Panorama City

Wow I´ve just been having a flick through the blog from the start. What a ride! But time is steadily ticking on and we are coming close to the end of this wee chapter. I´ll get started with a little observation about business and parties in Argentina. Here it is the overwhelming fashion for guys to always arrange to have their business at the front and their party at the back. If you´re completely lost, I´m talking mullets baby, the hairstyle that was the bane of 80s fashion in NZ which traditionally went hand in hand with short shorts, singlets and a can of DB. We´ve seen all manner from the traditional curly hair mullet, to the tinted twin tail mullet. Fantastic!

We boosted from Mendoza on our longest bus extravaganza to date. It turns out Argentina is actually really really big, and we had only begun to see it. Our initial plan was to head towards Bariloche and the northern part of Patagonia while stopping at a few places along the way, only there wasn´t really anywhere on the way, just miles and miles of flat plains. We arrived at last at the town of San Martin de los Andes, winter haven for the elite and famous. The fancy town houses were built almost entirely of stone and stained timber and the place had the midweek desertion of a holiday home town. While we were there we decided to trek up to a lookout with views of the surrounding mountains and lakes. We got pretty well abysmally lost as the path split into dozens of tracks all over the hills and my theory that "the lookout must be at the top of the hill so we should climb up" only really works when there is only one hill, in this case there wasn´t... We eventually made it to the top just in time for the sunset over a scene very reminiscent of Lake Wanaka.

Our next stop took us to the town of Villa de Angostura, so named for its location on a thin strip of land and the beginning of a peninsula which juts out into the lake. It was a small town and seemed much more relaxed, although just as touristy as San Martin. We were well into panorama country here, pretty well wherever we went there were cracking views of snowy mountains draped with lush pine forests towering over crystal clear lakes. We spent the next few days walking and cycling around to various lookouts for fantastic views of all the mountains, trees and lakes. A few weeks previously, a huge storm had dumped piles of snow in the area and some of the tracks (including the one out on the peninsula) were wrecked and closed by landslides, debris and fallen trees but we didn´t let this slow us down. There was also plenty of time for our new favourite pastime, lazing around by lakes.

In these picturesque resorty towns we discovered something that we hadn´t counted on. From a lookout near Angostura overlooking Lake Nahuel Huapi, we spied a beautiful wee bay with a few bobbing fishing boats and a small boardwalk which looked like the perfect place to stop for lunch. But when we walked down to it we discovered it was private land and we couldn´t access the waterfront. This was the case all over the area, we found that most of the best spots were owned by hotels or private houses and coming from NZ where anyone can lawfully wander the waterfront this was a bit of a surprise.

Our last stop in the Lake District was the ski resort city of Bariloche, famous for having the largest ski field in South America, Cerro Catedral, and just across the lake from Angostura. Bariloche was a strange town in many ways. During our stay there seemed to be an invasion of rich high school kids on organised trips who were staying at fancy hotels and would wander the streets at night in huge packs yelling school chants. Another wierd aspect was the noddy town like city centre, which seemed like some tacky mockery of Swiss architecture, while the rest of the city looked like a pretty normal city. Obviously some resident felt they needed to clear up any confusion because outside the centre was graffitied "Esto no es Barilcohe" (This is not Bariloche).

Our trekking around the Bariloche area took us out on a peninsula on the lake that had another lake within it which was really quite spectacular. We headed away from the road following a track marked on the map which showed a way through the forest to a beach at the head of the peninsula. Unfortunately this track had been nailed by the storm and we spent the next four hours bush bashing our way through debris, snow and thickets of thorns to find ourselves at a lookout far above the coast. It was here that Tessa decided that there must be a track down to the beach shown on the map and we further bush bashed our way down the cliff, through private property and past barking guard dogs, Tessa took a detour through the lake, and finally to a tranquil and nearly deserted beach with the obligatory fantastic vistas of trees, lake and mountains.

Being so close to such an enormous ski field we were obliged to head up and give it a go, despite bad reports of the slushy spring snow. As we have become budget hounds in our travels, we found the cheapest place in town to rent gear and proceeded to get decked out for our retro ski day. Fitted out with our straight skis, space boots, battered red poles and me with toilet paper jammed between my googles to stop them fogging up, we were absolutely the least stylish people on the mountain that day and possibly all season. The ski field was huge and criss crossed with gondolas and lifts of every variety. It took a couple of hours for us to figure out where we were and where we were going. After battling with the shoddy gear, white out conditions and nasty icy snow for a bit in the morning we eventually found our way to some really good runs and went flat out for the afternoon.