Mendoza and Around, Argentina

On a long and exciting bus trip I left wind-blown Patagonia behind me. The bus trip involved the usual spectacular sunsets, but also some day-time highlights, such as spectacular accidents besides the road:

I was heading for the notorious city of Mendoza, which I already gave some premature praise and props in my last post. Well, the rumours turned out to be true: Mendoza is hot (in every meaning)!

You can imagine Mendoza as a little green oasis in the dessert,

located directly under Americas' (note the spelling) highest mountain, the Aconcagua (6962 m).

To say that Mendoza is an oasis is probably a little understatement. In fact, you feel like being in a huge forest or a park area in the entire city:

Well, not just Mendoza itself is located in a hot and dry climate, but it is also renown for hot women, which I quickly found out on an excursion to the Aconcagua National Park:

Believe me or not, but surrounded by all these pretty Latinas my Castellano suddenly worked out really well and fluent ;) I spent a day in Mendoza strolling around town, eating fine food, recreating from climbing, and partying with other travellers at night. Actually, I wanted to go up to Acongua's base camp for some hiking and camping. But everybody I met told me that I will only find a pure volcanic stone dessert up there and, unless I am interested in climbing the mountain itself, there's not a lot to do. So I decided to go for an organized round trip through the local mountains, which also brought me to Aconcagua:

Together with other hung over and bleary-eyed travellers I got on a minibus (way too early) which brought us via a curvy road (362 curves) up to high altitude. Of course, we had several scenic stops and I just couldn't resist the thought of descending with a bike...

Finally, we climbed the first Andes cordillera at 3500 m and had a spectacular view on various 6000 m high peaks of the main Andes range including Aconcagua. The road stayed up high and led us to the main mountain range in a desert-like environment:

We followed the road that leads to Valparaiso and Santiago (Chile) passing through bizzare stone desserts shining in all colors. The sky was steel blue and 6000 m high volcanoes with glaciers blazing in the sun defined the horizon:

We stopped at a small hut for lunch which was surrounded by a picturesque Dolomite-like scenery, that is, steep faces and towers made of volcanic rock. Well, you definitely cannot mess with such a scenery:

The only non-volcanic stone I found was at the famous Puente del Inca which you may call a 2000 year old spa for the Incas:

Sooner or later that day, we also made it to Aconcagua and hiked an hour towards the base camp. Although, Aconcagua is Americas' highest mountain, it seems, compared to the impressive granite monoliths of Patagonia, just like a huge brick of black volcanic rock with gravel and ice slopes. So from a climber's Aconcagua is not that impressive, even its notorious South face isn't, but we should give it credit for being the highest:

After this long day which we mostly spent in the bus we were really tired. Blame it on last night's party or on the extreme altitude differences. For me and Alister (from New Zealand) the party turned out to be a little quieter that night because we wanted to enjoy another highlight of the Mendocina region the next day: a tour through the local vineyards, where most of the famous Argentinian Cabernet and Malbec is coming from:

So we took a bus out to the vine region of Maipu, rented two cruising bikes, and cycled from vineyard to vineyard.

At the wineries a sign "Bienbebidos" welcomes you,

you can tour through the vineries outdoors,

and through the vine cellars indoors.

Of course, you are provided all kinds of explanations to become a real vine connaisceur

and have some degustacions.

In short, you are having lots of fun and get pretty drunk after only a few vineyards. Luckily, you can take some typical Argentinian steak breaks that help you from getting completely drunk ;)

And so what is like to cycle through paradise?

I guess you can imagine that we had lots of fun, although we literally got more and more of a tunnel vision ;)

In the end the police brought us home (with a motor cycle escort)...

What the f***?

No, it wasn't that bad. Alister just had a flat tire and we tried to hitch hike back with our bikes. The first car to stop was simply a police officer on a motor bike who then called one of his colleagues.

So you see, I got somehow away from the "great wild" and into the usual traveller's party life. It was fun for three days, but now I am sick of it and want to escape into the mountains again.

My next stop is Salta at the Argentinian-Chilean-Bolivian border. Let's see what expects me there.

Nos vemos,

Flo

Bariloche and Around, Argentinia

I took a 30 hour bus from El Calafate to Bariloche. Yes, you read right, 30 hours in a bus. But it wasn't boring at all. I met lots of people in the bus, we had a lot of vine on board and so the entire bus ride was just a long party :) The landscape during the entire ride didn't change a lot, i.e. yellow-borwnish step only, some white sheep and some pink flamingos. The place were I was heading to, the area around Bariloche and the Parque Nacional Nahuel Huapi, is commonly referred to as the "Argentinian Switzerand". And indeed, as soon as we got close to Bariloche, the landscape changed from the desert-like steppe to forest-covered mountains and lakes. It looked just like at home. Bariloche itself indeed looks like a town taken from either Switzerland, Austria, or Bavaria, and it is just as touristy.

Did you get the picture yet? The main products of Bariloche are chocolate and cheese and there are numerous people here speaking German with an Alpine accent... so it feels a little like being home. An old German guy I met on the us told me that there are lots of old Nazis around here who fled after WWII. Right across the boarder to Chile, in the so-called "Chilean Switzerland", you can find all the communists, such as Honecker, who escaped after the fall of the Berlin wall. So fate somehow wants it that the old left and right Germans still face each other here...

Bariloche is a pleasant town but, as you can imagine, I wanted to do something else than eating chocalte fondue ;) So I rented a bike and spent a day cycling around the Parque Nacional Nahuel Huapi, a lake district. The picture bew shows me at one of the probably most photographed locations all over Argentina, a viewpoint above the famous Hotel LLao LLao.

As you can see, this area resembles a little bit Algonquin Park in Ontario doesn't it. I cyled arount through this lake district the entire day. Sometimes, I also locked my bike somewhere and went hikng through the dense and misty rain forests, which could have been taken from Vancouver Island.

Don't think it was all like in Canada! There were high mountains with steep granite faces all around. I even discovered a mountain cemetery, where some former Swiss-Argentinian Olympic skiers were burried.

You definitely couldn't oversee the Swiss heritage in this place. Take a closer look at the sign in the lower picture... Heidi :)

The upper picture was taken from Colonia Suiza, an entire Swiss village. This is by the way Argentina's most famous spa and golf resort, Hotel Llao Llao. Lovely, isn't it lovely and cheesy?

I cycled all day around lakes, through forests, and over mountains... a great first day in Bariloche.

Achim gave me a hint, that I should stay in a hostel located at the top floor of the only skyscraper in town. The hostel was great, the view was picturous, ...

... and especially the party in the hostel was a lot of fun! Probably thanks to the free beer ... :) The next day I was a little hung over, packed my stuff, and hiked up into the mountains around Bariloche, because there was supposed to be some great rock climbing up there. At the beginning, I hiked with some people I met at the bus stop and we discovered a scenery from the "Lord of the Rings" movie:

But sooner or later I got off the track, as usual, crossed some gravel slopes and hiked and climbed for some hours along a spectacular ridge.

Wow, what a scenery! Lots of granite rock around me, endless brown gravel slopes, dense rain forests and blue lakes below me, and condors circling above me.

Yeah, I am back in the mountains!

I hiked almost the entire day and had best weather. After some time I finally descended to Rifugio Frey, the playground of the climbers in Bariloche!

Loco, isn't it? Dozens of granite towers looming above a small blue laguna. Hell yeah! There were about 30 climbers up there from all over the world and I quickly found some partners, such as Anne, a student from Innsbruck:

While I was up there the Rifugio Frey turned 52 and the climbers had a fun party goin' on. I stayed up there for two and a half days climbing, bouldering, and partying in the rifugio. Unfortunately the weather turned bad on the third day - snow and rain. Am I still at the boundary to Patagonia here? So I decided to descend through misty highlands

and dense rain forests

back into the valley to Lago Guittierrez, where I dried my soaking wet tent.

By now, I got to know many climbers and also moved into the loal climber's hostel La Bolsa, where they even had an indoor bouldering wall :)

As usual among climbers, we had a great party goin' on there and I got to know lots of new people. Among these was Dani from Zuerich, Switzerland. The next day I took off with Dani to spend some days climbing in Argentina's number one sports climbing destination: Valle Encantado which loosely speaking means the magic or the charming valley. We took a bus that dropped us off in the middle of nowhere and we pitched our tents high above a wide river on some lava rocks:

As you can see in the back of the upper picture, Valle Encantado is a pure volcanic climbing area with lots of old volcanic slots, lava chimneys and lava tongues to climb on. A truely picturesque scenery which deserves the name magic valley:

The only problem was that we had to cross this 40m wide river to get to these wonderful crags. Luckily there were a few climbers who brought small inflatable boats. Unfortunately the boats were always on the wrong side, so we had to swim one way. I never had such an adventurous approach to a climbing area, but it was truly worth it!

Here you can see one of the awesome 40m super endurance lines almost right above the river. This nice climb (see the climber?) was called Carpe Diem and was 7a+. Although I almost didn't climb for the last seven weeks or so, I was able to onsight this nice line and many equally hard and beautiful climbs.

So somehow, I must have lost sufficiently much weight on my trip to make up for the insufficient climbing practice. ¡Que bueno! Here you see another nice route called Divina ConMedias (7b), notice the play of words, which I could also easily climb. ¿Loco, verdad?

So I was all happy in the magic valley, stayed there for four days together with Dani, went swimming and climbing, and met lots of new people - climbers from all around the world. Here you can see Miguel, a Basque badass, onsighting Divina Conmedia in the last sunlight.

Unfortunately, wee sooner or later had to say adios to Valle Encantado although we could have stayed there for ever :( But we both wanted to move on in our travelling plans. I am sure I will be back one day to this truely magic valley!

So we said goodbye to our new friends, such as Molly, Vera, and Laurenzo, who probaly still hang out under their carpet until the day they run out of either chalk or food supplies :)

I had wonderful ten days in and around Bariloche and almost didn't want to move further on. But there is somebody wainting for me in La Paz at the sixteenth. So I gotta be back one day!

My next stop is Mendoza, the so-called most beautiful city of Argentina right under Aconcugua (America's highest mountain), home to the famous Argentinian wine, and, if I may believe the rumours, the hottest latinas outside of Copacabana! It promises to be good, doesn't it? I will find out and let you know ;)

Hasta pronto!

Flo