Join the game, boy

Join the game, boy

We stayed in Bariloche a few days - It was quite a novelty, it's a touristy town so shopkeepers speak English, and there were other foreign travellers which made a refreshing change to truckers.
Best of all we met Lorna, who was working at the hostel and helped immensely with finding second-hand clothes and our still basic Spanish, and we became great friends.
Kevin came down with a freaky fever so rested while I browsed the horifically priced camping shops to replace some of my kit to help ensure I kept all my digits on future Andean adventures.

It's a beautiful city (well, the centre anyway) with swiss-style mountain architecture, on the edge of the Nahuel Huapi - a huge lake bordered with snow-capped mountains on all sides, and it's in the middle of a huge national park, which the huge four thousand metre peaks which overlook the city from the west are in.

Saturday December 15 2012

We walked south out of Bariloche, and continued hitching the infamous Ruta 40.
We got a lift in a small Mercedes van carrying double it's weight limit in sugar slowly to El Bolson.
I've forgotten his name, but our host was nice, spoke clearly and explained anything we didn't understand in simpler terms, and was interested in our trip and had plenty of interesting things to say.

It was a blessing travelling so slowly as the stretch of road is incredible.It winds through the edge of the Andesalongside beautiful lakes and formidable rivers, through daunting mountains and breathtaking valleys, with our new friend naming each of them as we went.

Sunday, December 16 2012

The mysterious paradisical town in Patagonia Kevin had been told of by his Argentine friend (see first post) was called Lago Puelo, and we'd decided to walk the last part of our journey there from El Bolson.
That day I was glad to have lost all my belongings, Kev was struggling with his bags and we were soon hot and sweaty walking down the quiet road to Lago Puelo.
Before long it was raining.

It was a beautiful stretch, but more than once I was tempted to get the old hitching arm out just to get out of the rain, but we stayed true to our original plan and walked the whole way.

Our original plan was to camp wild on the lake (which the town is named after), but the windy, forested shores were wet and miserable that day - even though the snow-capped peaks on the other side were mesmerising.
We boiled some water for a cup of tea and ate an alfajore to lift our spirits and replenish ourselves.

We skulked back to the village in the rain and found Hostel Crux, where Kevins friend has given us a name with a very tenuous link of friendship.
The hostel was closed, but a quick glance around the back revealed it was getting an extension built. It's a fantastic building - all wood , varnish and uncut stone.
It looked like an amateur outfit, and didn't have any of the hallmarks of a professional team of builders, so Kevin saw the opportunity which we could only dream of:

"I bet we could help out with the building work for a bed."

I was very doubtful it could actually work out, but agreed it was definitely worth an ask.
We agreed to turn up on Monday morning pretending to have Spanish and extensive building experience.

The village was very spread out north-south and we agreed to go all the way back out of the north end of town to camp somewhere dry.
Following directions to a campsite after finding nowhere suitable from the road we took a break from the rain (which was now very cold) in a bus shelterand were promptly set upon by a gang of three small girls asking for a present.
They were very sweet and Kevin asked them for a song, which they sang with much gusto.
He had some Thai baht to confuse them in exchange.

Then the rain really picked up. We found the campsite as it was getting dark, and it had an enormous chain padlocked around the gate. It was closed. Very closed.
Trudging back towards town in the dark now and very cold we saw some cosy-looking cabins, and decided we deserved a break.

We knocked on the owners door, and while his cabins were full by some miracle he did have an unfinished one we could have for the night half price. Before we knew it we had our clothes strung up over the gas heater and were cooking up a storm in the kitchen.