Jan 16, 2006 - El Bolson, Argentina

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John at the backyard camp ground	The field for frisbee, and for parachuters to land	The field, some tents, and the view	Our goup, and the people we met in Bariloche
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Tanner taking pictures from above the Rosario boys' site	More of Tanner and the night scene	Brian making some Mate	Songs around a campfire, camping in Argentina
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Dan's turn to take some tree pics	More scenes from a typical night at the campground	Dan got comfortable in that tree	More campers
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Brian and Carmin, making friends	Thats a Mate gourd in her hand, the typical Argentine tea	Lago Puelo outside of El Bolson	More of Lago Puelo
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Carmin, John, Tanner, at the lake	Me at the lake	Panorama 1 at the lake	Panorama 2 at the lake
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The boys and Leslie, sitting lakeside

El Bolson is a small hippie town overrun with art vendors, travelling Argentinians, and international backpackers looking for another beautiful place to hang out for a few days. While it doesn't sit on the shore of a beautiful lake or rest at the base of jagged snow-capped peaks like Barilohe or some other places around, the landscape around El Bolson was still pretty breath-taking. We walked with our bags to Refugio Patagonico, another hostel we read about that was said to hae a large backyard to accomodate as many tents and campers as necessary, for a lesser cost of course. But we had no idea what would greet us as we rounded the corner off that dirt road to check in. See, January is smack in the middle of Argentina's summer vacation, and local college students and other young folk from all over the country flock to Patagonia to take advantage of all the camping, hiking, and outdoor activities that are only doable during the warm summer months in this otherwise frigid and wintry climate. And when these young Argentines travel, they like to camp. In the massive field serving as a backyard to this hostel there were probably somewhere around 80-100 tents, divided into the ¨quiet side¨ on the left and the ¨later-hours¨ crowd on the right. We went right and found a nice spot where we could set up our three tents next to each other. We also met back up with a group of locals who we had met in Nelly's bakyard in Bariloche, wo were now staying inside the actual hostel.

Our 4 days in El Bolson also kind of all blended into one, with a lot of repitition in the daily schedule and activities. Once I started this section of my trip and stopped entering info onto this website I kept a much more detailed hand-written journal. Luckily, that means I do not need to get so specific here, and can hopefully stick to some of the highlights. Our days in El Bolson consisted mostly of getting business done and trying to figure out the rest of our time in Patagonia, what would actually be possible, and what we would need to do to pull it off. For example, we needed to know what buses we could take where since there are not many established roads down here, and often you have to buy these tickets well in advance since the high number of travellers in this high season can fill up a bus days before. For this reason we had to end up scratching Futalefu, one of the best rafting rivers in the world and something we had all been very excited for, due to scheduling. It simply would not have been possible to do that and still have time for all the hikes an other locations we had planned. There were many borig things like this that needed to just get done so we could start focusing on the real task at hand, enjoying ourselves. Yet somehow we managed to fill nearly 4 straight days with this ridiculous kind of business, since we were examining different options (including flying, buying/renting a car, or hitching), and information and availabilities kept changing the more time we waited.

But the nights were a different story. The camping grounds was a fabulous place to be and meet ton of other people, almost exclusively Argentinian. Each site also had a BBQ pit so we cooked our diner at the site on some nights as well. And the Argentine have a very specific way of camping in groups as well. At some point someone will break out a guitar and start playing, and soon all those with instruments will gather together. Not long after every person at the site would be huddled together by the music and the camp fire and this would often last until the wee hours of the morning. Without exception all of our nights started out this way in El Bolson, and some times this would be all they consisted of. Lucky for us, there was a group of Argentinian guys around our age staying right across from us, who were all very cool and of similar mind, and 3 of whom were actually in a band together. They were a folkloric band, which means they perform traditional Argentine music at shows, while still being able to bust out an awesome rock tune when need be. So we were treated to extra special music for the 3 days that our schedules overlapped, and one night in partiular when all the campers seemed to decide to stay at the site all night and these boys from Rosario played for hours and also cooked up an amazing and massive barbeque of beef and lamb.

The other main nighttime activity of note was bowling, but not how you picture it. Our first night in El Bolson we found this bowling alley bar, which is really just a small bar with two tiny bowling lanes an one waitress to bothe serve you, set up the games, an keep your score if you need. The bowling is all slightly miniaturized tough, so the lanes are shorter and narrower, and the pins and balls smaller. It is also scored slightly differently, which is why we did need to have the waitress keep tally for us, but I don't think Nataly minded as we kept her pretty entertained throughout the night. We had so much fun this first night that we returned the next night with our friends we had met in Bariloche, but never actually got to bowl since the lanes were full until closing time at 4am.

The whole time there we kept hearing about Lago Puelo and the beautiful National Park that lay just 25 minutes bus ride out of town. We arrived on a Monday night the 16th with the intentions to go the next day, yet due to our planning frustrations we were not actually ready to go until Thursday. Of course, on Thursday it was rainy and cold all day, so we held off. This was also the day that we were all pondering the possibility for a few hours of being on the cover of GQ magaine in Spain. I'll explain. Tanner and Brian (two strappingly-handsome young men) had been outside of a supermarket, when they were approached by two guys who worked for GQ in Spain. Apparently they were in town looking for people, and had invited Brian and Tanner to come by a shoot they were having later to get some shots taken and said they should bring their friends. We had a grand time discussing and arguing over exactly how we would change the entire world of fashion once our faces graced the pages of that magazine. So we all set out that evening, finally arrived at the right place, realized they had already left, found them at their hotel, and were told to wait outside in the lobby while they called us in to another room one by one. You go in, they ask you your first name, they take one snapshit with a point and click digital camera and then thank you for your time. Turns out they were searching for anyone with a sort of ¨¨hippie¨ look, which is why they came to El Bolson in the first place. They explained they would look over all the photos later and contat anyone they wanted to come back the next day. Unfortunately we had our tickets set for the next day, so when they came by the hostel to find us and tell us they wanted to make us millionaires, we had already left.

That final day we had a bus at 5pm, yet it was our last chance to make it to Lago Puelo. Enjoying any of the walking trails around the park itself was out of the question, but at least we'd see the lake and get some time to spend there. And that morning at the hostel I actually ran into Leslie again, the French girl who is studying for a year abroad in Mendoza, who I originally met on my Lake Titicaca tour, and who I had tried to find in Plaza Sotomayor that first night in Valparaiso 2 days before New Year's. With all the times we tried to coordinate a meeting through email, it took a complete fluke at the tooth-brushing sink to finally meet back up. So Leslie came along for the day to the Lake as well, although Dan and Brian unfortunately had to miss out, since Dan had to get a police report for his camera and jacket being stolen from the dance place we had gone to the night before. Yeah, a complete bummer yet an accepted possibility at any point while travelling down here. Anyway, we bought the massive fried steak, egg, ham, cheese, lettuce, avocado, and Salsa Golf sandwhiches that had been maintaining us for the last few days, and brought them with us on the bus to Lago Puelo. We had a total of one hour to hang out there on the shore, and then had to catch the following bus back into town. It was indeed a beautiful place, and a pity we could not have had more time there. Less than an hour after we got back into town, enough time to grab another ice cream cone for the road, we were back on a bus heading off to our next Patagonian location.

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