Hi everybody!
Well, we´re back in Bariloche. We were here (actually, at this very same computer) over a month ago. Since then we´ve taken eight boats, been to Chile & back, seen lots of glaciers, and completed a rather large loop around northern Patagonia. Tomorrow we´ll be boarding a bus for a 36-hour ride to Jujuy (pronounched hoo-hooyee!) in northern Argentina. We´ve just about reached the halfway point of our trip, and we´re both eager to bid farewell to Patagonia and start checking out the north, where the mountains are higher, everything is cheaper, and by all accounts we´ll have our minds blown. We decided to begin that leg in Argentina so that we could get used to the altitude and change of climate before having to get used to Bolivia. We´re told that Bolivia is unlike anywhere else in the world, and to be prepared to enter another world.
Our most recent input came from Sebastian and Marcella, who are now on tour with their 2-year old daughter Florencia. We both arrived at the same river crossing traveling in opposite directions around camping-time, so we camped together. They told us of their past adventures, which included riding with world-traveler Alstaire Humphreys (I overhauled his bike once) on two different continents, and assured us we were going to love the north. We hope to visit them in the next few years at the hostel they´re openning up near Mt. Fitzroy, at which time Florencia will probably be one extremely interesting kid.
On the way here in the hippy-town of El Bolson we camped at a microbrewery. Let me repeat : we camped at a microbrewery. Where they brew beer. They also have a campground and a pub with great food. What a concept! And we camped there! And we drank their beer! And it was…….quite good! Definately heavily influenced by German beer culture, and not much like the hoppy beers of the good óle Pacific Northwest. But definately good. They had this chocolate desert beer that tasted just like liquid chocolate in beer form. Nice El Bolson, very very nice.
We had been planning to take a bus from there to the north, but kept seeing signs for Bariloche. It´s only 120 km away. In the end that was just too close to get on a bus for. Those 120 km would absolutely be the prettiest 120 km we´ve ever ridden, had they come two months ago. Instead they were just really, really nice. Patagonia in the summer is so astoundingly good-looking, so impossibly majestic, so much of a perfect feast for the eyes of all mountain-lovers, so, so, SO very difficult to come up with enough compliments for, that, uh, well, I guess that I´m at a loss for a finish to this sentence. The ride was great.
And perhaps I´ve been misled by mountaineering stories and magazine articles into thinking that this corner of the world would challenge us like nowhere else. Patagonia always sounded so hard-core, y´know? I was sorta scared of it. And I´ll admit that if you don´t think seriously about water, food, and proper gear choices, you could find yourself in very serious trouble out there. Especially on the Austral, which we only saw the tip of. But in general there´s way more support than in the states. Way more places to get food, way more campgrounds, and way nicer drivers. The road surfaces are pretty bad, yes, but aside from that the roads are great. I strongly recomend to all of you who enjoy bike touring to try really hard to get down here and check it out.
So we´re off to the north! We escaped the Trevelin-Esquel vortex at last. All it took was two days in the desert. And now we´re going to go up to those freeride trails I wrote about last month to camp, drink some wine, and toast our farewells to glorious Patagonia, our home for the last seven weeks.
2200 kilometers down so far.
Andy´s final swimming tally: one hotspring, one ocean, six rivers, and twenty lakes. I´m satisfied!
Ciao!
-Andy