Baribourgeois to El BoBolson

So, bringing two trips into parallel now as Bariloche twice led to El Bolson. Neighbouring towns with opposing ideologies. Bariloche the richman’s playground. Ski-ing, chalets and 5* hotels mix reluctantly with classes of rowdy 18-year-olds celebrating the end of their school days.  El Bolson: a hippy experiment, peace and permacultura, vegetarian beef in harmony with the naturaleza.

First time around, following the flor de luna I hired a bicicleta up and down the hills of the circuito chico, down with the highs and up with the lows as a coach full of tourists pulled up to my mirador. Their fresh legs over-took on four wheels while my two rested on a rock and their cameras obscured every angle of the 360· panorama.

Take two: A hostel up 14 storeys high meant a vista to feast on. Steak supper and smoking on the balcony followed by a morning of snow without skis at the peak of Bariloche’s house of god, Cerro Catedral.

Back to round one: Stereotypes became my reality in El Bolson as an elderly hippy nabbed me off the bus and invited me to his organic hostel, a homemade finca. I journeyed there in his battered-out old motor and entered the rickety gate with a smile.

Round two was brief in El Bolson as Nacho sipped chai with Trebol while I filled a shopping trolley with supplies and bought a quarter kilo tub of helado artesanal before taxi-ing it to the wilderness of Chacra El Manantial in Mallín.

The supermarket was a stopping point the first time round too. Outside this spot, sat on a grassy verge, Nacho and I, por casualidad, became reacquainted. Lazing among a crowd of hippy youths (El Bolson happily retaining its image) I got swept up in an evening expedition of International love* to la cascada escondida. Argentinos, chilenos, franceses, guatamaltecos, una holandesa, un alemán, una el salvadoreña, un suizo, una canadiense y yo – an inglesa for the record!*

From the fall night fell and we lost our bearings, finding precipices rather than our way. Eventually, as we stumbled across the dead (walking through the cemetery), we knew that we were alive. Closing in on the civilisation from which we had ventured, retracing our footsteps over a rickety bridge, we each arrived safely back on the other side.

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*  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtUT3kgyYl0