Lago Puelo

A gorgeous lake and national park, situated just south-west of El Bolson, and surrounded by thick pine forest and snowy Andes.  Although we've been in Patagonia now for a couple weeks, this is what I imagined it to be...It's wild and untouched; All of the surroundings.  We found a campground, right by the lake shore, and we have literally been the only ones here, other than a couple from Czech we met the other day.  They just started their trip in Buenos Aires a couple weeks ago, and bought a Toyota Tundra with an awesome pop up camper on the back, from a guy selling it in BA.  Cool folks.  We drank Yerba Mate with them and made lentil patty burgers for dinner on the fire...Hopefully we'll run into them again down the road.

Fishing is one of my favorite past-times, and growing up trout fishing in the Santa Barbara mountains, and having a sailboat on the Pacific for 4 years, I've been in need of a fix.  I brought a pole with me, and have been carrying it since Costa Rica, where it broke, was fixed, then broke again in Ecuador, and still haven't caught a thing on this entire trip...After 2 days of trying the river mouth here, and finally ending up in front of the breakwater of the small marina, I caught us some dinner last night.  Feels great to be able to fish, let alone to bring home some food.  Planning on plenty more of it to come!

 
Killing some time and taking in scenery is what we've got going on for a bit, then we'll need to figure out our passage further south.  Ushuaia's on the list, so there's still plenty of traveling left to do...Actually much more traveling, as we finally booked our flight back home in March, and we've gotta get all the way back up to Lima!  It's not like we're not used to taking long bus rides by now...

El Bolsón

The 'hippie' town, as most call it, is a great little place.  We arrived Sunday, on a 2 hour bus ride from Bariloche, with, again, great surroundings the whole way.  Winding through valleys of tall, snow covered mountains and crystal blue rivers and lakes.

Awesome tree carving in the park

Might I first mention in this post, that while traveling so far, we've had some strange and 'small world' connections and coincidences...One very notable one happened again, for the 4th time while on this bus...History goes, that while we were in Panama (Boquete) to be exact, in April of this year, near the start of our trip, we met a French couple at our hostel.  Turns out they were also traveling all the way down South America, and we briefly exchanged ideas...That was that.  Then, while we were in Ecuador, 2 months later, we exchanged glances, crossing a street in the pouring rain, and I said to Danica..."Whoah, that's that couple from Panama!"  That was all at the time.  Then, on our 22 hour bus ride to Bariloche from Mendoza, him and I passed eachother at the terminal, halfway through our trip.  At that point, we both smiled and started talking about how crazy it is to do that not only once, but 3 times!  We talked a little about places we'd been in the rest stop we had, and then we continued to Bariloche.  We ended up spending almost a week there, and never saw them, until we got on the bus to El Bolsón, and they boarded about 10 minutes after us.  Finally, when we all got off at the bus terminal there, we had a good chat about it all.  Unfortunately we didn't exchange info, but judging by our ways of intersecting at random moments, I imagine we'll see them again!  Infact, I'm pretty sure of it.

As for El Bolsón, we really enjoyed it.  We found a campground called "Refugio Patagonico" not far from the bus terminal, and they had a massive yard with tons of campsites,and we were 2 of maybe 5 people there in total.  The guys running the place were super nice, and gave us a great deal to camp for a week, so we did just that.  We had a comfortable campsite with nice grass, a great fire pit and grill, and the place had wifi, which was a bonus.  The people working there gave us tons of local info on what to do in the area.  As of this point so far, Argentinos have been some of the nicest, most helpful people we've come across thus far...Not knocking any other countries, as everyone has been amazing, but these people seem extra friendly!

We spent our thanksgiving holiday there, and actually, it turned out to be 2 days in a row, because we were off a day, and thought we were celebrating it correctly...We cooked some great food on the grill, including mashed potatoes and chorizo and chicken, and sipped some delicious Mendocino Champagne to say the least.

After our week there, we decided on coming slightly south-west, almost to the border of Chile, to a lake called Lago Puelo, to do some more camping...

Rio Azul, a one hour walk from Bolson

Bariloche, Patagonia!

A gorgeous spot, right on a huge lake surrounded by Patagonian Andes, covered in snow.  We arrived in Bariloche aboard the 22 hour bus ride from Argentina, it was pretty brutal, but amazing scenery the whole way was a pleasant companion.  Our dream of making it to Patagonia has finally happened...Patagonia is gigantic, as it is the entire southern part of Argentina as well as Chile.  We'll see how far south we get!

Spent 5 days at 'Punto Sur' Hostel, which had a grill out back, which we used almost every night, to barbeque some dinner, or "Asado," as the Argentinos call it.  And, yes, Argentinian beef is amazing, like everyone says, and super cheap! 

One of our asado nights...

 Bariloche apparently has a ton of German settlers who ended up there.  The structures look very German, with some other European style, and the town is full of chocolate shops, featuring locally made chocolate, which was delicious.  There's also a ton of breweries, and we found a great one (from Mar de Plata) called "Antares," which had about 9 beers on tap, and a great happy hour (2 for 1 pints)...

During our stay, we walked the town, and finally found a guitar shop willing to repair my acoustic (on the cheap).  We dropped it off, and it was ready the next day about 5pm.  Guy did a great job, fixed the action, tightened the neck rod, and cleaned 'er up with some new strings.  What a relief...I would be pretty bummed if it was beyond repair...

We searched and searched for a volunteer gig in the area, without much luck...It turned out, after our second day at Punto Sur Hostel, we found out they had a listing on HelpX, and we didn't know about it...Would have been a great spot to work for a bit, but another couple, Rachelle and Don, from the States had it planned out.

Met some cool folks there, and decided to head down the road to El Bolson, where we could possibly find work, and definitely find some camping spots...As for our entrance to Patagonia, it was none other than gorgeous, and will probably get even more beautiful as we head south.  The plan as of now is to spend New Years in Ushuaia, aka the bottom of the world!  Booked a hostel for a couple nights there, and now we've got some time to kill!

Paraglider over the lake

Classic 'German' style architecture downtown

This is the lake right in front of the town