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Published: March 20th 2009
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I didn't plan to stay in Los Antiguos. But when you arrive in a town, and find that the next bus out isn't for 2 days, you generally end up staying there. Not knowing a great deal about the place, I hastened for the tourist office, to find there were a couple of nice walks around the area. Even better, is that Los Antiguos is the cherry growing capital of Argentina, and one of the farms does a free tour and tasting everyday at 4pm. Excellent.
My first walk was to the municipal campsite at the edge of town, which was very well set up. It was also very close to one of the places the tourist office had said was a nice place to walk to, so as soon as my tent was pitched, I headed to the old dock to watch folks fishing in Lago Buenas Aires (its the same lake as General Carrerra in Chile, they just change the name over the border). The fisherman didn't seem to be having much luck, and to be honest, the scenery on this side wasn't quite as nice as on the Chilean side, but it was still a nice spot
to have a bit of a sit down.
The rest of the day I spent pottering around town, which doesn't really take very long. After I'd managed to visit all of the miradors, I ran out of things to do that day, so just bought some food from the supermarket, went back to the campsite, cooked, and read my book until it got too cold. Hey, I can't promise thrill a minute excitement all the time!
Knowing that I might struggle to fill another full day, I treated myself to quite a long lie in the next morning. I had nothing to do until 4pm, so decided to walk a bit of a way out of town back towards Chile, to see if I could find a spot where I could see both Los Antiguos and Chile Chico at the same time. I never quite succeeded in this, but at one point I did end up scuttling round a fence to get to a point at the other side which seemed to be the highest around. I just hope that fence wasn't the border between Chile and Argentina.
At about 3.15, I realised I'd left a postcard
back in my tent, which I wanted to post to my grandparents in England. Figuring I had enough time to go and collect it and get back in time for the fruit farm tour at 4, I set off towards camp. Sadly, I misjudged the length of the walk, and it was at about 4.10pm when I turned up at the farm, slightly sweaty from a bit of light jogging. Imagine my annoyance when I was told the guides are on holiday, so the tours aren't happening. This was soon abated when the lady said I could still do the tasting, but 2 minutes later, after 4 miniscule tastes of their jam selection I was back out on the street. Thank god it was free. Oh, and the post office was shut that day too, just to make my hurrying even more pointless.
Anyway, that kind of sums up Los Antiguos. It's a nice little town really, but I was definitely glad that I had a bus out the next day, to take me down the famous Ruta 40 and towards Patagonias tourist honeypots.
Stewart
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