In Search of a Glacier

After a few glorious days in Bariloche I decided to head south to El Bolson, a place that is supposedly more beautiful and has better hiking options than here. Arriving in El Bolson I have to say it is not quite as pretty as Bariloche, the mountains in the background are really nice but the lack of a lake seems to just take away that ideal location feel.

The town itself had its local market on that day and with a large hippie population this meant lost of interesting arts, crafts, beer and music on display. An unexpected surprise however was that this is very close to the berry centre of Argentina meaning that there were many local jams to try. Luckily for us we managed to pick a hostel that not only made its own bread (proper home made multigrain bread not the usual sweet bread available here) but also its own jam which made for quite a nice breakfast. With the exception of the markets there is really nothing to do here in El Bolson with the town little more than a gathering point for hikers and indeed most hostels being out of the "centre of town". However it is for the hiking you come not the town itself.

There is a quite beautiful national park nearby that you are able to walk/climb through, finishing in a glacier at the highest point and this was where I was headed. The second day here however it was off to do a bit of a warm up and try one of the closer hiking options, finally deciding on the 20+km trail that took me out of town to the Indians head (a rock face that looks remarkably like a face) and some quite nice albeit small waterfalls (after Iguazu I think only Angel and maybe Victoria falls might compare). The trek wasn't that difficult and certainly provided a good warm up for the next day, the start of three day hike to the glacier.

The hike through the national park was beautiful with the first day spent walking alongside a river that was so ridiculously clear (coincidentally called blue river) it almost seemed fake. Strangely though there was very little in the way of fish in the river and despite seeing some small ones I can only think that perhaps it was too cold for the fish here (the water was freezing cold). The river provided a lovely spot to have lunch and it was a nice easy mostly flat hike to the first refugio.

The refugio's are similar to a camp house with a simple kitchen a bunch of mattress for you to sleep on, a fire and little else. You have the option of buying food here as well but we had opted to bring our own and it certainly made things cheaper with food for the three days coming to the cost of about one meal in the refugio. Still they have everything you need and you are welcomed with anything that they have that you require. Also the park is kept incredibly rubbish free which is nice and actually encourages people to collect any they do see and remove it from the park.

The second day was the hardest day with us having to not only walk back almost an hour to the point we would climb from but then climb up about a mile in altitude. We struggled up the mountain with an Argentinian guy that we met at the first refugio and made it up despite him struggling with a lack of energy. The breakfasts are small over here so they really rely on a big lunch about 2pm and a big dinner and since we didn't reach a place to eat lunch until 4pm he was really struggling. Finally after walking most of the day we arrived at the refugio for a late lunch and some beautiful views of the Andes up nice and close. The walk was beautiful though and once we got to the top of the mountain we walked through nothing but quiet rain forrest with nobody else to be seen or heard. A short hour long walk from there took us to the refugio at the foot of the glacier, leaving us with a 1.5 hour trek up in the morning and then a solid 5 hour trek. It was however as we were sleeping that mother nature reared its ugly head and dumped a storm upon us making the path to the glacier too dangerous the next day, leaving us disappointed.

The remainder of the walk down was also very wet with the lovely rain forrest once again a feature, a feature however that failed to stop us getting wet and indeed dumped any held precipitation upon us when the wind picked up! The rain also made the goat trail very slippery and it took us alot longer to get down than we would of liked but we all got down and back to town alright. The arrival in town was met with the purchasing of a couple of beers and some much needed steak after three days of living vegetarian. With the weather looking uncertain for the next few days I decided I would head back to Bariloche because if I had to spend a couple of days in a town I don't think I could have managed in El Bolson. The decision in front of me is the same that it has been for the last two weeks....do I head south or north?