Last Full Day in Bariloche

Cerro Catedral

The next day I met back up with the Brits and a seventh person, Jesse. We had intended to head out to the town of Catedral at 11AM via bus, but were delayed by a futbol game. After the Brits got their fill and saw their local team (Manchester City) lose, we caught the bus at 1PM. I was a little peeved by the delay, but I'll admit that things might not have been quite as amazing if we had started our trek at a more reasonable hour.

The trek started easily and it seemed that we would certainly make it to the summit very quickly. That all changed very abruptly, as I received yet another reminder of the burdens that come from traveling in a group. We took constant breaks before we needed them, and were always waiting for whoever was dragging behind. To be fair, as a group everyone was relatively strong, but we only had about 5 hours of daylight to do an estimated 6 hour hike.

When we got farther up the peak, the scenery became incredibly beautiful, almost dreamlike. The camera can't quite capture the diagonal rays splitting through the canopy of the old-growth forest, but the whole area emitted a distinctly pure vibe. We naturally spread out beyond each others' area of vision, and it felt like walking peacefully alone through paradise.

When we met up toward the end of the forest that we realized how far behind some of our group had fallen. We ended up waiting half an hour for Jesse, who had some physical troubles and had to stop a few times on the way. He decided to stay behind in the forest as we headed up toward the summit. Time was short and the path was really steep, but we covered the estimated 2 hour climb in just over an hour. The forest scenery dissipated completely to reveal great varieties of spires and jagged peaks, and everyone suddenly felt the physical toll of the hike. I was the only one that had packed food, and ended up sharing it with the rest of the group, some of whom appeared to be feeling extremely weak.

I had lugged that food all the way up the hill, and losing the extra weight vitalized me as much as eating did. Being the prepared type, I ended up sharing much more of my food and water than I kept for myself. Despite the hunger, I'm always happy to help anyone, so naturally I pretended have had my fill and urged them to eat and drink freely.

We then tackled the last 2 kilometers with a "get it over with" mentality and pushed through the exhaustion. A beautiful spring sat at the top, nestled among a tight ring of jagged peaks. We took a little break and checked out "Refugio Frey," a base camp for truly daring climbers who came to attempt to scale the vertical cliff faces surrounding the spring. They looked truly insane dangling on the edge of oblivion and it certainly took the greater part of a day for them to complete their short but nigh impossible climbs. We were happy to live vicariously through the pictures of the peaks. We also brought Jesse up to the top through an impromptu superimposition.

We rushed down doing a great deal of fun and exciting "fall-running" (using momentum from downhill stretches to propel yourself farther, faster, and with less energy). We met back up with Jesse who ended up napping in the forest where we left him and continued down the hill reunited.

The second time I "saved" one of the Manchester group was when Michael built up too much momentum and lost control while running down a slope. I pretty much just stood below with my arms out, feet braced and fingers crossed. He was easy to stop. I think it was because he was tall and his center of gravity was really high and separated from his feet. He was just happy to not have crashed into the mountain wall.

We reached the bottom just before sunset, but had to wait almost 2 hours for the bus to come take us back. It was cold, and I looked ridiculous running around town trying to find someone that knew the bus schedule.

I pretty much went straight to bed after all that. I left Bariloche the next day.

More of Bariloche

Cerro Campanario

Today the rest of the group wanted to take it easy and sleep in, but by some miracle, I wasn't tired or sore at all. I decided to do a short hike up to Cerro Campanario, one of the top 10 views in the world according to National Geographic. I agree that the panorama of lakes and mountains was very impressive... but I'm more of an intimate scenery type. I was more affected by the unique views we enjoyed on the bike ride. I can't complain too much, since I skipped the gondola and hiked up to the summit for a total cost of $0.

A nice German woman took the picture above for me, and I took a few more photos before heading back down. On the way I noticed a path that headed around parallel to the mountain.... obviously it had to be explored. It turned out to be an infrequently trodden horse trail that I assumed followed the mountain range along the lake. It winded through bamboo forests and occasionally cleared up for a view of the lakes. About 45 minutes later, I discovered that it didn't follow the mountain range. I had just circled the mountain, and I found myself back where I started, perfectly oriented and generally disappointed.

The rest of the day was just relaxing and kicking back in the hostel.

From Buenos to Bariloche

The Actual Leaving:

After wrapping up a few loose ends in Buenos Aires with incredible haste, I jumped on the bus to Bariloche.

There seemed to be only Argentines entering, so I was excited to get an opportunity to practice my Spanish... but I ran into a strange surprise when I got to my seat. Instead of meeting an Argentine, I found myself next to an overly-talkative Korean man named Kim. Kim had made it a point not to learn a single word of Spanish in his months of travelling. I talked to him for a long time about essentially nothing before I got really bored and pretend to fall asleep. He's an author/artist in Korea, and obsesses way too much over the obvious. I'll leave the Kim business at that... at least he kept me awake to take that shot of the sunset on the horizon.

Exploring People and Places in Bariloche:

I ended up in my hostel room with a group of 5 Brits from Manchester traveling together. They turned out to be an awesome group and I got along well with all of them. That night I acted as their Spanish translator and we went on a hilarious 'empanada crawl' in Bariloche. Some pizza place that cooked them freshly took the prize.

We spent the first full day biking around the "micro circle." It was an amazing time for lots of reasons, but mostly because everyone wanted to do completely crazy and ridiculous things the whole time. We started just by riding up hills that weren't meant for bikes, like the road to the fancy hotel Llao Llao, where the picture on the left was taken.

That, however was the least exciting part of the excursion. Farther down the trail me Jaime, and Lawrence ended up cutting into the woods and climbing through the canopy to get a unique view of Lago Escondito. I managed to snap this picture of Jaime moving through the treetops.

Afterward we got stuck in the bamboo forest below, but eventually worked our way back to the normal path and had lunch by the lake. This was the first of several off-the-trodden-path experiments... and it really showed me how much more I could enjoy my experiences simply by knowing that they were unique. Peer pressure drove us off the path, and I'm not gonna lie, some of my greatest discoveries have happened as the result of peer pressure and mob mentality. The extremes that those things are responsible for are pretty interesting, but I won't explore my philosophical reflections on the power of collective thinking here.

I will, however, talk more about exploring in general. It's no coincidence that every single one of my pictures came from the things we found off the main trail (which was still very beautiful itself). The second time we diverged from the road was actually twice removed from the main trail. We accidentally went about 15km off the map and ended up on a difficult and poorly marked road. It was from that road that we went off into the woods and found a beautiful waterfall. We filled up our water bottles with some of the most deliciously pure, cold water I've ever tasted, and relaxed there for a while. I convinced the group to take a trek up into the hills since they looked fairly climbable. I wanted to see where the waterfall came from. I expected a pond or something of that sort, but we found far more spectacular things. After a bit of fairly difficult climbing we found a shrine and a statue of the virgin Mary on top of the cascade. This place must have been special to someone, but we could only guess why. It was a surreal sight . . . hard to take any clear and simple impressions from.

Farther up towered a taller, thinner, more spectacular waterfall. That's the one in the picture. Sam took a fall on the way down, and I put my arm out to help him. I think he would have been fine, but I was credited for the first of two times with 'saving' one of them. I'm pretty much one of the greatest heroes that ever lived... anyhow... the waterfall we found felt so peaceful, so inspiring, so uniquely beautiful that it's hard to reflect on the experience without feeling a longing to be out in the wilderness in the quiet.

After coming down from there and riding even farther in the wrong direction we saw an isolated and completely deserted beach. we felt obligated to find a way down to it. After the third random guess as to how to get down there, we managed to find a trail. We weren't disappointed at all. We discovered a private beach with a setting sun and beautifully dynamic horizon - completely unspoiled by civilization or any signs of human activity. It was an amazing day, and after returning to the main road we managed to return the bikes 3 minutes before they had to be back, 10 hours after we started the trip. Good people, good sites, good exercise, great day.