Patagonia's Lake District, parte dos

After riding almost 400 miles through Patagonia's Lake District over the past two weeks I am now back in Bariloche for another three nights (and yet another bike excursion on Wednesday) before packing up my stuff on Thursday and starting the long flight home on Friday. What a great two weeks this has been!

My last campground of the trip, at Camping Los Cipreses

Since my last post, from San Martin de los Andes, I have seen more lakes and different mountains, thanks to a detour (and a side-trip on a rented mountain bike) I took to add even more variety to this trip. If you were to look at the map, as I did for many nights before embarking on this vacation, you'd see that this immense area is sparsely populated, and therefore there are not many roads. The ones that exist are mainly gravel roads, or ripio, and they are pretty much off-limits for a road touring bike with 700 x 28 C tires. That leaves only two or three asphalted arteries that traverse the region, and as a result it is impossible to go for a loop trip unless you want to spend a month or so on the road. (I could have ridden a long loop, but it would have entailed a 150-mile stretch without any services whatsoever, no campgrounds, farther east in the deserted area, without lakes and almost no streams—so, why?)

In other words, I had to do an out-and-back excursion.

Long, long distances, and no shoulder

While we're on the topic of roads, let's say it loud and clear here: The riding here is not the most relaxed by any measure. Fewer roads translates into more cars on the existing highways, and the constant stream of traffic is, quite frankly, bothersome and annoying. It never ends. Even at night, at 3 a.m., you can hear from the campgrounds trucks rolling by or cars revving their engines. I have no idea what their mission is, but the traffic doesn't stop. Most of what I rode of Ruta 40, the Panamericana, has no shoulder whatsoever, and the road drops off into gravel two inches to the right of the white line. Busses, eighteen-wheelers, cars with travel trailers, and all the rest of the traffic pass you by mere inches, often in a line of a dozen vehicles or more, with a slow one leading them and the others impatient to pass.

RT-40 has a total length of 5,194 kilometers (or 3,227 miles)

To be fair, most of the drivers try to give you space or will slow right behind you if they feel uncomfortable passing. Honking is rare, and I didn't hear any "angry" horns, only the light tapping to let you know that something big is coming up behind you. They have faith that you'll hold your line, easier said than done on a loaded touring rig with crosswinds and a semi a foot away. Today I decided, for the first time, to drop off into the gravel since what was coming up behind me seemed to be closer and bigger and faster than anything that I wanted to test my skills against. So, that was really a big negative of this trip, something I had not expected. On my side trip on RN-231 that leads to the border with Chile the traffic was much lighter, and I enjoyed those few miles where one could actually hear the birds chirping, the exploding seeds of Genista pilosa, and the wind brushing through the trees. If you want peace and quiet, come to the Lake District but go hiking from refugio to refugio.

The old ripio road to Lago Lolog

Broom, or German Ginster, lined the roads almost everywhere

Genista pilosa pops its seeds in machine-gun fire fashion

Let me also say something about those gravel roads. What I had ridden in the Mendoza area was a hard-packed gravel, bumpy but manageable. Down here the soil is different, with much more volcanic ash that turns these gravel roads into dusty nightmares for skinny tires. It is impossible to see where there is hardpack and where the cars have worn the surface into a deep sand pit. As I mentioned, one day, while in San Martin, I rented a mountain bike to explore the old road to Lake Lolog, and even on a mountain bike there were some hairy patches. But that's not all: Anytime a car passes (and they don't really slow down just because there's no asphalt) you get completely enveloped by a huge dust cloud. Do this for an hour, and you've had your fill. The old road to Lolog was OK since there were only two cars that passed me in about 8 miles, but going back on the popular ripio road was enough to collect 10 grams of first-grade buggers over the next 24 hours. It was miserable.

Fellow cyclo-tourists walking a pitch too steep to ride, on a rare shoulder (and yes,
I had to walk, too—the 34/32 was not enough)

So, I tried to stay away from ripio, foregoing a side trip to Lake Traful as it would have meant 20 miles of this crap, one-way. I made the mistake to check out the campsite at Lago Espejo Chico, which is connected by a bit more than 2 miles of ripio to the Panamericana. I was passed by at least 15 cars just going there, barreling through the dust on this curvy and hilly road. The campground was crowded and even though the lake and river were beautiful, the vibe was just wrong and I just couldn't stand all the dust in the air—so I decided to backtrack. And then my front wheel washed out in one of those dust-filled depressions, and I went down on my side, bruising (or maybe cracking) a rib or two and incurring some road rash. That was a suck-ass day, and camping for the next four nights was certainly not as pleasant as it should have been. Getting in and out of the tent was painful and pathetically slow, and sleeping was punctuated by the occasional stabbing pain in the left side. In other words: Leave ripio to the locals.

Riding ripio on a rented mountain bike

And that's all the bitching I have for you. Everything else was perfect! I couldn't have had better weather, with only one day of really nasty winds and clouds (the day I left Bariloche). Temperatures during the day varied from the low 70s all the way to 90 F! Once the sun sets (this time of year not until about 9:15 p.m.), things get chilly, with temps dropping into the low 40s and as far down as the upper 30s. I had packed my 600-gram Marmot Hydrogen 30-degree (-1 C) sleeping bag, and it kept me nice and warm. My Nemo Hornet one-person tent, at something like 750 grams total, was another piece of equipment that made camping fun and comfortable (although I should have brought a LazyBoy recliner for those post-crash nights!). A 600-ml Snowpeak titanium cup to make coffee and soup on a tiny Snowpeak burner and a few other superlight items from my backpacking days rounded out my camping equipment, which served me well.

Life at camp, part 1

Altogether I spent six nights in established campgrounds. They charge about $7 to $11 a night, provide (mostly) hot showers, and have functioning toilets (bring your own paper!). All of the ones where I stayed also featured a proveduria, a small on-site tienda that carries the basics such as bread, various canned foods, occasionally even some produce, and definitely cold beer, various wines, and of course Fernet, the Argentinians' go-to drink when coupled with Coke. I had brought a Ziploc bag with coffee bags and some instant soups, and I supplemented that with vacuum-sealed cheese and salami that I bought in the three towns that I passed through. I can't say that I hurt for anything!

At camp, part two

Obviously, I was not the only one enjoying life in the outdoors. These campgrounds were fairly crowded with Argentinian and Chilean tourists. It's summertime, so let's pack up the kids and spend a week or two on the lake. Have a boat to tag along? All that much better. Let's make sure we have our camp chairs and table, the big old tent into which we can all pile, and let's make it a summer vacation. Since all the campgrounds have firepits, I saw (and smelled) lots of meat being grilled, asados. In addition to families, gazillions of teenagers and university students are traveling as well, waiting every morning on the road in front of the campgrounds and trying to hitch-hike to the next destination. Others travel on their loaded mountain bikes, usually three to five in a group. Of the people I talked to, many come from the capital, Buenos Aires, to spend their summer vacation. The Lake District certainly is a hot destination.

Beaches seem to be everywhere, even if the lakes are pretty damn cold. I know, because I took a dip in two of them. Every campground that I stayed in had lake access, and whenever the road is close enough to a lake, cars will be parked and people are sitting in their camp chairs on the mostly rocky shores of these aquamarine jewels. And let me tell you: There are a whole bunch of very nice-looking women who like to show off their tiny bikinis! Every day I would curse more than once that I am now abuelito material. Oh well, what can I say.

Beach life on lake Nahuel Huapi at Camping La Estacada

One big difference in comparison to my trip to the Mendoza wine country last year was that I saw way, way more people drinking hierba mate, the national tea-like drink that requires hot water and a bombilla and a receptacle, often a gourd but also made of plastic or stainless steel, also called mate. Where do you get hot water, when sitting on the beach? Why, of course you pour it out of your thermos, and as the water should not be boiling that thermos will last for quite a while. The folks on their bikes pack their thermos, the people on the beach have their thermos, and people in the park carry their thermos. Run out of hot water? You don't have to look far to see a sign aqua caliente para mate. As I said, this was by far not as prevalent in the wine country.

Tengo mate, bombilla, y termos

I found the people down here extremely friendly and open, be it locals or those from other parts of the country. Numerous times, camp neighbors would approach me and ask whether I needed anything and not to hesitate to ask if there was something they could do for me. My Airbnb hosts, of course, were super nice as well but went beyond what I have experienced in other such domiciles. Never did I feel as if I was treated as a tourist but rather as a visitor who was to be welcomed. Of course, I am sure it helps to speak Spanish, but that can't be the only reason. People down here are just friendly, plain and simple.

Talking about my Spanish: I felt really comfortable with my language skills. Just today I talked for quite a while with a young woman from Cordoba who is on a solo trip through the region, with no exact time schedule or other worries it seemed. We had both stopped in the same spot, she going, I coming, and we chatted for a good while, in Spanish, of course. It is fairly easy to understand the Spanish down here, once one gets used to the fact that a double ll such as in pollo is pronounced as a soft je sound instead of the Mexican ye: poh-joh versus poh-yo. Same thing with the y in playa: plah-jah versus play-ya. It's a bit similar to all those soft sounds in Portuguese.

Fly-fishing on Lago Lolog

A campground run by the local mountain bikers

Herding sheep with a mountain bike

The effects of a forest fire near the Chilean border at Brazo rincon campground

I killed dozens of these SOBs; scary looking even when dead

A young monkey tail tree (Chilean Araukarie, araucaria)

Office on the lake

The eastern end of lake Nahuel Huapi, with Bariloche on the other side

To wrap things up: It ain't cheap to fly down here, and it ain't cheap to stay in even moderate hotels and cabanas, at least not as a single person. Meals in restaurants and food prices in the grocery stores are on the same level as what we see in the US. I read some online article about how Argentina is no longer a backpacker's cheap dream come true. But if you can scrape together the pennies for the flight, don't mind dealing with a bit of adventure, and have a desire to see some truly magnificent countryside, you may want to consider coming down here, maybe renting a car (not everybody is into the bike thing, I realize), and spend days hiking and simply looking at how beautiful this part of the world is. And don't forget: When it's dark, cold, nasty winter in our hemisphere, it's summer down here! What more could you want?

Jürgen