Bariloche to Buenos Aires

We have been a bit busy lately and as a result have fallen a bit behind on our blog.  We meant to post this about 3 weeks ago.  Sorry for the delay. 

There was no direct bus from Pucon to Bariloche so a detour with a stop in San Martin de Los Andes was necessary. While in San Martin we were lucky enough to see a hip hop dance competition between local elementary and high school students and it was awesome!  We walked around and decided it looked exactly like Pucon.  And it rained. 

The next day we got on a bus to Bariloche.  Once off the bus, we quickly found “The Penthouse” hostel.  There is no sign for this hostel. The Lonely Planet directions said for us to, “find the tallest building off of the main square, take the elevator to the 10^th floor and look for room 1004.”  As its name suggests it is a hostel located in an actual Penthouse suite.  The views were amazing from the hostels large floor to ceiling windows.  The first two days it rained (no, I’m not joking) and the forecast called for rain the remainder of the week.  Even though we both had been feeling pretty “hiked-out” at this point, we didn't want our total Bariloche experience to be in a hostel so we decided to do one more trek regardless of the weather.

View of Bariloche from our hostel

We caught a bus to a gigantic ski resort where we were joined by other tourists and workers who were making repairs and preparations for the rapidly approaching ski season.  This is also where the trail to Refugio Frey began, and after four hours of easy hiking we were there.  We are told it is a very famous Refugio as far as refugios go.  There are some amazing granite walls with only a short approach, which makes this a popular climber destination.  Frey is an old two-story stone hut on the edge of a lake that looks like it could have been taken right out of the Sierra Nevada mountains in California.  After setting up our tent we explored the refugio which we discovered, to Tamara’s delight, is kitten friendly.  We pulled Negrita out of her super secret backpack chamber so she could chill with the rest of us.  It was a small building with a woodburning stove for heat.  Next to the stove was a beanbag chair with a napping kitten we named “Gato Liquado”.  Negrita curled up with Gato Liquado and they became instant friends.  With mixed feelings, Negrita decided that Refugio Frey was the place for her and decided that she would stay behind and make it her home.

Refugio Frey

For the climbers: Right next to Refugio Frey

Negrita y Gato Liquado!

After some tears, we left Refugio Frey in search for Refugio Jakob.  According to the book, there was a simple trail to follow.  After being “temporarily misplaced” we finally found the trail, and we couldn’t believe that it was a trail at all.  No one ever built the trail.  Someone at some point found a way to cross the pass, straight up the mountain side, which became the trail.  It is marked with red circles and at times becomes 4^th class climbing (all while wearing large backpacks).  After the summit we assumed that the slope would be more gradual for the downhill which, as it turned out, was not the case.  After the vertical hike and walking through a long, glacially carved valley, we realized we still had another pass to go over before the next refugio which turned out to be a repeat of the previous pass experience. Lonely Planet described this trek as “pass hopping through beautiful mountain scenery.”  Pass crawling and sliding was more like it but it was beautiful, no doubt.  The scenery made us feel like we were back home in Yosemite.  When we finally got to the bottom of the second pass and after we made our way through some foot-deep mud we arrived at Refugio Jakob. 

The view from the top. The trail went straight down from here

Pass number 1: The beginning of our "climbing" adventure

The view from Refugio Jakob

The next day we made our way back to the bus, which (we discovered) did not take money (apparently you were supposed to buy your ticket ahead of time) and we didn’t have tickets so we played dumb and got our ride for free.  We spent one more night at “The Penthouse” before catching a 20 hour bus back to Buenos Aires.  Taking advice from other travelers, we sprang for the “cama” class, which gives you a nice wide cushy chair that reclines 120 degrees, you get this leg rest thing, and they serve you meals! How luxurious! Almost all the long distance buses in Argentina and Chile are double-decker buses, so one mistake we made was to reserve the seats right in front of the windshield on the second floor.  We discovered it is better to be completely ignorant on how the driver is driving.  We spent two nights in BA (it rained hard) where we picked up the bag that Miguel and Flor were kind enough to hold on to for us. After spending the last two months wearing the same three sets of clothing, it was like Christmas when our wardrobe suddenly increased to five outfits. Eager to get to Mendoza we booked another 14-hour bus ride. 

Volcanoes and hot springs

From the Navimag Ferry, we headed north to the town of Pucón, Chile. Pucón is a town where the wealthy Chileans come to vacation, and it’s a beautiful town, but a little crowded and touristy. It’s right on a lake surrounded by tall mountains and volcanoes. One of the big attractions is to climb Volcan Villarica (9,341 ft). Since you need an ice axe and crampons to climb the volcano we went with a guide.

The scenery was amazing, you could see the town and lakes in the distance along with another, even larger, volcano.  We were climbing up an active volcano that constantly emits gasses so the guiding companies gave us each a gas mask in case the winds changed.  The interesting thing was that the guides had us leave our packs (with gas masks) below the summit and only bring layers and a camera. As we were slowly making our way to the summit the winds changed direction, and whatever vapors were coming out the volcano instantly made our sinuses and throats burn. Everyone in the group was coughing but it passed quickly. We both have been around other volcanically active areas. The vapors from this volcano did not smell like sulfur, which is stinky, but relatively harmless. These vapors smelled…deadly. We had few moments at the top to snap some photos. You could look directly into the crater and see the smoke coming out but more whiffs of the vapors made you want to get out of there quickly.

Coming down the volcano was the exciting part. The guides gave us a short (too short) lesson on glissading. For those of you not familiar with glissading, it’s a fancy French word for sliding on your butt or feet. You can use the ice axe to brake your speed, but neither of us has had much experience with this. The slides the guides told us to go down were these big long (water-slide looking) trench things in the snow. Sitting in one of these trenches, we assume the position and the girl in front of us goes. We can’t see much around the bend but her scream sounds like she was having fun! We were wrong.

Some of you may have experienced glissading out of control down a mountain and it is not fun. You are supposed to sit on your butt, knees bent, bottom of the ice axe digging in the snow to brake. Tamara went down and it was steep, too steep. She leaned on her ice axe, and there was no slowing down. She was digging her ice axe, heels, elbows, anything in the snow to slow down and nothing helped. Soon her feet were flailing around, and she was rotating side to side when the sides of the chute flattened out and she could see the other people in the group standing far below. She finally came to an abrupt stop at a snow bank, heart racing, hands shaking, terrified. Dan came down a moment later looking just slightly more graceful. There were about seven more of these slides to go to get down before reaching the bottom. It turned out the first one was the steepest and as we made our way down the mountain, the whole glissading thing got a lot easier and a lot more fun.

After we arrived safely down at the vans, we shared our disbelief that the guides take totally inexperienced people up and down that route every day.

The next day, still a little sore and bruised from our ascent, we set off on a 4 day trek in nearby Huerquehue (pronounced Where-kay-way) National Park. Compared to our experience in Torres Del Paine, it was like we had died and gone to another place. It was really our first time in about a month having sunny and warm weather and we got to hang out on a perfect summer day with our feet in a beautiful lake. The first campground was clean and quiet, and the scenery was reminiscent of the high Sierra but with more tropical looking plants. Our second campground and destination was located next to natural hot springs, which were glorious. We camped under some apple trees and soaked our tired muscles in varying pools of hot water. We were sad to leave, but just in time because the rain was coming yet again.