Mucho Argentina

This will either be a very long post or I will leave a large amount of stuff out. We’ll see how my blogging stamina is on this cold clear early morning at Casona Odile in El Bolson. Haley is sleeping. Last night we got very lucky and got a good dose of our great friends Jake and Naiomi AND Princess Akolea on the Skype video. A trip highlight for sure.

The last 2 days we have been relaxing/recovering from bus rides (Haley says ‘no more semi-camas for me’… you see, a semi-cama seat on a bus is kind of like an economy seat on a plane which reclines much further and has a support for your lower legs and much more leg room….but this is one step down from a ‘cama’ seat which is more like a first class seat on a plane that reclines almost flat and is much wider, etc… and we know haley is very much first class so…)/catching up on chores like photos and emails/planning some hikes.

We are back at Casona Odile in El Bolson for the second time after taking a week long detour to Puerto Madryn on the Atlantic Coast mostly to see some (300,000) penguins. We ended up staying for more than the penguins. We rented a car for 2 days to see the penguins and the beautiful Peninsula Valdez. We agreed that Peninsula Valdez was a lot like Pt. Reyes, California, except there were penguins instead of herons, ostriches instead of coyotes and llamas instead of deer. Other than that, there was fog, magically beautiful coast, sea lions, and a few old farms.  In some places you could really believe that you were just out for the day at Pt. Reyes.

 

 

Also in Puerto Madryn we snorkeled with the seals, but they weren’t feeling particularly interested in us so it wasn’t as cool as it could have been. Haley did her first SCUBA dive with almost 0 preparation and liked it after the initial ‘o shit I’m under water and I’m breathing’ freak out.

More Puerto Madryn notes:

We met a few very nice people who we hung out with a good amount.

The town is pretty boring, but we had a nice hostel called El Gualicho.

We looked for orcas eating seals in a place where that is common, but the orcas must have been on a diet and didn’t show.

The weather was nice and the moon was full (see photos section).

Before P. Madryn we spent one night and two days in El Bolson and did a beautiful hike called El Cajon Azul that started out sunny and slowly turned into a downpour. The hike was so spectacular even in the clouds and rain that it sucked us all the way back 12 hours to El Bolson…on a semi-cama no less. We may re-do the hike today as the prognostico calls for lots of sun. We are also planning on sleeping in a refugio for a night or two, to get a little deeper into the nature around here.

 

 

More El Bolson notes:

This place is a hippy haven. They’re everywhere.

The place we are staying is like an old farmhouse outside of town with a nice fireplace and garden with a stream running through it.

The wild fruit is very good here, especially the raspberries.

Before El Bolson the first time, we were in Bariloche at the Piramide just like the last post, but we did many more things since then including:

An incredible hike up to Refugio Frey and a little bit past. When we were in Nicaragua we met some Argentinians who told us that we shouldn’t miss Refugio Frey when we got to Argentina. Well, we just so happened to end up staying very close to the trail to the refugio so we took advantage of one of the less cloudy days, packed some food and warm clothes and set out for the big adventure. It did not disappoint. We ended up walking about 17 miles that day and couldn’t have been happier. I could go on for a very long time about the whole thing, so ask me to when we see each other next and I promise to elaborate.

 

Other things we did in Bariloche were taking a gondola to the top of Cerro Catedral which was like a moonscape looking out over the world. It was also really windy. After having a nice cold picnic up on the mountain we decided to go get lost and then the weather decided to rain and be cold and windy. We finally made it back to the parking lot and eventually home but Haley vowed never to stray off trail again, ever.

One other day we went on a pretty hike up Arroyo Goye out of Colonia Suisa. I set up a nice shade for Haley using our umbrella, but then the wind put the umbrella in the river and broke it.

 

Another day we went for a run to a beach with floating rocks.

 

missed a whole bunch of stuff, and there are a ton of pictures in the Argentina album, so if you are at work one day and bored… set it to slide show and daydream a bit. talk soon.