Travelling South (Mendoza, Neuquen, Bariloche, El Bolson)

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After both an emergency room doctor and a blood/urine test declared that I was perfectly healthy, I was beginning to feel a little embarassed by all of the dramatics surrounding an illness that in Canada I would have treated by heading straight to bed and staying there until I felt better. Instead, I found myself on Monday evening, still tired but feeling much more spritely, in a taxi with my mother, father, and language school teacher heading to a specialist doctor. The taxi stopped infront of a large, suburban house bedecked with big gold name plates announcing the name of the doctor. We were buzzed through a security gate and let into a small waiting room with padded benches. As I sat there looking at the impressive degrees and art on the wall, I began to feel exceedingly ridiculous. I was not suffering from anything that a few days of rest would not solve and my entourage was larger than a common cold warranted. I was probably just exhausted from my time in the jungle and my bus ride to Argentina. I told mom that I wanted to leave but the door opened and a middle aged Argentinian doctor ushered me (and mom and Susanne, the language instructor) inside. The room resembled a personal office with the addition of an examination table. The doctor sat behind his desk and asked questions about my symptoms and medical history while Susanne, translated anything I didn´t understand. When the doctor saw the marks on my stomach and legs that, I had assumed were bug bites, he claimed that they were caused by my illness and within twenty minutes had sent me out the door with two perscriptions and the assurances that I had been right to come.

After being told that my health was good enough for us to continue our journey, we went straight to the bus station and purchased tickets for the next evening to Neuquen, a town 11 hours south from Mendoza. The bus journey passed uneventfully. Mom and dad were pleasantly surprised by the luxury of the Argentinian buses and the amount of food served on them. By the time we arrived in Neuquen at 8 am the next morning, my normal energy level had returned and the marks on my belly had begun to fade. From the bus, Neuquen appeared to be like any large North American prairie city whose main purpose is to support oilfields and agriculture. The road into town was lined with big box stores (including a Wal-mart which looked like it could have been transplanted directly from Idaho), fast food restaurants, and car dealerships. The surrounding countryside consisted of sedimentary river terraces and rolling grasslands. It was not a place that appeared especially inviting to tourism. Our own interest in Neuquen actually lay in the paleological discoveries about 80kms outside of the city. We had been under the impression that it would be an easy matter to take a day trip out to the dinosaur museum and continue on our journey the next morning. However, it quickly became apparent that the tourist route had not been established and that a visit to the museum would require 2 days or the rental of a car. We decided to push on South to Bariloche. We purchased tickets for a bus departing 2 hours later but soon learned that the bus was delayed an indefinite amount of hours. We spent half of the day in the bus station researching Bariloche on the internet (trying to find accomodation, a nearly impossible task), and scrounging for food. In Argentina, it is very difficult to buy anything with the 100 peso notes that are dispensed by the ATM´s. Many places will not accept them and are often unable to provide change for considerably smaller bills. As a result, it is a constant struggle to keep oneself in a steady supply of small bills and coins. One may have several hundred pesos in 100 peso bills and not be able to buy anything. Mom and I went on an expedition to the grocery store 4 blocks away from the bus station to get some small change and almost missed the bus in the process.

The road between Neuquen and Bariloche is a beautiful one. The terrain transitions from dusty, well eroded plains (perfect for the preservation and excavation of dinosaur bones) to lush green river valleys crowned with craggy mountains. We arrived in Bariloche around 8pm (because of Argentina´s daylight savings it is light until nearly 11pm but the sun doesn´t rise until 7 30 am). After 5 months in South America on my own, I was feeling quite frustrated with the pace and strategy of my parents in finding accomodation for the night but luckily, within a few hours we had managed to acquire the last campsite at the Selva Negra Campground and put up our tents (the first time my tent had been put up since I left Vancouver in August). The campsite was nice enough, if a bit dusty, but had the advantage of being close to town.

Bariloche is very similar in function and feeling to Banff in the Canadian Rockies. The mountains in Bariloche are a bit further away and it is situated on a large lake, but it, like Banff, is filled with trendy shops, restaurants and excursion companies and is inhabited by
wealthy vacationers and shoestring backpackers. The setting was undeniably beautiful and the trekking oportunities seemed plentiful, but as soon as the parallel to Banff had been made Dad declared that he ¨was more of a Jasper kind of guy¨and that ¨Bariloche was not his style¨. We spent our one day in Bariloche researching the rest of our trip through Patagonia. We had decided that we wanted to travel south down the famous Ruta 40, a gravel road that hugs the eastern edge of the Argentinian Andes for 3000km, but it seemed that our only travel options were a two day excursion or to rent a car of our own both of which were prohibitively expensive. We were fortunate enough to discover a third option, a small bus company which runs buses the length of the road for a fraction of the price.
The next morning we packed up our tents, ran around town to buy a new pair of hiking shoes (mine had finally become unusable after 3 months in the Bolivian jungle), and took the bus two hours south to El Bolson.

El Bolson is a much smaller town than Bariloche. It has more of a hippy undercurrent and is closer to the mountains. From the bus station we walked across the road to the C.A.P. (Club Andino Piltriquitron) office to get information on treks in the area and half an hour later we found ourselves on the lawn outside of the house stripping our backpacks of everything we didn´t need. By 4pm (with considerably lighter packs, although still heavy because of food) we were off trekking up to a series of refuges in the mountains. At the refuges you can either camp or sleep in the loft and many of them sell meals and basic supplies including home-made bread and beer. We spent 4 nights in the mountains of El Bolson exploring the beautiful forests, glaciers, and crystal clear aquamarine rivers. It was an amazing hike (although a bit dusty in some spots). We were surprised to discover that the Argentinian hiking culture differs greatly from that in Canada. The vast majority of our fellow trekkers were groups of university aged Argentinans, people of my parents´generation were rare, wearing sneakers and jeans and carrying small daypacks stuffed with bulky sleeping bags. This confirmed in Dad´s mind what he already suspected, that he was carrying way too much stuff and resulted in a major purge once we returned to El Bolson.

We are spending the day in El Bolson catching up on the world and buying food before taking the 30 hour bus ride south down Route 40 to El Chalten (Fitzroy) at 11 pm tonight.