Ever Southward

A statue and a flag
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Its hard to leave a town whose self identity is found in long lines of grape vines and delicious bottles of wine.  However, if there is one constant theme to this trip, it is that sometimes we leave places we love, to be in places we´d really rather not be, all because until we can go no further, its always time to move south.  So south we go to Bariloche, the headquarters of the Argentine lake district, and as far as we can tell of Argentine tourism.

In all the miles of traveling we had yet to come across anything quite like Bariloche.  Here, amonst the chicely dressed Polbanos there are no shortages of eye catching vistas, ice cream parlors, souvenir shops or over priced restaurants.   We found it, oddly enough, strangely similar to Vail in its very self conscience effort to be charming.  And oh so charming!  I mean who doesn´t love fancy chocolate shops with huge St Bernards sitting outside as a Christmas card photo op?

St Bernards and Dirty Hippies

Can we stay there please?
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Chocolate and St. Bernards aside, perhaps the best part of wandering Bariloche´s streets was that it gave us the chance to restock on mate supplies.  Mate is the Argentine tradition/obsession that involves drinking a delicously strong tea steeped from loose leaved herbs out of a gourd (mate) with a filtered metal straw (bambilla).  The tradition is one that pulses so deep through Argentina that mates are ornate works of art, bambillas are objects for collection, water of the perfect temperature is dispensed in bus stations and Worth and I were open to blatant amusement walking around drinking ours.  As the nice man at the vegetable store finally explained, to drink mate while walking around disturbs the yerba (pronounced ¨cherba¨ in the indecipherable Argentine accent). It is unheard of and very faux pas. Silly Americans.

That sounds good, I´ll have that.
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Engerized by all the mate, we decided that a lake of such a caliber as the one Bariloche nestles up against, is worthy of being biked around.  After finding out that actually biking all the way around the lake was a multi-day endeavor and one that--sin bike shorts and buttocks padding--we were unwilling to undertake, we settled for biking along a stretch of the lake and then turning around to go back to Bariloche to eat chocolate and take pictures with St. Bernards.

Our route happily included the most historic and most exclusive hotel in Argentine, beautiful lakeside beaches, a Swiss enclave of a village, microbreweríes, views of the surrounding ski areas, and kilometers enough for us.

If only the water was a little deeper...
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After having indulged our need for ritz, we decided to go hang out with some hippies.  So off we headed to the anti-nuclear, anti-consumerism, anti-pesticide, very pro-juggling-as-a-profession enclave of El Bolson.  The town, with a surplus of natural beauty, organic food and baggy linen pants, is everything I image Boulder to be in the 60s. We arrived just in the nick of time for their tri-weekly street fair.  The Â¨big dirty hippie fest¨ as we quickly dubbed it, was less dirty than big, but there were lots of hippies selling their homemade beer and deliciously inexpensive empandas lending to a festive atmosphere.  After finding ourselves a mega-mate and a salad of all organic, homegrown goodness, we were happy.  And we even made it out without dreading our hair...