Río Negro - Neuquén - Chubut

(Click on the pictures to enlarge them)

Again we were lucky enough here to have friends as hosts in the famous city of Bariloche, in the Río Negro province. They were living there at the time, trying to make their way to the tourism business. We went with the car, about 1600 kilometers (1000 miles), driving from Buenos Aires. Bariloche is a very touristic place, with surrounding lakes and mountains, national parks and the like. Some landscapes are very impressive, but the problem is that you cannot "get into" the landscapes easily. It is full of signs like "forbidden to trespass", etc. Many lovely places are now owned by rich Americans like Sylvester Stallone and Ted Turner. Such places were free to visit before, but now they are excluded from the touristic places. It is free, for example, to row in a lake, but you cannot use the margins of it to land your boat, even though the law admits it. Those powerful people are over any law. Also there is the problem of big fires in the forests.

Myths
Many places we visited were burned down, which is a pity. Some say such fires were done on purpose, but they cannot prove it. As one of the most beautiful places of the country, there money is above anything. And so everything is very expensive. A big deal of the tourism is foreign, so they expect people can pay higher rates in dollars. Argentinean are in disadvantage here, and even more when you go South to places like the Perito Moreno glacier. The people managing tourism are the worst people I have seen in Argentina: greedy, corrupt, ill-tempered. You have to pay for everything, even though they offer nothing in change. A good example of this is the Los Alerces National Park. You have to pay to enter there, but the roads are not well kept, the camp site lacks a lot of services, there are no people working there to show you anything: you pay for nothing, you pay to see the nature, that it was already there, and it is not very well taken care of, as fires are always lurking there. It is kind of a shame that, even though we knew that the South of the country was one of the most obvious targets for tourism, we preferred to go abroad because it was too expensive. At the moment of this trip, it was cheaper to go to the Caribbean Islands, so imagine. Many places are kind of mythic, everybody talks about it, and sometimes you get dissapointed when you meet it. One of them is the famous trochita, a small and ancient train that makes a long road through the South. That was in Esquel, a legendary town where it is not worth even to walk by during a few minutes. I think people sometimes are too much in love with the South, or the image of the South it is being sold. Perhaps the monotony of the landscape and the people predisposed me in that mood. When I say "monotony" I mean that the landscape is essentially always the same: lake and mountains. Not like in other places of Argentina where there is a lot of different things to see, cultural places and views. Another mythic place is the "road of the seven lakes", near Bariloche. One lake, perhaps, it is impressive. Seven is too much. I could not stand the monotony, and to the astonishment of my friends, I fell asleep. It was unbelievable for them that I did not share that unconditional admiration for the most famous place of Argentina. But I am perhaps talking too negatively about this. I had fun, no doubt. But thanks to my friends, because we actually could get into the landscape, we could escape from the postcard and be part of it.

Adventures
We did a lot of different things. We went to raft in the Manso river, for example. "Manso" means "tame" or "meek" in Spanish; the river is very dangerous. People even died there. All of us we were friends there, no tourists, and we had a funny afternoon. Things got a bit complicated later: our car got stuck in the mud, it began to rain and the night fell over us. In the confusion of vehicles escaping  (the road could get too muddy and we did not want to spend the night there), me and two other friends we were left in the forest, at night and under the rain. It was not a pleasant experience: in the forest, the night means complete darkness. After an hour or more, we were "rescued", and in the morning after we went to rescue the car with a tractor. In spite of the problems, we had a wonderful day, cooking a lamb in the woods, and rafting for hours in the rapids. Also we rowed on kayaks in the Gutiérrez lake. A different day, of course. The lake has a beautiful view, and it is completely transparent. So to kayak there, slowly, while you see an abyss of water down below your boat, that is something I really enjoyed. The silence of the place is also a plus. A friend of mine wanted to do it, but he quickly turned himself down: it is not easy at first to get the proper balance. We did that for hours, until we were really tired. I even tried to swim, but the water was too cold. Most of the surroundings of this lake are in the hands of the famous people I spoke before. We went biking all the way to the lake, and we came back biking. We also went to the Otto mount top (there is a gyratory bar up there) with the bicycles mounted on a car, and went down biking, an incredible experience. You feel the speed in all your body, a speed you would never reach just pedaling, and the gravel down below the wheels in a winding road makes it very difficult to control the bike. You feel you will fall down the mount in the next turn, your hands are closed over the brakes, and the speed is too much in any case. Your heart is full of energy, and pure adrenaline is running through your veins. When we reached the base of the mount, I was in a kind of ecstasy. For some moments, I felt the world was just me, the mount and the bycicle. I learned the meaning of the expression "mountain bike". On a different day we did some scaling in the a rock wall. I have a terrible vertigo, a dizziness that takes the control of my body when I feel I am high. But I always try to defeat it, even though all my body is saying "no way". To try and climb with ropes was not easy for me, and to descend, facing back the ground, less than anything. But once again, it was my body against my mind, and the feeling that I was trying to achieve something. The rock was not very tall, and I was among friends. I guess that is the only thing that counts, after all. All of those activities for me had more value than the passive contemplation of the landscape itself. Of course we visited the several places to visit near Bariloche, but for me those hardly can be compared with the interaction with nature. There is a place called "El Bolsón" that is famous for two things: their local brewed beer and for being a kind of "town of hippies". I was not that interested on the latter, but the former reason at least was attractive. The beer was shit, at least compared with that of Villa General Belgrano, province of Córdoba, made by the descendants of Germans escaped from the world wars. The hippies did not impress me, and their handicraft was too inferior compared with those in Buenos Aires. One by one, all of those legends were falling in front of my eyes.

From West to East
We crossed the Patagonia from the Cordillera de los Andes to the Atlantic Ocean, through the province of Chubut. The road was mainly boring, but reaching the town of Puerto Madryn, things got more interesting. There were, of course, legends to check. One of them was the so-called Welsh town of Gayman, that turned to be just another town with a couple of places where they serve you a Welsh cake with Argentinean beer. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say  they sell you Argentinean cakes at the price of the cakes they sell in Wales. Not very charming, in spite of the efforts of those people, who pretended to be the Welsh. One of the things they tell you is that the very Princess Diana was there. Oh my. There were a couple of Welshmen there, tourists, I suppose. But in any case, the last portions of the road to the Valdes peninsula were okay. In Puerto Madryn things got better, and we were treated like real tourists there. Everyone was nice, and we felt at home. Puerto Madryn is a mainly industrial town. The touristic thing is the Valdes peninsula, not too far, where you can see whales, penguins and seals. If you are lucky. We had to pay to enter to the National Park, but this time the road was really okay, there were people to show you things and everything was working. The only problem is that you cannot see or touch anything. The animals are too far away, it is very difficult to appreciate them. You cannot get any closer, because they must not be disturbed. You almost have to be believe they are there, because they are grey and white little points in the sand, away down below. Somewhere in the road we found a penguin, by chance, and that was the only chance to really see one of those animals (close to us, I mean). In any other case, we have seen better things in the zoo. We waited for the whale for a long time, because it was suppose to come and have her lunch of seals at a certain hour, but she did not show up. "There is too much wind", we were told, and we had to believe it, of course. The most interesting thing I have seen in the peninsula was an armadillo, a kind of common animal used to make musical instruments (like a turtle with a more flexible shell): as they were anywhere in the road and friendly with humans, I felt I could say more about them than about any of the so promoted penguins or whales. Back to Puerto Madryn we wanted to go diving, but again the wind was not in our side, and the sea was too turbid to see anything. We promised to come back there and dive with a better weather. And that was it: we came back to Buenos Aires, me with the sensation of being cheated regarding the good things of the Patagonia, but happy with the activities we had; my wife and a friend, happy again to see one of the most wonderful places of the world, and with its legends intact in spite of my words.

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