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Published: September 27th 2012
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View of Cerro Tronador and the glaciers
You can see the white Manso glacier ready to fall over the ledge to the Ventisquero Negro below. Living in Melbourne you don't get to see too many glaciers. Fiona and Toby had been to Franz Joseph in New Zealand, but Harriet didn't even know what a glacier was. There are 2 glaciers right next to each other a couple of hours drive from Bariloche and so that was our plan for today. The road to the glaciers is one way. In the morning you can go in until 2pm and at 4pm the road direction changes so that you can leave. We were apprehensive about being at the glacier for a fixed amount of time, unsure if we would find enough to do until we could leave, but it turned out the timing was perfect.
We left Bariloche quite early and drove past the southern parts of town. We had thought the town a little run down but were quite shocked to see this area. The poverty was completely evident. None of the dwellings were as bad as those in the slums in India or Thailand for example, but many of the houses were unfinished and yet obviously lived in. Some had tarpaulins instead of walls. Some had no roofs. The roads were dirt tracks and there
Glassy lake
On the way to Cerro Tronador was a huge rubbish dump across the road with flocks of birds circling overhead. We were reminded once more how hard some people have life, even living in such a beautiful place, surrounded by amazing scenery.
The road took us past two lakes -Guttierrez and Mascardi, which were both still and reflected the mountains perfectly. We could see Cerro Otto, the nearest peak to the town and the walk along the ridge from the top very clearly as well as the whole of Cerro Catedral ski field. Lake Mascardi is a big V and we drove down the east arm and then we turned off to follow the west arm and stopped at the park rangers. We had to pay to get to the park and they clearly explained the one way system to us. They also gave us maps which pointed out all the walks we could do and things to see. We had tried to get these at the tourist information in town yesterday, but they hadn't had them. So we were pleased to get them here.
The first 9km was 2 way, but there was nothing coming the other way anyway. We stopped at the
Los Cesares falls
Definitely worth the walk turn off to see the rapids. A group of men were on the bridge and they beckoned for us to come see what was in the water. In the stiller part before the rapids there were trout swimming hard, staying in the same place. They looked as if you could just reach in and grab them.
Further down the road was a look out where you could see a heart shaped island in the lake. We pulled over for a quick look but were really looking forward to getting a coffee at the hotel marked about 5 kms further on. When we got there it was closed, but we parked a little further down the road and set off for a waterfall that was supposed to be a 45 minute walk. From experience we thought that it would probably only be about 30 minutes away and we were right. It was an uphill hike but the view of the falls was wonderful. There were 3 drops as it descended and although you could go right to the top the best view was from further down. The power of the water was evident and we were glad to be kept
back from the edge by railings.
Back in the car we had to keep the speed down due to the conditions of the road. There were several potholes, it was unsealed after all, and also lots of bends. It was a good thing that we were going slow when 2 cows popped up onto the road from the slope below and then a couple of kilometres on a fox stood in the middle of the road. We had never seen such a huge fox. It was about the size of a big dog as opposed to the size of a big cat and it's tail was almost the same size.
The next stop was a place called Pampa Linda. We weren't sure what we were expecting but it was probably more than one or two buildings, which is all that was there. The cafe that was open was great though. It was a better building than we had expected and looked like something from the Swiss Alps. We ordered a drink as quick as possible because two tour buses came in the same time as us and we didn't want to be behind all of them in the
line. The cappuccino was amazing. It wasn't like any other cappuccino we had ever had. It was a cafe latte with cream and chocolate on top. Delicious! Lots of the walks in the area started from Pampa Linda but we wanted to drive on to the glaciers and the mountain.
The mountain is called Tronador which means thunder. Its called this because of the noise made by the many avalanches and landslides. There are 2 glaciers together on the mountain and others that you can walk to from Pampa Linda. The two together are one above the other. The top Manso glacier is a beautiful white overhanging glacier. As it comes down the mountain the end of the glacier is pushed over a ridge like a frozen waterfall. It then forms the second glacier. This glacier is black because it picks up gravel and dust as it advances and so is known as Ventisquero Negro - the black glacier. At the bottom the ice falls off into a lake.
We parked quite near the lake at the bottom of the glaciers. The road was closed further up so it was as far as we could go. We ate
lunch in the car because we thought it looked too cold to eat outside and then we walked down to the lake. As we neared the lake we were really lucky to see part of the top glacier break off and fall onto the black glacier. There was a slight delay and then we could clearly hear the rumble just like thunder. It was quite spectacular and although we sat and watched for ages we didn't see any more fall. We could hear thunder rolls though as avalanches happened in different parts of the mountain. It is certainly aptly named.
We walked up the couple of kilometres of the road which was closed to the base of the mountain. The paths were all closed off and so we couldn't get any further but it was really nice to stretch our legs. We sat on the pumice stone from ancient eruptions and listened to the mountain making its noises. Then we wandered back to the car just in time for the road direction to have changed meaning we could drive out. We left the car park quickly so that we wouldn't have to sit behind another cars dust and drove
Beautiful reflections
Still on the way to Cerro tronador back the way we came. We stopped at the trout bridge to see if we could feed the trout but they weren't interested in our bread crumbs. The temperature had really dropped anyway so we got back in the car to warm up and return to Bariloche.
Tonight was our last night in Bariloche. We hadn't skied as much as we had intended but we had had a relaxing time, eaten loads of chocolate and seen lots of the beautiful countryside.
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