin next to a small lake called Lago Queni. We booked a bus for the next morning and prepared for our 25km hike into the mountains.
Most of the hike ended up being on a dirt road so we were able to hitchhike for about half of the way and enjoyed the ease of walking on a road as well.
This was Lago Queni - It was the end of the road and there was a sign saying one hour to the hot springs. There were lots of people camping here so we had lunch and were glad we were prepared to go all the way.
About five minutes from the hot springs we found the perfect camping spot and swimming hole. There was an old downed tree to help us cross the river with all of our stuff and hot sand to set up our tent on - it stayed hot most of the night to keep us warm after the sun went down.


We set up camp, went swimming while the sun was still up and then when the sun went down we hiked to the hot springs to soak. There were about 20 people when we first got there but they were all on there way out to hike back to the lake camp grounds. We were the only ones camping up there so we could stay as long as we wanted.


Steaming hot waterfall at the Lake Queni Hotsprings. Like having your own outdoor shower.




We got up the next day and headed straight for the hot springs where we sufficiently pruned ourselves in the hot, muddy waters. Before breaking camp, we took another dip in the river and then hiked to the end of Lake Queni so we could catch a bus early the next morning back to San Martin. The weather had changed. A cold rain fell on us as we prepared our camp that night and the next day we hiked in our raincoats. We got back to San Martin around noon Sunday February 29th. Without really knowing where to go, we took the advice of a stranger in the bus station and bought tickets for El Bolson, Argentina. It turned out to be a great choice.

For more photos check out our web album.

Pucon and Parque Huerquehue

We Arrived in Pucon, Chile at midnight on the 18th. It was a long day on the bus, but I got to catch up on my sleep (giovannina writing - Woody can't sleep very well on buses.) He watched me sleep, listened to his History of Baseball on his MP3 player and every time I woke up he would say "were you asleep?"

We didn't have reservations for a hostel in Pucon so we just started walking from the Bus station and a young lady came up to us on the street to tell us her mom had a hostel which had room if we wanted to go there. It was perfect, we both took hot showers and collapsed into bed.
The next morning I got up and went for a run through town. There was a beautiful beach on the lake to run along and I found the campground that we eventually used that night. There is a smoking volcano right next to the town and no one seemed to be worried. When I asked if it does that all the time they said yes!!! Yikes!!!

This was our camp Thursday night.
Check it out a smoking volcano!!!
Well, Pucon was cool but very ritzy and we just wanted to get into the mountains so we bought some food, a fuel canister (side note shout out to Glen Wallace - the stove is AWESOME!), a blanket and caught a bus to Huerquehue National Park. This picture is of our first campsite at Parque Huerquehue. We rested up here for the 20km hike we were planning for the next day to the hotsprings we had heard about on the opposite side of the park.

We started hiking at 7:30am that morning, we wanted to get going before the sun came out full force.




As we hiked it was like a botanical garden or maybe just Matt and Lilias garden ;-) there were ground fucsias and many other unknown beautiful plants. And as we climbed higher the forest was filled with monkey tail trees - soooo.... cool ;-) Just like you said, Hong !

It was a grueling trail up and down but we just kept thinking of the hotsprings at the end to keep us going.
Here the trail turned in to a road and we didn't know if we were going the right way or not but we finally made it to the hot springs and it was wonderful.
Ahhhh...
The next day was just relaxing, soaking and resting the body. The hotsprings run into the near by river - Rio Blanco - so you could soak and then jump in to the freezing cold water. They also had pools along the river that were warm from the mixture of the river and the hotsprings. Bellissimo!!!
Camp was not even 20 feet from the springs - in the middle of the night I got cold so I got out and went to soak for a little bit then climbed back into the tent.
The next day - Sunday Jan 22- we started our hike back out of the park but we had heard from some other campers that there was a woman who sold zapapillos (fried sweet bread) to the passing hikers. Her house was about 15 minutes off the main trail, so we took a detour and went to check it out. There we met Senora Pilar and her husband Juan who lived on a small peice of private property with in the park. They had a beautiful home, garden and yard. We asked if we could stay the night and they said yes, making us fresh zapapillos and hot tea,to make us feel welcome.
Here is our tent on their manicured lawn.
Great ideas for the back yard when I get home.

Relaxing on their beautiful front porch
The next morning, Senora Pilar told us that Juan had gone into town and if we wanted to follow his tracks it would be shorter than going out through the park. We both hate backtracking and were up for an adventure, so we decided to take our chances and head down the valley, following Juan's tracks (actually, it was his horse's tracks).
Some times it was really hard to follow his tracks but we became expert horseshoe trackers.
Other times the trail was easy to follow and we knew to just keep going to the lake.
We got to the lake but never found the town or Juan. After a swim in the lake and some lunch we got back on the trail which soon became a road. We were lucky to catch a ride with a middle aged shipping executive and his hard-rock loving 10 year old son to Pucon, listening to American Idiot and Kiss blaring from the car stereo. We were back in civilization.

(for more photos check out our web album)

Mexico City Pictures

Here are some photos from our stop in Mexico City. To see more, check out our Mexico City Web Album.