Hippie Days

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We spent eight nights in El Bolson, the longest that we have remained in one place so far on our trip. The place was simply beautiful, and it was difficult to tear ourselves away. El Bolson a small hippie town just two hours south of the more famous Bariloche in the Rio Negro province. It is surrounded by mountains and small waterfalls, and is really close to the popular Lago Puelo. The resort was a destination visited mostly by Argentinian tourists, we only met about 4 english speaking people in our whole time there, which was really great as we were able to use our Spanish. We felt we were in the real Argentina.

We arrived in the town after a 27 hour bus ride which fortunately had no break downs. We were a little later than intended so were pretty impressed when the owner of the hostel where we had booked our stay was waiting to collect us. Along with an Italian girl called Denise we rode back to La Casa de Viajero in the back of Agustin's clapped out banger; we were soon to realise that the town was full of them. In fact, it seemed the older the better. La Casa de Viajero was a good 20 minute walk from the main town and nestled in between trees and beautiful gardens on the side of a stream- it was perfect. We quickly settled into our beautiful little house then headed into town to have a look around. The views along the way were out of a fairy tale. We watched as horseback riders crossed through the stream, and the local neighbourhood dogs played in the streets. We were completely taken with this charming place, but it was pretty late in the evening so we headed back to cook some dinner and get an early night ready to check it out properly the following day.

Unfortunately there was something that we hadn't been told about Agustin's place. When we arrived back we were greeted by a large Alsatian, who accompanied us on our walk back to the hostel. After a quick head to head with another local dog in the street he ignored us as he followed us into the gates. As we were cooking dinner the dog sat outside our house; initially we thought it was quite sweet how he was 'guarding' it for us. It turned out he actually was guarding it though which became a bit of a problem. Luke headed out to get a lighter for the cooker, then when he came back towards the house the dog snarled and jumped towards him. Luke was too scared to come back in, to which Katie exclaimed he was being a wimp. A few moments later Denise came over to the house to come and join us. The same thing happened to her. Katie was still inside the house so had yet to see the look on the dog's face, so she still exclaimed that the dog was fine. To demonstrate this she followed Denise out towards the main house, turning to the dog to offer her hand for him to sniff with the intention of stroking him. The dog came towards Katie full pelt, it was like something out of the Bill- lips curled up, deathly snarl, the works. We later asked Agustin if he would tether the dog to his kennel during the night as we were too scared to leave the house. To which he replied that the dog was completely harmless, just a playful 'teenager'. Yeh right, well we weren't taking any chances, we have come into contact with many dogs on our travels as most of you know we are huge dog lovers, but this one was not a 'nice' or 'playful' dog. Agustin finished up the conversation with, well the dog is fine with everyone else that stays here, it must be something you have done to him. We were really offended by this comment as neither of us would ever be horrible to an animal. With that we decided to accompany Denise who had already decided to move hostels in the morning. We were upset to have to leave such a beautiful place, but we didn't feel safe around that dog. One thing we have noticed is that this breed of dog is very very common in Patagonia and we were later informed that this is because they are apparently good for working the land.

The following day we moved to El Bolson Hostel, pretty much in the middle of town. It was a hostel with a really comfortable community feel, where everybody cooked together during the evening, and countless hippies strummed their guitars until the early hours (is that what you call it when they're still playing at 10am?) We spent our days taking walks into town where we browsed the artesan fairs and sat by the lake. All day hippies would just congregate on the grass by the lake watching the world go by, and the strange summertime entertainment ranging from clowns to acrobats.

One day we took the bus to Lago Puelo, which we guess we just expected to be another lake. Therefore we hadn't been too bothered about going there. No one had actually mentioned that the lake had a coastline where you were able to sunbathe, swim in the water, ride in kayaks. It was like going to the beach but being surrounded by snow capped mountains- it was really beautiful. We discovered that there were two campsites within the national park of Lago Puelo; we had wanted to do some camping, or at least be in a greener location as opposed to in the town. It would be a shame not to when the area was so beautiful. We requested at both campsites if there was the opportunity to hire a tent, but they didn't have any. We didn't have our own so retreated back to our hostel.

Saying that though we were reluctant to leave the hostel and kept booking more nights, the garden was lovely and the kitchen had really great facilities and there was a great barbeque. This eventually ended when Pablo, a man whom we had met a few days ago, turned up to the hostel to collect us. Pablo had recently opened a campsite up by Cascada Escondida a local waterfall. An American girl we had met in the hostel, Valeria, had just started working there and we wanted to go and stay. Pablo had given us his number to call, but we had been able to contact him using it. But faithful to his word Pablo came to find us and ask whether we still wanted to go and stay with him. We jumped at the chance and asked him to collect us the next day. After a joint dinner at the hostel of spaghetti bolognese, we were a bit sad to be leaving. However, we were really excited to be going to stay in a beautiful location again.

Pablo turned up on time to collect us the following day. After a quick stop off at his own private house and carpentry workshop we were on the way to the campsite. It was even more beautiful than we had imagined, and Pablo assigned us to one of his hand built wooden cabins. We were one of the first guests at the campsite, which made the experience a little more special. Pablo was touched that we immediately changed our onwards but tickets to two days later so that we could spend 3 nights at his campsite. He offered to let us use his kitchen facilities (even though we had our own barbecue) and said we could take what we liked from his vegetable garden. We could pay at the end for the food we took if we felt we should, which of course we did. We had an endless supply of peas in the pods which was fantastic. Pablo's family often stayed around the campsite during the day carrying out the final jobs to get the site up and running. They would often eat together and offer us to join them, and they would also sit and chat with us around the open fire.

We spent a wonderful few days at the campsite, visiting the local cascada, and ironically taking really long walks back into town just on a whim for an ice cream or whatever. Pablo visited town everyday, and as it was quite a distance away, and he invited us to join him on the ride if we wanted to get anything. We were really grateful but again feel this may have been one of the privileges of being the first guests. One of the biggest privileges of all was the tranquility, and being able to just relax and enjoy the surroundings in the peace. Nearly every night in El Bolson we had taken to eating barbecued steak- it worked out at just £1 for a slice of filet, price per kilo for the best cut (lomo) was about £8.50.
We were really sad to be leaving El Bolson, we had become quite settled there, but had to move on after 8 nights. It was the latest we could possibly stay and meant that we would not be able to take our time visiting our next two destinations on the way back to Buenos Aires. Pablo dropped us to the bus terminal for our bus, and we were both a bit sad to say goodbye to a man whose generosity had really touched us, and the first person on our trip who had really invited us into their lives. By this point of our trip our Spanish was at a level where we could chat a little, so this really did help, and we only wish that we had made more of an effort to learn before coming to the continent.

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Comments

[zee]

miss you!
you've got such lovely photos!! the loveliest thing iv seen all week is a bowl of noodles... im massively jealous that you're out there experiencing the wonderful world and im stuck in cov working on coursework! Got my uni trip to Brussels next week (study week) 16th-19th feb which im mega looking forward to! Also going to book tickets to thailand soon, hopefully 18th july - 26th august =) xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx