The Lakes District: Argentina

Amazingly at half way through our trip, we were yet to experience the pain of a 24 hour bus ride… that all changed when we decided to head back to Patagonia, albeit northern Patagonia this time! All things considered, the bus ride was not nearly as bad as you imagine (picture a business class flight type seating), but it does feel like a bit of a time warp.

 We arrived at Barriloche, part of the Argentines lakes district, with adventure on our minds. We’d eaten far too much and moved far too little in Buenos Aires – and Dave had been itching for a chance to get on a bike again. So it was decided, a 4-day bike ride through the ‘siete lagos’ (seven lakes) route was on order.

 We hired all our riding and camping gear and set off on a 130km ride. Day 1 – the morning started with a relaxing boat cruise across to our starting point. The sun was shining, the lakes were brilliant blue and the snow peaked mountain tops surrounded us…. Truly it couldn’t get much better than this. The good-will lasted until we had to carry our bikes, loaded with all our camping gear, up and down a ridiculous amount of stairs because the ‘proper’ track was closed! With my moral low, and doubts creeping in that I’d never be able to complete this ride (keeping in mind, my riding history includes a couple of 2 hour rides in the past 12 months!), we decided to call it a day and set up camp at serene camping spot number 1.

 

 

 

Day 2: Today we were actually riding on road, which was much nicer than the dirt tracks of yesterday, but dave had to keep convincing me I wasn’t going to die riding next to trucks! Again, blue skies, shining lakes and stunning mountaintops surrounded us as we went. Thoroughly exhausted (well I was anyway) we set up at campsite numero dos – another tranquil lakeside spot, next to all the holidaying Argentineans. This was one thing we’d noticed, this route was not full of gringos, rather we’d found where the locals go on holidays… it was rather refreshing.

 

 

 

 

 Day 3 was tough – this section of road was in the process of being paved, so most of the day was spent coughing up the dust from the road as all the cars and buses passed us. We met up with another group of riders who put my whinging to shame fairly quickly: they had been riing from the southern-most tip of South America and were heading all the way up to Alaska, a full 18 months of riding every day… kudos to them!

Once we passed the dirt, we had a blissful descent to campsite numero tres – you guessed it, another serene lakeside location.

 

We started early on day 4 and were rewarded with having the road to ourselves, spotting a few eagles that were pretty happy to pose for some photos and a stunning 19km descent to the finish line. Definitely an awesome reward for the effort.

 

 

 

Our next stop in the lakes district was El Bolson, a hippy community a couple of hours south. It just so happened that a couple of girls from our hostel were desperately trying to find another couple of people to join them paragliding. The sun was shining, and they were heading to where we wanted to go, so on a whim we signed up and were off. A couple of hours later we were up and away, flying above the Andes and watching the world go by…

 

 

 

In El Bolson town, we managed to find the most inconvenient Laundromat in existence, they refused to wash socks! As we walked away dumbfounded, we found a good-old regular Laundromat and pondered how on earth our original find was still in business!

After stocking up on raspberries and artesian chocolates at the local market, we were off to a secluded lodge about an hour out of town to have a well-deserved rest. No cars, the most beautiful river I’ve ever seen, awesome hot showers, home grown, home cooked food, horse riding to hidden hikers refugios, a drumming circle and a few nice bottles of Argentinean wine made the next few days absolute heaven. A perfect end to possibly our favourite country so far. Argentina, you were good to us!