El Bolsón
Semana Santa, Seventies Style
Sunday March 23, 2008
I believe this has been the first time during the trip that we've spent more than one full week hanging out in the same location - and sleeping in the same place to do it. Back in September, we spent exactly one week at the ski resort in Portillo. We slept in the same beds and rooms for 10 nights on the Antarctic cruise, but on the boat we were never in the same geographical spot for more than one night at a time. We kept coming and going through El Calafate and surrounds so I'm pretty sure we totaled over two weeks staying in or within 30 kilometers of that city. But as I recall, six nights at the same hotel on our last trip through town was the longest stretch of sleeping in the same room. So our 8 night continuous stay at a cabaña in El Bolsón is a record of sorts. I think it has been a comfortable and enjoyable if not extremely eventful week.
We came exactly one week ago (and are spending our eighth night here tonight), arriving after a half-day drive up from Parque Nacional de Los Alerces. Driving into town, passing an endless string of billboards advertising cabañas on the outskirts, it became immediately obvious that El Bolsón is a popular tourist destination. But it's also clear that this place receives a much smaller percentage of foreign visitors than El Calafate or Bariloche (the latter is a nearby famous resort that we haven't been to yet located not very far to the north). El Bolsón is non-elegant, simple, refreshing, laid-back, out of the way... and definitely more affordable to an Argentine vacation budget.
It's also technically above the magic 42nd parallel but somehow still in the official "cheap gas" part of the country. I've decided (taking the lead from our guidebooks) to include El Bolsón in the "Lakes District" geographic section of this journal. In town, the local businesses still feel free to advertise their trout dinners, hand-crafted candies & jams, and micro brews as "Patagonian," but we've definitely entered into a distinctly more verdant region - dotted with perfectly clear lakes and crisscrossed by rapid-flowing mountain streams and rivers. We're in a new province, too, so I figure this is just as good a time as any to start a new chapter.
Left to right:
Argentina; Rio Negro and (most of) Nequén Provinces; and a zoom into the southwest corner of Rio Negro and Nequén showing where we are now in El Bolsón (Provincia de Rio Negro).
Now for a little more about the city itself...
El Bolsón is not very large - barely more than 10,000 permanent residents populate a sprawling patch of development planted in the bottom of a pronounced basin. This valley is nestled between two sharp longitudinal ridges along the eastern edge of the Andes. On any given day, there may be far more than the listed number of inhabitants living within the city limits. This is the kind of mountain holiday destination where the instantaneous population fluctuates drastically depending upon the season and holiday schedule.
Lonely Planet begins a description of El Bolsón by stating "This Mapuche resting place of yesteryear is the refuge of choice for weary urbanites." All of our guidebooks somehow or other find a way to make reference to a hippie heritage that still lingers around the central plaza - especially during the thrice-weekly produce and craft fair. In spite of a notable growth spurt throughout the last 20 years, El Bolsón has managed to stave off the type of high-end tourist industry that defines nearby Bariloche and attracts foreign tourists to the latter's 5-star hotels, expensive restaurants, and world-class skiing.
Although you can buy tie-dyed t-shirts (and perhaps even a cheap little wooden hash pipe), illegal drugs aren't the big attraction here. El Bolsón has a famous reputation for produce of the legal variety. Fruit, organic vegetables, and specialty beers made from locally grown hops dominate the local cuisine. We discovered that the best place and manner in which to enjoy these delicacies is not by dining in a restaurant, but by grazing the food stalls at the public market and either eating and drinking on the spot, or procuring ingredients to take home and cook with (or consume directly) later.
Being the week before Easter (Holy Week, or "Semana Santa"), it's been pretty busy around here. This is a major social as well as religious holiday, and many Argentineans take a large part of, if not the whole week off work. An extra and very busy Saturday was added to the operating schedule of the street fair, and during each and every day of the week the main avenue was clogged with traffic and pedestrians.
The restaurants here are not particularly fancy, and the best ones have been not only busy, but heavily polluted by cigarette smoke too. It's a good thing we've been staying in a cabaña with decent cooking facilities. We were able to prepare some of those good fruits and vegetables sold at the street fair and enjoy them in our own smoke-free home.
Regarding that "hippie heritage," it was more than just the tie-dyed shirts, dreadlocks, and incense at the street fair that gave our visit to El Bolsón a retro feel. Our "V.I.P." cabaña brings back memories of an earlier era as well. The interior features dark wood paneling, thick dark brown cut-pile carpeting, a curved bar between the kitchen and main eating area, high-backed chairs with glossy flocked wallpaper in the "formal" dining room, and plenty of veneer-coated particle board furniture throughout. It's an interior decorating nightmare, but large and comfortable with plenty of storage space, a functional kitchen, and patio with barbeque pit. The twins even had their own rooms. We've grown to feel quite at home in our nice big ugly house.
Although we had to drive up an annoying, bumpy dirt access road to get to it, the setting for our cabaña complex is pretty nice too. There's a well kept lawn, flowers and fruit trees, cows and horses across the street... and a clean, heated pool, too!
Looking at our V.I.P cabaña from the pool deck.
The pool!
The face of the eastern ridge looms over our home in "Villa Turistica," a neighborhood of vacation villas and cabaña complexes encroaching on the eastern flank of the valley a couple of kilometers from the central part of town.
We spent the greater part of the week hanging around our house, focusing on schoolwork, and swimming in the pool for exercise and entertainment. The street fair provided entertainment for all of us on Tuesday, and Lynn and I went by ourselves on Saturday for a pre-Easter shopping spree. On Friday, we drove 15 kilometers to a nearby national park to enjoy its primary feature - a large, pristine mountain lake (that bumps up against the border with Chile on the far western shore). The weather was perfect and we were joined by a fairly large crowd of people, the majority of which showed up in the late afternoon presumably after Good Friday mass.
The "clock statue" in the main plaza of El Bolsón.
The public fair and market.
They liked the fresh raspberries, and loved the chocolate!
A Good Friday afternoon at Parque Nacional Lago Puelo.
Zoom shots of the mountains surrounding the lake.
Today, Easter Sunday, we got up early to travel up the flank of the nearby ridge to our east. First we bounced up a dusty rutted track, following the steep zigzag of switchbacks to a small parking lot and viewpoint about three quarters of the way up. Here we had to leave the car and begin walking. Up. And up. And even more up. After 45 minutes we came to the first of the two primary attractions of the excursion - "Bosque Tallado," or "Carved Forest."
Looking at the ridge line from the road.
The carved forest is a collaborative effort by an assortment of wood carving artists - most of them local but several from various other parts of the country. It's an interesting and rather unique sort of theme park/art gallery, and walking through it helped us feel like there was a decent reason (other than the view) to have driven up that horrible road and huffed and puffed all the way up the hill.
The objects d' arte of Bosque Tallado.
After completing the carved forest circuit, we spent another half hour climbing up the ridge even higher - practically all the way to the top. Here we encountered the second primary attraction of the outing; not only the best views yet, but a charming little wooden hut claiming to be a hosteria and serving up hot tea and cocoa, pizza, beer (if cocoa isn't your thing), and Welsh black raison cakes to enjoy along with the view. We couldn't help wondering, who carries the the supplies up here?
The hosteria hut (they offer free camping in the "yard"),
where we shared the deck with one dog and several cats,
and enjoyed spectacular views of the El Bolsón valley.
I was actually a little nervous standing out on that rock, and Lynn was annoyed because I wouldn't stand still for a decent picture. Perhaps Anna is a little braver than I - but just before Lynn took that first picture, I was standing right out on the edge of the rock. For at least 10 seconds. Honestly.
OK, the thing to do would have been to take the plunge and jump off that rock with a parachute. I was thinking it might have been fun to try, but I don't know if it requires skill or training, or just the ability to pay money (to rent the chute), put on gear, and then jump. Maybe next time I'm here, I'll look into it.
-Rolf