Hippie hostel in a hippie town

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We have stayed in the coolest hostel so far, here in El Bolson. It is called El Pueblito, which means little village. That is the feeling the owners wanted to get in there hostel and they have pretty much succeeded. It is a wooden house near a river and away from the road. Our room is a little garden shed out the back of the house and surrounded all sorts of fruit trees. They also make there own beer (very good), jams and cheese’s. It’s basically a hippie commune for travellers. You get to know everyone who stays here and the wooden barn as a bar out the back is as cool as it gets. You could stay here for a long time and never want to leave. Unfortunately that’s not possible for us.

First though let me tell you about our two day trip along Ruta 40. It was long, obviously! The road for ¾ of the journey wasn’t paved. It was the bumpiest two days we will probably have on our travels. The road was just small rocks and gravel and this made the long journey even slower. For parts of the journey we could see new paved road, not yet open to the public. The paved road would tease us for Km’s on end, while we bounce up and down in our chairs. It’s a long trip but worth it in the end. For two days we stared a vast amounts of nothing. Flat, unusable land for as far as the eye could see. Not much could survive out here. We did see the bird that the Road Runner was based on bolting along the flat ground but unfortunately we never saw the Wily Coati! There were cows at random points and some Alpaca too. We stopped over night at a one horse town called Perito Moreno. We arrived in El Bolson at 7pm the following evening, tired and weary. We made our way to the hostel where the had leek soup. We were offered second helping’s which is quite unusual in a hostel. Our bread basket was refilled a few times and soon we were feeling at home (not the same as home home though mothers!). We had met a nice girl called Katie from Reading on the bus who was staying in the same hostel as us. We had shared a taxi and sat together for dinner. As wine was only 11 peso (€2.50) for a bottle of red we shared one or two of those as well! There was a party in the hostel that night for the owners brother who was 40 so it continued onto the bar outside. It wasn’t too late going to bed though as the last few days had caught up with us.

The following day we wanted to take it easy as we had enough trekking done to last us a while. We went to the hippie market with Katie, Pat and Karen (US) for the day. It was a pretty cool market and you could buy all sorts of handicrafts there. The also had lots of food stalls and I had a big juicy lamb roll that was freshly cooked in front of me. It cost €3 and was as feast to eat. After that we found a stall selling beers. One claimed to sell Cerveasa Negra, or Irish stout as the sign claimed. One was 8% and the other 4.5%. I went for a glass of the lighter stuff as I didn’t fancy falling around the market. It was actually very good so we returned later and got a pint this time. I got to go in behind the counter and get my photo taken when the found out I was Irish. The were delighted when I told them it was as good as Guinness! They want me to e-mail them the photo too. I could be the new face of Piltri Negra! The market was cool and we walked, ate and drank for a good few hours.

Myself and Pat had decided to try and go fishing the next day. The girls had decided on testing the numerous ice cream and chocolate shops for the next day. We couldn’t rent any equipment so we had to buy some cheap rods and reels. While we looked for fishing rods the girls went and got some lovely waffles in the market. We met up again and shared a taxi back to our hostel 4km’s outside town. That evening there was an Asado (bbq) and we had earlier put our names down for it. It started with chirizo sausage. Then we had ‘blood sausage’ which is basically soft back pudding. Nest we had some ribs which of course needed hands only. The last bit was some juicy rump steak. There was all sorts of salads as well and plenty of bread and a big bowl of garlic butter. We had thought the Asado was over and 20 minutes later they arrived in with some more steak. We were quite full at the end. We talked there for a few hours before continuing on in the bar until about 3am. The next day Michelle and I would spend the day apart. She was hanging out with Katie and I was going fishing with Pat. I am going to try and get her to blog her day as it is the first day we have spent apart!

In a bit. DH

Song of the blog: Kings of Leon - Use Somebody

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