Trains, teas and trees

---

After our first few days in Bariloche we picked up a hire car to drop back south to Esquel and El Bolson. Stopped for lunch in El Bolson and despite my fears it is not/no longer overrun with hippy types despite what the guidebooks might lead you to think. These days they are growing fruit or maybe some herbal tobacco. Seemed like a nice town.

Esquel is about 300 km south of Bariloche and just about at the end of the decent scenery before our favourite road (see previous blogs) starts to cross the steppes. Esquel seems like a normal town with few tourist pretensions despite the number of newish cabanas around. We stayed with a woman who is 3rd generation Argentine/Welsh who still speaks the Welsh language fluently. She also serves up great breakfasts with lots of fresh fruit from her garden.

Reasons for coming here:
1. To ride the La Trochita steam train (the Old Patagonian Express ) on a very picturesque trip along the narrow gauge railway to a stop about 19km down the line and then back again. Had a good chat with our fellow passengers, mixture of spanish and english languages.

2. To take a welsh tea, which we did in Trevelin on Saturday afternoon after the train ride. Both Esquel and Trevelin are Welsh Patagonia towns. We shared one portion of the tea between us: five sorts of cake, scones, bread, butter, jam and cheese and really good tea (with leaves).

3. To see trees. To the west of Esquel is the Parque Nacional des Alerces. The Alerce is a type of ancient and long lived, slow growing cypress conifer, some of the trees we saw are over 2,500 years old. As always (?) the weather was great. To reach the trees you need to drive about an hour along a rough road alongside a beautiful lake and then take a boat for an hour and half and then walk. The whole thing sounds weird but makes a really good trip.

From Esquel we headed back to Bariloche under blue skies, the drive was beautiful, especially from Epuyen northwards.

---

Photos

At Nahuel Pan station
I think the horse is faster

El Abuelo, the biggest Alerce
if you look closely there is someone in the picture. Gives some idea of how big this thing is. Estimated at 2,600 years old and 58 metres tall. 2.2 metres diameter.

Canes in the forest
the undergrowth is dense bamboo up to about 6m tall

Lago Verde
in the park

Lago Menendez
from the boat