El Bolson

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We arrived in El Bolson around noon Wednesday (March 14th) to clear skies and beautiful temperatures (I´d guess high 70´s to low 80´s). By this point, we´ve established a routine. Try to get information from the bus terminal. If information isn´t available there, find out where the tourist information office is and head there. The information we typically look for is: 1) Where are the campsites and which are the cheapest (or hostels, but lately we´ve just been camping), 2) What are some of the recommended things to do around town or nearby - we typically know what we want to do, but it is always good to get more input, 3) How do we get to the next town we want to go to - sometimes the bus terminals aren´t easy to come back to, so finding out bus times and days to the next destination is useful, and 4) what is the weather forecast - aka, is it going to rain because if it is we need to find a hostel instead of camping.

There isn´t really a bus station in El Bolson so we took off to the tourist information building. The guy there was very helpful and after proving we could hold our own in Spanish, he talked to us in English. El Bolson instantly became my favorite because prices started coming back to reality. There were dozens of campgrounds (usually there are only one or two) and they were all in the $20-30 pesos per person per night ($5-6). $30 had been on the cheap end up to this point so to break that felt great. Our campground was a kilometer or more outside of town, but was loaded with campers. Ni Nuna was a recommendation by a fellow traveler on our way to the campground we initially were heading towards based on the tourist information guy. Turned out to be a great recommendation, only $20 pesos/person/night, but the place had everything. We even did a load of laundry for the first time! Played some chess. Some ping pong. Clean, new, hot showers. Awesome.

After finding the campground we set out for food and found a nice outdoor spot downtown. We tend to split our meals since we want to try different things, so we got a chunk of beef with french fries and a thin slab of chicken with some thinly cut potatoes stuffed with veggies. Post sustinance we climbed a hillside on the outskirts of town to a very pretty overlook. Cerro Amigo. The view was great, with the town spreading up and down the river valley nestled between two large mountains. The downtown area reached out to the burbs and then to agriculture very quickly. Of no surprise since the town only has a few tens of thousands of residents.

Thursday we awoke and promptly moved our tent away from party central. Sarah slept just fine with her ear plugs in, but me...well, I was awakened every hour or so by the loud intoxicated group that insisted on tripping over our tent as they used the path next to it for their very own highway. I really have no idea where they were going all night.

Tent safely moved, we took off to the city market. They close down a fairly large loop around the city´s central pond and have all kinds of street vendors selling a variety of things. Sarah would have been more than happy to get all of you something, but alas, our packs are heavy enough as it is. We hung around the market for an hour or two and even picked up lunch there. El Bolson, how I love thee. $20 pesos filled us both with excellent food (a little less than $5). We had two tartas, ham and cheese and spinach, plus a huge cup of french fries. The tartas are hot sandwiches, almost like calzones. And french fries...well, they come with everything.

Post market, we took a 30 minute bus ride out to Lago Puelo, a large glacial lake that is a national park. The afternoon was spent walking around the lake, taking in the scenery, scrambling up a rocky hillside to peer down on some rock climbers and some fish. The day couldn´t have been better. Sunny and warm with a cool breeze. The scenery was amazing with the large mountains covered in pine trees leading down in to the big lake.

Thursday night was successful in the camp site move and Friday morning we got up bright and early to catch the bus to Bariloche.

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Photos

Ham flavored crackers
Hey, they were free so of course we ate them!