Bariloche Part 3: Refugio Frey

DAY 5-6

Here we are setting out for our biggest, and final, Bariloche adventure: A hike and overnight stay at Refugio Frey. After a short bus ride to the little ski town of Cerro Catedral, we're on our way. Daniel models with this wooden mountain man at the entrance to the trail.

One of the coolest things about Patagonia is the amazing diversity in the landscape. Depending on elevation, sun, winds, and proximity to mountains and glaciers, everything can change. In this one four hour hike, we went through what seemed to be about five different ecologies. It was cloudy for this last hike, making the first trek through the long, fire-scorched hillside very eerie and beautiful.

About an hour in we hit a sudden line where the trees came back, everything was fresh and green, and a snowmelt creek came down the mountain.

A surprise cabin built into the underside of a boulder, complete with door, windows, and woodstove.

At the end of hour three: snow line! Giddy with fresh air and ham sandwiches.

One final big uphill, and we were in the snow and making a stream crossing up to our final destination.

Refugio Frey.

Torre Principal & Laguna Toncek are our backyard.

The clouds part to light up some of the peeks during sunset.

A few brave souls camp in tents, shielded by little rock walls from the lake wind. It's a chilly night. 

Evening reflections outside the cabin window.

We took in the view from the warmest room: the kitchen. (See little orange light.)

Looking a little less energetic, we gift to ourselves some homemade pizza and cheap wine for dinner. In background, the host/chef/everything man, Fabian.

Playing cards with some of the other folks at the refugio. Our companions were from Israel, France, Buenos Aires, and Brasil. Good conversation. I was on a roll, and gave them all a spanking in gin rummy.

Morning view from the baño.

And bye-bye Frey at 9am after some of Fabian's hot coffee and homemade bread. Back to Buenos Aires for my last 48 hours in Argentina!! What a refreshing, amazing trip. Now, home for Thanksgiving dinner, and some new adventures back in the good ol USofA.  Hope to come back again someday.

Maybe I'll see you soon...
x besos x

Bariloche Part 2: A Glacier of a Different Color

DAY 4: Cerro Tronador

Day 4 we did an all-day excursion to hike Cerro Tronador, 3478m, in Parque Nacional Nahuel Huapi. Cerro Tronador is an extinct volcano. Here is a glacial stream-- gray from the minerals washed up from the rocks that the melting glaciers pass over. It was a nice 2-hour hike through the forest to...

Castaña Overa Glacier (top.) This is the first time I've seen a glacier from the BOTTOM of a mountain. You can see the waterfalls running down from the melting ice. Tronador means "thunder," which we had the chance to hear when a piece of ice broke off the glacier and fell down the mountainside. Our guide told us that scientists estimate that there will be no more ice in this part of the Andes in 30-40 years.

This is a llao llao. (zsh-ow, zsh-ow), which means "sweet sweet." It's a mushroom that was a staple of the diet of the early people in this area. They are bright orange, and each grow to the size of a golfball. I ate one. There is a peninsula named after them, as well as a luxury hotel.

After hiking back, we hopped on the bus to Glacier Negro. Yes, that's a black glacier. The lumpy, striated thing flowing out of the valley. It's a rare thing that happens when certain conditions are right. A glacier above melts, collects rock debris as it flows downward, and then actually reforms into ice below.  The chunks in the water are not rock, but black ice. Strange and beautiful.

On to our last days...

Bariloche Part 1: Neon Yellow Bike Vest

Hello, hello!  Here be my final set of blog posts for this great 6-month adventure I so boringly named "Erin's Travels 2012". Wow! Well, Cutter headed out last week, and I'll be back 2 weeks behind him. I decided that I couldn't bear to keep living in Buenos Aires without him, so I thought it would be in my best interests to go to Patagonia. And I did. 

Following are three posts from the six-ish days I spent in BARILOCHE this week! I consider this a Patagonia Test Run, which I hope will inform a future trip to other, farther regions of Patagonia with Cutter and you family people who wanted to come, but didn't make it down here. I hope this will entice you to come back with me... 

Bariloche Days 1-3

Theme: Yellow

DAY 0:

The first step in any cheap Argentine vacation is a really, really long bus ride. This one was 20 hours. About 18 of them looked like this...

 DAY 1:

...until BAM we were in Patagonia! All mountains and lakes, and more mountains and lakes, and beautifulness. Here is travel buddy Daniel on the beach on Day 1. Daniel was in charge of making sure no Latin men spoke to me while Cutter was gone. Note: Snow-capped mountains in the background. I don't know how many times I said "wow."

The view from the hostel.

It's still springtime down here, and we happened to come to Bariloche when it is TOTALLY covered in yellow flowers. Yellow flowers are my favorite.  Also, it was 75 and sunny every day with a cool breeze, and 55 at night. Que linda!

 DAY 2: BIKES

I know, I know. I. Look. Good. There's nothing more sexy than bicycle safety.

Day2 in Bariloche consisted of a day of mountain biking. Those of you who know me may know that I'm not much of a mountain biker. Luckily, we went out with a buddy from the hostel who later told us he was a "Survival Runner" and had"biked the alps."  So... we just let him peddle on ahead.  Anyway, we DID bike part of the Short Circuit, a beauty of a 27 km trail with amazing vistas of the lakes, mountains, and peninsulas. We also took a short, steep hike up to the top of Cerro Campanario for a smashing 360 degree view. See below for more scenes from Day 2. It was like living in a postcard....Living in a postcard where I live in a neon yellow reflective vest.

DAY 3: Villa la Angostura

After physically exerting ourselves so on Day 2, we decided to take it a little easier on Day 3. We caught a bus along the first leg of the Seven Lakes Route to a little town called Villa la Angostura.  These orange trees were RAD. (embothrium coccineum.)

Araucaria araucana. Monkey Puzzle Tree. Neato!

The main activity of this day was sitting on the tip of the dock in the sun and watch the crazy people swim in the icy water. I stuck my feet in. It hurt. Looking was good enough.

Nice sunset views whizzing by on the bus ride back.

On to the next day...

Springtime in BA

Hello all. Happy Obama to you! It's been a beautiful spring in BA. The past few days it's been getting up to 80 at around 9am, but the trees are big and bushy, and the city looks fresh and lively, and completely different than when we arrived. Here's a smattering of stuff from the last month or so...

Here we are with some friends savoring a VEGETARIAN meal at a monthly organic fair. Don't we look happy?
<3 verduras. 

In late-October we said goodbye to our San Telmo apartment. Though our neighborhood was kinda crappy, I think we had 2 of the best restaurants in town right around the corner: Hierba Buena and Caseros. If you ever come to BA go to these places. 50-65 peso lunch ($10) for a ton of delicious, fresh food, wine, dessert, and coffee.  Who's that studly guy eating papas fritas??  Bye-bye San Telmo!!!

*Sidenote: Urban Dictionary's definition of studly: "Someone so handsome beyond comprehension and is very good with the ladies. He is a stud."

Hello Recoleta!  Here's the view from the new apartment. This is a supernice, central part of town, which we were able to move to bc a Williamsport friend's, sister's, husbands, brother's parents live here and are out of town. Score!! We're on the 9th floor.

Moving on, Cutter has had to come to grips with the amount of animal he's eaten in the last three months. This is a ceramic cow outside a brewery, but it's the best we could do in the city.

Oh wait, back to the terraza. Aint it nice?  Dang, we even have an umbrella.

Our old roommates came back to town for the weekend and cooked us an Irish-Argentine breakfast: bife de chorizo, boxty potato pancakes, fried egg, and chimi churri sauce.

In town, some of the lusciousness of spring, mixed with the neato architecture.

We realized that we hadn't really been doing to great wine down here justice with our cheapness, so last week we teamed up with some friends to host an at-home wine tasting.  All Argentine, of course. A rosé cuvee, torrontés, tannat, malbec, cab sav, Patagonian pinot noir, and torrontés dessert wine. A lot of these are from high-altitude Mendoza region. Torrontés is actually native to this part of the world, unlike many of the other grapes, which were brought from Europe.

The bubbly course, lit from behind by...

My bell pepper jack-o-lantern!  Cutter scoffed at the idea, but, by jingo, this is one good looking non-pumpkin. And spooky, no? The wine tasting fell on Halloween, which is not a big holiday here, but is slowly creeping in in the trying-to-sell-useless-Halloween-crap and bar-crawl departments. BTW, the pepper started smelling really great and roasty after about an hour. See the char on the top? Cutter wouldn't let me eat it cause we used a cheap blue candle inside. 

And last, a bit of nature, right in the big city.  This is the Ecological Reserve in Puerto Madero. We rented some bikes and finally took a ride along the river. Surprisingly lovely and quiet.  Many porteños out having picnics, drinking mate, and making out.

I didn't get to take a photo in this direction cause I didn't want to crash my bike, so I stole this one. However, it looked just like this. You're riding along between the city and the river, and you have an amazing view over the grassy marsh to the ultra-modern Puerto Madero skyscrapers. Another must-do if you come to visit. As I said in an early post, one of the coolest things about this city is the variety from one neighborhood to another.  Perfect way to round out our springtime adventures. 

90 Days = A Trip to Uruguay

In order to remain in Argentina without a penalty, every 90 days American citizens must leave the country. This Saturday marked day 85 for me & Cutter, so we hopped on a boat for a last-minute weekend in Colonia, Uruguay.

Once again, we were graced with a BEAUTIFUL spring weekend. I've realized that we're really lucky to be here and doing a little traveling now, before the weather gets hot and the tourist season kicks off in Dec-Feb.

Anyhoo, I was again skeptical about Colonia, cause it kind of sounded like it would be a big tourist trap, but HOT DANG, my low expectations proved me wrong again!! It was just swell.  We just got back actually, and Cutter is on the beanbag watching Enchanted (the princess movie) dubbed in Spanish. Life aint so bad.

The cuisine in Western Uruguay is quite a bit like it is Buenos Aires, as it turns out. EXCEPT they have THIS little specialty: chivito. The layers: 1) fries, 2) lomo (thin steak), 3) cheese, 4) ham, 5) bacon, 6) fried egg. And a glass of juice. Hits the spot.

We are going to build one of these at our house someday.

Cutter scares a child.

Basically, Colonia is one sickeningly cute place. It's a peninsula on the river with an oceany feeling, with Portuguese roots, and South American charm.  Full of lovely trees, flowers, cobblestone streets, great bars and restaurants, and views of the coast in every direction. Here, we are on our way to have a glass of wine and catch the sunset.

Afterward, wine and cheese for dinner at this little tasting place in an old stone house.  "Lunch for 2 / Appetizers for 4" consisted of more cheese than I could have ever imagined eating in my life. 

Here's a crappy picture of our little table nook at this very charming place.

If you're ever in the neighborhood, go check out Colonia! Especially in the springtime.  Be prepared to do very little, except eat chivitos, have drinks on the water, watch the tourists go by on their way to the many little museums, and take naps on the rocks on the shore. Yes!!

So, that's the last post for now. Just a little update on our mini-vacations from Buenos Aires. We have about 2 months left here, and are still hoping to do a long weekend in Mendoza or Salta, and one big trip at the end to Patagonia.  In the meantime, we're still workin, studyin, and hanging out in this great big city. We have a nice little crowd of (English-speaking) buddies, and some new native friends, so Cutter and I don't have to only talk to each other. (phew.) Happy autumn to all of you in los estados unidos! Eat some apple pies for us.
xoxoxo
signing off,
e