Our Journal

from San Martin to Bariloche…  May 4, 2005

We ended up staying in San Martin longer than expected in this slow paced mountain town where the sun rises around 10 am and sets before 5.  We went out to eat one night and struck up conversation with two girls next to us noticing that one of them was foreign.  Nicole, a Canadian from Vancouver, had been in San Martin for months, after meeting her Argentinean boyfriend on a trip to Costa Rica.  They traveled through Central America, through Colombia and on to Argentina.  She had arrived here as a vegetarian but realized it wasn’t going to work, so she assisted in the slaughter of a goat to get into eating meat.  Her friend Laura is from the area but had just moved to San Martin.  Nicole left the next day to pick mushrooms and Laura took us around town.  We ended up at the only disco in town where the average age was well below the average age of the American soldier in Vietnam, so being teachers, we did our best to educate the young on how to rile it up and dance around like idiots.  There’s always an element of pigmen in any disco, Argentina no exception.  We spotted one guy with a sweater wrapped around his shoulders, tied in front.  He spent the night trolling around pestering girls so every time he was near us we all screamed, “Sweater Man!” 

You know it’s time to leave a town when the delinquent-looking youth outside the game room smile and give you the “what’s up” nod as you walk by.  Also, the old man who owned our hosteria was beginning to talk to us like sons.  We got our first real cold in San Martin and I had to pull out all the clothes a couple of days – two pair of pants, two pairs of socks, two shirts, fleece and winter coat.  But, we finally drove out above lakes and mountain passes.  Every turn in the road brought a new point of lookout over steep drop offs.  The road was excellent, a bikers dream, that is if he can feel his hands.  I had gloves but the cold was cutting through everything.  Matt looked miserable.  There are lookout stops every few kilometers, one view as grand as the last, so we drove in short intervals to warm up.  The road turned to dirt and mud with parts under construction.  I was throwing the bike around everywhere going sideways at one point through mud, taking advantage of the new tires put on back at Cordova.  Matt’s back tire was bald and was spinning through the soft spots.  At the turnoff for Villa Traful the road went up and firmed up a bit with rocks.  We weaved through tall forest getting glimpses of lakes and waterfalls.  Villa Traful is nothing more than a small collection of small hoterias, a couple of restaurants, and some 300 inhabitants in the surrounding area.  Most everything was closed for down season but one hosteria and one restaurant stayed open.  I walked in to find a room and a little sprite looking old woman with a high crackly voice welcomed me, and then screamed “Alejandro!” at the top of her lungs.  Something told me Alejandro gets screamed at a lot.  He took us over to a box room with the bare minimum.  We grabbed lunch at the restaurant, sipped away a bottle of wine, and then spent the next hour wandering up to two waterfall lookouts.  There were fallen dead trees everywhere, but we couldn’t figure it out, no sign of them being used for lumber.  Cows wander freely through this wooded area, big fat funny-looking ones with curly hair on their head making you want to talk to them.  “Hey fat boy!”  I yelled.  “Yes I am quite fat aren’t I, and now I will have to kill you because you have heard me talk.”  Wait, was that Matt, or the cow?

The next morning we checked in with the tourist office and got permission to ascend one of the peaks above town.  The weather had luckily cleared, a great day for a hike, but we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into.  From the start, the trail is a straight up switchback up to a great view of the lakes and pueblo.  After a couple of hours it leveled a bit and brought us around to a valley with horses grazing.  One ran up looking aggressive but it turned out they heard us opening food wrappers and wanted to share.  Getting from there to the top wasn’t so clear.  The whole mountain is really one giant pile of slate and shard.  There are no sure steps and lots of sliding back or falling.  Matt took a straight arrow to the top, I followed some trail sticks off along what I thought would be stable rock wall.  It wasn’t and I ended up near the top but wedged between a pile of snow and an impossible to climb wall.  Going back down to a better vantage point wasn’t easy and my head reeled looking down but then remembered that you can’t fall off a mountain.  Matt was already at the top and off exploring a difficult looking peak.  I climbed up more rubble and shard where there was an obvious path.  Once up top the views expanded in all directions, the lake below, mountains in every directions, some white capped, some volcanoes with the tops blown off.  I walked the spine of the mountain and couldn’t believe that it was tiny bits of slate rock, even here at the top.  The final point was marked by a giant carrion poised like offertory pyre with cliffs surrounding.  The last few days had been cloudy but we had blue sky with slight haze.  Matt appeared and we took turns throwing giant rocks off the side causing instant avalanches that lasted a good 30 seconds echoing down the valley.  Hiking with Matt is never as simple as coming up and going back down the same way.  He found a giant washout that we walked at stumbled, slid and spent a great part of the descent on our rears in the crab position.  The last part was finer gravel and a run ski glide down to the front face where we had first hike up.  Walking down the incline was grueling, legs shaking and 35 year-old knees feeling overworked. 

That night we ate at the only restaurant in town.  The forlorn waitress told us that 20 years ago they had 30 to 40 cm of snow for most of the winter and that now they rarely get snow in town.  She said it sort of expectantly, accusingly, like it was perhaps our fault.  Will my grandkids understand how we could drive around in vehicles powered by internal combustion engines, releasing God-knows what kind of harmful emissions, riding motorcycles around the continent…  just for the hell of it?

Back on the bikes the next morning we drove the same dirt road back to the main “siete lagos” road, hit asphalt and rolled into Villa Angostura, yet another picturesque tourist mountain village town with lakes and mountains around.  Our legs were shot, I could hardly get mine over the bike.  We spent the day walking around the four block town during mid afternoon, ghost town hours.  Eating times are in this part of Argentina is always something to look forward to.  There isn’t much variety in the menus, in fact there isn’t any, but the food and wine are excellent, and right now very cheap.  Lake trout in toasted garlic butter sauce, venison cubes with a gorgonzola sauce, wild boar and sautéed vegetables, meets, chickens, and you’ll rarely spend more than five dollars at a formal restaurant.

Next morning, quick breakfast and then off to rent bikes for the day.  We rode 3 km to a national park that is a forested peninsula that rises over the lake.  The motherly hosteria owner tried to convince us not to go on bikes since a British guy had just broken his arm and taken some stitches from a bike fall.  Then, at the park registration office the woman screened us severely and asked if we did this kind of thing all the time.  Of course, we said, we’re pros.  100 yards into the trail it became so steep I carried my bike to the top.  The incline on the other side was so steep and gravelly that I walked the bike down.  So much for the first km of the path.  Then it was great mountain bike, following hills along a narrow path cutting through dense forest.  Again, it was a tree graveyard with giant fallen trees everywhere.  Some had fallen across the path and a dangerous narrow space had been cut.  It was intimidating riding, even for “pros” like us, not to mention my legs screamed with pain at the hint of an uphill.  There were so many fallen trees the bikes had to be lifted or dragged under several parts.  I coasted up behind a family hiking in the woods.  I sniffled from the cold and startled the whole.  They all laughed and cheered us on.  Bikes weren’t allowed into the last part and we hiked in to a tea hut with two hippies running it surrounded by an incredible forest of Arrasomething trees, most connected by the same roots.  A branch falls and then sprouts stems of new trees.  The bike back was somewhat easier even though the legs ached.  The hippies told us that the trees had all been blown over by a vicious storm last October.  Some of these trunks are about four feet in diameter and wind just snapped them in two!  Whatever the reason for global warming, melting glaciers, disappearing plankton, and the changing weather patterns, seeing the number of giant trunks taken down by wind makes me rethink - not man over nature, or even man as part of nature, but man on his knees huddled at the feet of mad mother nature.

We got more daring on the bikes and at one steep switchback Matt disappeared having skidded and rolled on his back into thick growth.  I laughed at him heartily and then two minutes later I skidded and slammed into a giant fallen trunk.  I walked the last part.  We had to check out with the same park official who seemed to be laughing at me when I walked in.  She had tried to warn us.  That afternoon while getting interrogated from the owner’s kids about our trip and the bikes an alarm sounded across the street, only it was so loud you couldn’t hear anything else.  I looked over to the fire station and guys started pulling skidding on bikes and motorcycles.  People poured out of their homes and get their cars out of the street and 30 seconds later the firemen were off, an impressive response time from the all volunteer crew.

We drove on to Bariloche 90 km away the next morning.  Great road shifting back and fourth although the traffic thickens toward town.  This is the main tourist center of the area but now it is down season so only a few European stragglers around.  I saw there was a half marathon in a week so I spent a couple of days going on long runs through the outskirts and hills beyond.  A couple of days ago, going down a steep slope pulled something in my foot and am walking like a gimp.  It is Bariloche’s 103’d birthday.  Everything closes and a parade went through town, mostly high school marching kids, horses and fire engines.  We walked into a Tango festival and caught some of the couples practicing.  Matt checked out a car race and motorcycle race the same day.  Fireworks were supposed to be held but were cancelled because of winds.  There are tons of cafes, bars, restaurants that we may get to explore.  We’ll see what the next week brings.

We’ve quickly learned about the Andes and the “micro climas”.  In Bariloche it is always raining, windy and cold.  There is a three day hike that where you sleep in cabins (i.e. don’t carry large packs) that we’ll try to do when my foot feels better and we decide to brave the cold.  We are looking into the possibility of selling the bikes so this could be the end of the trip.  Or, we’ll continue on and drive up Chile.

un abrazo, Chris

contact us:  chris@isabm.com   matt@isabm.com