Bariloche
ARGENTINA
Bariloche Tried to Kill Me
By LYNDI
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Any way you look at it, 22 hours in a bus is not fun. It’s not relaxing, it’s not comfortable, and it’s not recommended. However, if you can fall asleep in Mendoza in a desert-like city with scorching heat and awaken at the entrance to Patagonia with towering mountains and crystalline lakes, it’s pretty amazing.
During our time skiing in Chile earlier this year, a fellow traveler told us that when we were in Bariloche, we could not miss staying at Hostel 1004. As in, he basically made us pinky-swear to stay there, so we definitely could not consider any other locations. And boy were we glad we listened to slightly-obsessed-hostel-guy! We took a local bus from the bus terminal into central Bariloche and found the Bariloche Center, where the hostel is in Suite 1004. We were greeted with a spacious, clean, friendly and well-priced hostel when we entered. Not only did the central common area have one of the world’s most amazing views of the Patagonian Andes, but our dorm room did as well! And the best part? It stays light until at least 9:30pm, so there’s extra time to enjoy the view.
Bariloche is the gateway to the Nahuel Huapi (Nah-well Wah-pee) National Park, so our first day was spent in town registering at the Alpine Club (the guy behind the desk asked our names and nodded and didn’t even pretend to write them down. But still, we felt better), getting maps of the trails, buying food and supplies (Cal had wisely traveled down to Patagonia sans hat, gloves, scarf, hiking shoes or tent and had to buy everything at inflated prices in town) and walking around town a bit.
Argentina is a country that loves its siestas. From about 1pm-4pm there is literally nothing to do because everybody shuts down their shops and even restaurants to do… um… stuff? Really, what can they do if everything else is closed at the same time? But I digress. At any rate, since we couldn’t do any shopping or preparing during the siesta, an old pal turned up at our hostel and entertained us for a bit.
Aaron and I had first met Alisa on our boat from Panama to Colombia way back in August 2008 and Alisa had settled in Bariloche for the past 2 years. So she came by with her boyfriend Matthias and invited us to come along with them to a nearby park. The two of them are both skilled “slackliners”, which means they set up a tightrope-type thing between two trees and walk on it, bounce on it, and do other fancy tricks. Naturally, Cal, Aaron and I had to give it a go. Considering I couldn’t even stand on it without one person on either side of me, I knew I was in over my head. Cal and Aaron showed considerable improvement as the afternoon wore on, but my crap balance kept my progress at bay.
The whole time we were playing on this slackline, there was a little voice in the back of my head saying, “Hey Lyndi. What do you think you’re doing? You know you can’t balance on anything. Remember? You tried back in first grade and fell off the low balance beam and your entire class laughed at you! And if that didn’t teach you, then maybe when you were playing with your childhood friend Krisha and stepped off a curb you were balancing on and broke your foot? Get off that stupid slackline before you hurt yourself right before a 3 day trek!!”.
I nodded to myself at my inner wisdom, but then Cal, Aaron, Matthias and Alisa all called out to me “Lyndi! Try one more time!”. And my inner voice yells back, “Don’t listen to them!!! Stay off that slackline!!”. Still nodding to myself, I got on the slackline again – just to dismount ungracefully and sprain my left big toe. Words of “There dummy. You happy?!” taunted me the rest of the day.
So I tried to stay off my foot for the rest of the day, icing it and wrapping it and watching it turn pretty colors. But was I going to let an injured toe stop me from doing one of the world’s most beautiful hikes?? Never! But perhaps I should have…
We caught the 9:30am bus the next morning (that came at 10:15, by the way) to Villa Cathedral where the trail started. The first day’s hike was beautiful – winding up through forests, crossing rivers and affording jaw-dropping views of Nahuel Huapi Lake bordered by snow capped mountains. The last 100 meters of the trek to the campsite was covered in snow, but easily crossed, and we had camp set up by about 5pm. In the National Park, Argentina has a great series of refugios, or mountain huts, set up throughout their trails. You can camp outside the refugios for free, but they still have outhouses available to all and you can pay to use their cooking facilities. It also provides a fire-warmed place to spend the cold evenings, which is a real treat.
We had heard in the Alpine Club down in Bariloche that sections of the Nahuel Huapi circuit were closed due to snowy conditions, so we checked in with the refugio host to see what the latest update was. She told us that we could cross to the next refugio the following day – but only if we were very experienced hikers and accustomed to snowy conditions. That pesky voice inside my head was back.
“Lyndi – don’t do it. You are not experienced, you have an injured foot, the weather could turn bad at any minute, do you need more reasons to go back to town tomorrow?? Need I go on???”. So my initial response was, we shouldn’t proceed. We should go back to town. Cal, Aaron and I discussed it and decided that that was probably the smart thing to do. However, we spoke to an English couple staying at the refugio and they said to us, “Ah.. we’ve already come this far!”. Yeah! So had we!
Our resolve quickly changed and our plan of action for the following day was set. We cooked a rather outstanding meal of pasta and tomato paste with our little gas-burning stove, played a few rounds of canasta, and finally retired to bed when the light started to dim.
We got an early start the next morning, knowing that we only had to cover 8.5km, but two mountain passes and wanted to give ourselves plenty of time with the extra snow. We were joined by the über-German (as exemplified by his name) Hans Becker and he quickly laid out tracks in the deep snow while we followed behind him. Most steps held pretty well, but probably every fifth step or so had our footsteps collapsing into the snow nearly waist-deep. It was pretty slow going up to the first pass – what would take us about an hour on normal ground delayed us to about 2.5 hours with the thick snow. The last part of the pass was so steep that we had to scramble up boulders because the snow was too deep and steep to walk on. Climbing big rocks with big backpacks was a new challenge for me, but we all managed without too much problems. The views at the top were stunning, so we got in a few photos before heading down the steep and treacherous backside.
Can you imagine descending loose rocks and dirt at about a 70 degree angle with huge backpacks on? It was super. The good part was that every single step you took, you slid down another three or so. The bad part was that there was not a single sturdy place to put your foot. Everything was loose and collapsed underneath you and fell to the bottom. It was a long and slow descent but we finally made it to a forest clearing where we could refill water bottles in the glacial river and have lunch.
At this point – our legs were shot. The ascent in the snow and the descent on slick ground worked muscles we’d never used before. But assured that the worst was behind us – we carried on. In front of us loomed another snow covered mountain and it dawned on us that we would have to summit that one too. So much for the worst being behind us.
So we slowly trudged up another snow laden mountain using all the energy we could possibly muster. About halfway up we noticed that footprints in the snow diverged. One set went straight up the difficult and steep mountain, and a couple others veered northwest up a lesser hill. Always the optimists, we veered northwest – surely more footprints meant that was the right way to go? Using my last ounces of energy, we summited the lower pass – hoping to see the next refugio on the other side – only to discover that all these footprints had gone the wrong way. We’d have to continue up the enormous mountain. Our spirits sagging, we trudged on.
When we finally came to the top, I could barely look around to enjoy the views. A part of me vaguely remembers seeing awe-inspiring jagged mountains encircling us – but all I could see was the stupid refugio miles away at the bottom. So, with no energy, no water, and on the verge of despair at the sight of more loose gravel and snow to descend upon – we headed downhill. The details are vague, but I do remember slipping innumerable times on the snow, my feet falling through into waist-deep snow many times, and Aaron having to help me on countless crossings – but we finally made it to the bottom. There was one last river to cross before getting to the refugio and, naturally, no bridge. So we just walked across it, getting our poor feet soaked and freezing and stumbled into the campsite as light was fading. We had left camp just before 8:30am and it was now nearly 8pm. What a horrible, dreadful, difficult and painful 11 hours it had been. Okay – the first 5 or 6 were still fun. The rest were some of the hardest hours of my life.
Since I was useless and couldn’t move, Aaron and Cal set up camp in the only non-snowy bank we could find. As soon as it was set up, I passed out. The guys went in to the refugio to have some dinner, but all my body wanted was sleep.
I awoke the next morning refreshed – and just ready to get out of there. The hike back to town was pretty simple and after 5 hours at a pretty good pace, we had made it to the Ruta Provincial 79 where buses “occasionally” passed for Bariloche. We weren’t really sure what “occasionally” meant, so we took off our packs, had lunch, played innumerable games with sticks and rocks (darts, baseball, hit-the-sign, hit-the-sign-with-your-left-hand, etc.) but no bus. After two hours of waiting in the cold and occasional drizzle, we decided the only way to get home would be to hitch hike.
The first car to pull over was a nice Argentinean couple, so Hans and I piled in and were dropped off on a main highway at a bus stop. 10 minutes later a bus came and we were in our hostel within half an hour of being picked up. Cal and Aaron weren’t so lucky. Though they were picked up within 30 seconds of us, their guy dropped them in a different town, then they got another ride with what turned out to be the world’s slowest driver that had to stop in every antique shop and had to photograph every cow and sheep enroute, and then still dropped them off on a highway, and they got in about 2 hours after Hans and I.
Even though the bed beckoned, we stayed up that night enjoying a big pasta dinner, garlic bread, and copious bottles of wine and Quilmes beer. The next day I could hardly move. Not only were my muscles sore, but my injured foot was hurting and blisters were forming – and to top it all off my inner voice was on repeat “Told’ya so!!”.
Our recovery day was much needed and we had a great steak dinner that night to top it off. o even though “What didn’t kill me” didn’t make me stronger – it made me smarter. I now know my limits and I know I exceeded them, and all future hikes will have this circuit to keep in mind. I survived my first Patagonian multi-day hike – with the help of Aaron, a big walking stick, and some of God’s minor miracles – and already couldn’t wait for the next.
