Argentina Travel

Sailing the Nahuel Huapi

After a few days absence, I (Marga) am blogging today. Michaela fell asleep on her daddy´s chest in the hotel, so he´s unable to do much until she wakes up. So here I am, reading e-mail and blogging until she wakes up and Mike comes to pick me up to go to dinner.

We´ve had a pretty busy couple of days, discovering the beauty of the Nahuel Huapi lake (the largest of this area, as the guides don´t tire of telling us). Yesterday, we took the tour to Puerto Bless and Lago Frías, while today we did the Circuito Chico in the morning, followed by the Bosque de Arrallanes and Isla Victoria in the afternoon.

Both Mike and I were quite disappointed by our Puerto Bless tour and we felt outright defrauded by the Lago Frías optional segment. Don´t get me wrong, it the scenery was beautiful. I´m still in awe at how incredibly beautiful the whole area around Bariloche is. I certainly didn´t remember it this way, I don´t know if this is because I was only 8 during my previous visit and children don´t appreciate scenery or because the bright fall colors add a measure of enchantment to an already beautiful area. In any case, this must truely be one of the most beautiful places in the world.

Yesterday, Puerto Pañuelo, from where we embarked in a catamaran headed towards Puerto Bless, was truely gorgeous. It was rainy, but the rain and fog added to the beauty. The lake was also gorgeous, and PPuerto Bless is a very pretty place. Still, it wasn´t spectacular (at least no more than any other places around here) and I didn´t think it was worth the hour-long voyage or the A$62 (U$22) fee. I wouldn´t recommend that you do this tour if you´re in the area.

Whatever you do, avoid the Lago Frías optional excursion. It´s a complete rip-off. Basically, after arriving to Puerto Bless we took a bus to another port a km. or so away, where we got into another boat for a 15 minute ride on the Lago Frías (at least, I think that´s where we were). The lake has a very interesting deep greenish-acqua coloring, due to the sediments that fall down from the Tronador mountain, but there is nothing of particular interest beyond that. Once we arrived at Puerto Alegre, its destination, we disembarqued at the Customs building and waited forever until all the tourists coming from Chile had cleared customs. Then we embarked for the trip back.

Honestly, I think that this excursion (for which they charge A$18 (U$6.50), included in the A$62 mentioned above) is a scam. They have to go to Puerto Alegre to pick up the tourists coming back from Chile, and they figure they can call this an excursion and charge other suckers... eh, tourists... for the trip. So you are warned, if you come to Bariloche don´t do this excursion.

Of course, most people do it because 1)they don´t know any better and 2)the alternative is to stay at the Puerto Bless hotel for 3 full hours. The place is not bad, but it can get boring after a while. Puerto Bless is where we stopped for lunch and there was actually a choice between a snack bar and a restaurant. The restaurant only serves buffets, and Mike wasn,t interested so we went for the snack bar instead. There they serve hot sandwiches at reasonable prices (A$3-6, U$1-2). Mike had a choripan which he enjoyed very much and I had the steak sandwich which was good, but needed more salt.

After lunch we crossed to the other side of Puerto Bless for a hike up a set of wooden steps (700 and change) to a waterfall and lake. It was soooo not worth it. Poor Mike had a huge headache and was carrying Mika in his back, and I am certainly not in shape so I bitched al the way up. And all of that for nothing!

The waterfall, which you can find about half way up the climb, was pretty nice. I think I may have seen it as a child and it seemed familiar, though I have seen so many waterfalls that they all start looking alike. If you do this trip, you might as well come here and maybe to the lookout above it, from where you can see another cool view of the fall. But at the top, all there is is a lake. Yes, it.s a nice lake, though again, nothing amazing by Bariloche standards, but going all the way over here to see a lake? I don.t think so. We also got to see the remains of the ¨Abuelo¨, or Grandfather, a very old tree that I might have seen as a child (I remember seeing a tree called the Abuelo, but I imagine there are several trees named that). The tree finally died in 1995, so all you can see is its trunk, I didn´t see much of the point in looking at it either. Oh well.

Then it was back to Puerto Pañuelo and then to Bariloche.

Michaela, who had been sick the previous day, seemed much better during this trip. She played and flirted with fellow passangers and crawled a little bit around the interior of the boat. But she also complained a bit. She liked it better when we were outside, walking around the boat, but also only for a while. We were certainly happy to have the backpack when hiking around with her, though it didn´t work well when she was loudly whining on Mike´s ears. Still, she did pretty well all in all.

She attracted lots of attention and by the end of the trip many people knew her and were enchanted by her. Argentinians and Latin Americans in general are much more expressive and friendly than Americans, so people are constantly talking to her and interacting with her, which she loves. She is such a cool kid!

She fell asleep as soon as we returned from our trip, so I decided to go out for pizza. We figured she needed as much sleep as she could get. She did wake up, however, as soon as I returned and then it took her forever to go back to sleep. Her fever from the previous day returned, her little body (sans the hands) was sooo hot. Still, we knew from a previous experience that unless she has a fever of 105F or the fever lasts for 5 days, doctors don´t find it a matter of concern, so we weren´t terribly worried. Still, I gave her Baby Tylenol and eventually she went to sleep.

She must still be sleeping now, as I´ve already been blogging for 1 hour (it´s 9:30 PM) and Mike hasn´t come by with her. Maybe she´s off for the night. If so Mike´s going to be quite hungry.

Today, things started better. Mika woke up once during the night and had some formula (as she is not eating, I´ve gone back to giving her baby formula, I figured she needs the fat and vitamins), but was her wonderful, cheery, loud self in the morning. Ah, last night we also changed hotel rooms. This one has a larger bathroom (the other one was so tiny I had to breath in to enter it) and an extra bed, but has no view. As we are never here during the day, that didn´t seem to matter.

Mike and Mika went down to breakfast while I finished packing up for the day. I then went down and I had my usual breakfast of coffee (pretty good), ONE single croissant and toast with butter and jam. I´ve re-discovered how fond I´m of toast with butter and jam.

Our bus came to pick us up and we were off for our first tour of Circuito Chico. This is a short scenic drive around Bariloche, with a couple of good stops for views and picture taking. We´d gotten this tour free, as a promotion of a travel agency that wants to draw in clients (who will then hopefuly buy other tours, as we did). Mika did quite well in the bus, and barely complained.

Our first stop was the Cerro Campanario, where we took the chair lift (A$12, U$4.50) to the top of the mountain. It was my first time taking a chair lift and I found it a lot less scary than I thought it would be. Mika liked it at first, but of course started complaining in the latter part. There isn´t much you can do to calm a complaining child on a chairlift...

Well, I think this is all I´m going to blog tonight. It´s 9:45 and there is no way I can finish the whole day by 10 PM. I think Mika must be down for the night. I´m going to go out and see about buying some food to go (not pizza, our smoked-venison pizza from last night was WAYYYY too salty) and bringing it to Mike.

Our plan tomorrow is to rent a car and go towards San Martin de los Andes - after doing some laundry, that is.

Ta ta.

Posted by mike at May 10, 2003 05:39 PM