was incredible. I’ve been back for just a few days and as I tell the stories to my friends and family I realize how amazing our trip really was. First, let me catch you up on where we went and what we did.
After we climbed in Frey the first time we went down for a couple days into Bariloche and I got sick and lost my voice. We headed back up intending to climb for three more days and then meet our friends Anna and Camilo in Valle Encantado (a sport climbing area). When we got back up to Frey I was feeling mostly better and then Jay got sick and slept for three days. I was pretty sure he had strep throat, but wanted to let him rest before we went down to get some antibiotics. In the meantime we met an incredibly fun Irish couple named Sue and Joe. We’d hang out with them for breakfast and dinner and talk about the state of the world and where to travel to next. They are on a trip until September and are doing a lot of trekking in addition to climbing. We did get a few more days of climbing in at Frey, however not as much as we had wanted. We were running out of food though and Jay needed to start his antibiotics “for his heart” which he loved to keep telling me. Sue and Joe came to the Hotel Venecia lobby and had some Malbec with us and then the four of us went out the Boliche for bife de lomo. I had found out that day that I needed to be in Ohio pretty much as soon as we got back to the states, so I had a lot on my mind again. We spent a couple days in Bariloche and planned a trip to the Banos de Cuaelle in Chile, which Sue and Joe had told us about.
We bought tickets to Osorno, Chile and got off the Bus at Anticura where we were to register at the Parque Nacional de Puyehue. The park headquarters were closed when we got there, so we walked about a km or so down the road to the start of the hike. On the way we discovered wild raspberries and picked an entire Nalgene full to have on our four days in the hills. The first evening we hiked up about 3000 ft up in about 3 hours to the refugio just below the volcano. We hung out with a French couple who were on their 6 month long honeymoon and a field biologist from the Netherlands. We shared our chocolate with them and cooked on the wood stove, then retired to our tent outside. The next morning we hiked up to the top of the crater in the volcano (which has not been active for I think 30 years) and checked out the amazing views. There were multiple other volcanoes that we could see from the top as well as (my favorite) the river of lava. It was a very unique landscape to say the least. We headed back down to our packs and then off to the banos. It was maybe an 8 mile hike through this immense desert of pumice before we reached the small stream that contained the banos. It was unfortunate that there were three tents already set up near the most obvious hot spring, but we walked up over a hill and found a beautiful little spot where the river curved around and set up camp. No one could see us where we were, and although we had to cross the freezing cold stream to get to the banos, we were close enough. It was somewhat disturbing the amount of trash and human impact that we found surrounding the springs. Apparently there are guided horse trips in to the area, and you would think that the horses could pack out trash, but it really didn’t seem to be so. Not to mention the amount of horse manure. I’ll never understand how stock causes less impact in many peoples’ minds than dogs. Anyway, the banos were great; the perfect temperature and fairly clean (aside from the pisco liquor bottle). We got a soak in before the rest of the camp had returned from the geiser hike and retired for the night. This campsite was probably my favorite of the whole trip. We had such privacy and a pure water source as well as the sound of running water all day and night. The next day we hiked up to the geiser, which was more of what I would call thermal pools. The closest I could compare them to is the bubbling pools at Yellowstone. The geiser hike offered more incredible views of the surrounding mountains and volcanoes as well as rocks that looked very climbable. There was nothing like old faithful that spouted up in the air, but lots of bubbling pools that gave off impressive amounts of steam. Seems like it might be a good place to get rid of something if you ever needed to. We soaked in the springs again that night and the next morning and then headed back down to the road to try to find a way back to Bariloche. We got down from the (approx) 12 mile hike out in the early evening, but the restaurant that we were hoping to eat at was closed. We instead stopped at the little house that advertised empenadas and pan and bought a sprite, some bread, and a piece of some kind of apple cake. We hiked on a ways toward the border of Chile and Argentina and ended up paying to camp. We were a bit bummed about this at first, but when we saw that the campsite was stocked with a huge pile of firewood and there were hot showers, we stopped complaining. We enjoyed a campfire for the first time in several weeks and ate the homemade bread with fresh hot raspberry “jam”. It rained a bit that night, but we were able to pack up pretty quickly in the morning and started our hike. Amazingly, as we were hiking up a hill without even having a thumb out, a large white semi truck stopped on the hill and backed down to pick us up. Paulo was a 28-year-old Chilean truck driver who took us clear to Bariloche! He smoked cigarettes and talked fast and we had a hard time communicating, but I did learn that he’d been a trucker for 14 years. He started with a fake id that said he was 18 when he was actually 14, and he’d been driving ever since. He had a motorcycle of some sort, I thought it was a motorcross bike, but he said no. He had no family or significant other and he lived in Punta Arenas, Chile. He was very generous to drive us the 2 or more hours back, not to mention going through the border crossing and he wouldn’t even take any money.
We grabbed the bus from near where Paulo had dropped us off and when we got to the bus station, Camilo got on our bus. He had gotten sick as well and Ana had left to go back home. He was thinking of going to Mendoza, but said that he’d go with us to Valle Encantado if we were going there. The bus had already left to go that way that day, so we waited until the next day. Before leaving Bariloche we went to the open air market and tried to communicate to one of the many knitters that wee wanted a panchito for our friend’s little boy, David. Mandi, Roy, and David had been taking care of my Brutus all this time and we wanted to get him something special and authentic. Also, the little man had had his first birthday while we were gone. We arranged to pick up the panchito on Monday when we got back from climbing. When we boarded the bus to Valle Encantado, our friend John, who we had met and climbed with at Frey, was on the bus, so we had a party of four. We got to the river and found that no one was being courteous enough to bring us a boat, so Jay dived in and swam across the wide river to get one. Jay’s not the strongest swimmer and I was stripping down, at one point, to dive in there to get him if need be. He made it though and then, although some people weren’t the most friendly, he got a boat a brought it over to us. I’m talking about a little inflatable boat, nothing too extravagant. We shuttled our packs and ourselves over and set up camp in a secluded little rock corral. We climbed a few easy routes that day and then Camilo cooked an incredible last asado in Argentina. The next morning we tried a few more routes (I could tell I was way out of sport climbing shape) and then headed back across the river to catch the bus back to Bariloche. We had hamburgers at the bus stop gas station and drank a beer for St. Patricks’s day, then headed back for our last night at Venecia.
We had changed our flight from Calafate to Bariloche and when we got to the airport to check in they told us it was going to cost $100 US because of our excessive luggage. We definitely had excessive luggage, however it hadn’t been a problem flying down and we were not too happy that this was the first we learned of the fee. We decided to take the overnight bus to Buenos Aires instead of flying, which would be significantly cheaper for many reasons. This bus was WAY better than the bus we had taken from El Chalten to Bariloche. It had big wide first class kind of seats that even had a piece that folded down from the seat in front of you to support your entire leg. They played movies the whole way, fed us, and even gave us a night cap. If greyhound worked like this I think I’d take it all the time. The only bummer was that we only had about 20 hours in Buenos Aires. I had wanted to go see Evita’s grave and do some museum hopping, but the bus was late, and we were supposed to get there the day before. We did manage to have mate with our friend the fork bending artist, and we had a very romantic dinner with live guitarists. The hostel that we stayed at was cheap, clean, and had a open air deck on the second floor. It was quite nice and I would go back. It was called the Carlos____ , a famous Tango musician.
All in all Argentina was an amazing experience. I would love to go back and explore more, but I missed my dog a lot and I think that 6 weeks is enough time that far away from home. Jay and I learned a lot about one another and I am so lucky to have such a unique, caring, adventurous, strong, competent, intelligent, incredible partner. He is so good at giving me my time and my space. Even as I sit here typing this on the beach in Erendira, Mexico, weeks after the Argentina trip is over, he is milling about in the Rialta organizing, cleaning, and reorganizing. He is his father’s son.
