After a day in Bariloche it is time to explore
Following on from my summary of Bariloche, it was quickly time to move on and explore the amazing scenery in the area. After a bit of research we chose 3 tours to cover while we were there.
We chose to go on the Spanish speaking tours as they were much cheaper, clearly a European surcharge going on. In our experiences the tour is fine without the commentary, it mainly focuses on local species and trees, which I for one, can do with out.
- Cicruito Chico
- Tronodor peak and glacier
- 7 lakes road to San Martens de la Andes
Here is a quick summary of our experience.
Our first tour in Spanish, when we boarded the minibus, I did my Spanish Good Afternoon and stated– Yo no hablo Espanol – we could not speak Spanish.
It quickly became apparent that we were not the only English speakers on the bus, a few Americans and Europeans. After a few minutes, the tour guide asked if anyone on the bus spoke SPANISH, only 3 people put their hands up. At this point there was lots of laughter and a good, humoured guide explained she only had a few words of English but would do her best, and she did, and we had lots of fun teaching her.
One of the main attractions is a tour of the local lakes. This was only a half day tour but took us to some spectacular locations with stunning views. After visiting Norway earlier this year we had seen some spectacular scenery, but this was probably better.
First view involved a chair lift to the top of peak where we could get a full panoramic view of the region, the scenery is awesome speaks for itself in the photos. We ended up on viewing platform that provided for a 360 degree of the Lago Nahuel Huapi national park.
We then went on a road tour of the shoreline, with numerous little lake side beaches, ferry port and a final look out with a view back along the lake.
This was a really great tour, it was only 4 hours but we seemed to see so much of the landscape that it is probably all you need to get a feel for the Lago Nahuel Huapi national park.
This tour is an absolute must do tour – it is stunning and cheap
The second trip of our visit was to the Tronodor peak in the national park. This is the highest peak in the region and is an extinct volcano. The images are spectacular so we thought we should try it out.
We booked the Spanish speaking trip again, but things were a bit different this time. All the passengers were Argentinians speaking Spanish, and the guide knew no English whatsoever. Our theory that it wouldn’t matter if we didn’t have a commentary turned out to be solid, my little bit of Spanish helped to understand that the commentary was all about plants and nature so we didn’t miss much as it was just one huge pine forest.
It was an incredibly long day, 10 hours in total on a packed minibus is hard work anyway, but as 90% of it was on rough mountain tracks to get to the waterfall and peaks made it that much harder.
The first stop was the beautiful Cascada Los Alerces waterfall. We arrived after a couple of hours bouncing our way along the tracks so the walk to the falls was really welcomed. There was a really cool boardwalk built through the forest that enabled people like us to see the splendour of the beautiful falls.
We then headed off to the Ventisquero Negro glacier, which hangs off the side of the Tronodor peak. The stop off for lunch was a bit of a disaster as the café didn’t take credit cards, so we sat around dreaming of food and grateful we pocketed a couple of pastries from the breakfast bar.
Eventually we arrived at the car park for the glacier and headed off to experience the views. The benefit of being in the mountains during spring is that as the weather warms up the high level snow starts to crack on glaciers, as was the case here.
On a clear day I am sure that the scenery would have been more spectacular, but on a cloudy day we missed that, and once you have seen one lake you have probably seen them all, so
While we stood and watched in awe at the size of the mountain and the distant glacier. We heard those telltale booms that tell us that the snow is breaking high up on the mountain and hoping that we would see an avalanche of snow coming off the ridge, luckily on this occasion we saw some snow flurries rolling down the gully.
After an hour spent in this placid location it was time to head back onto the minibus and the 2 hour journey on tracks back to the entrance to the park, and the luxury of tarmacked roads!
On reflection and bearing in mind that we are heading towards South Patagonia and the Glacier National Park, maybe we didn’t need to go through the trauma of all those hours on the minibus to see the glacier, as there was very little else to see as we travelled through the miles of pine forests. However, the waterfall was fabulous, and we have seen the best of the Bariloche region.
If you have never seen a glacier then this is a must do, if you can cope with 8 hours on a minibus on rocky roads
7 lakes road to St Martens de la Andes
This was a our last trip so we were getting a bit saddle sore in minibuses by now, so it was nice to have a coach. The journey from Bariloche was interesting and worthwhile.
This was another Spanish speaking trip but the guide, Stella, was great and worked really hard to explain to us in English what was going on. She had a huge passion for the vegetation and history that fired here enthusiasm.
As you head out of Bariloche you realise that the scenery is basically scrubland and desert and the road is dead straight, in fact, the Romans would have been very proud of it.
In a distance of about 10 miles along the lake, the climate changes from huge levels of rainfall with ski slopes into desert scrub and hardly any vegetation, no trees, nothing.
The early part of the drive around the lake was through the scrubland but as the altitude rose so did the vegetation. As moved through the lakes the dense forest from the Tronodor trip reappeared and made for spectacular scenery, if only the low cloud wasn’t blocking off the peaks.
After 4 hours of checking out numerous lakes we arrived in St Martens Andes at which point I was hugely relieved that I was only doing a daytrip. It was a rather dull modern lakeside town which nothing of interest to do other than eat lunch and walk back to the bus station. There were no walks or anything, but as luck would have it, the rain poured down so we just had a little wander and got back on the bus.
A must do if you like looking at lakes, I might have overdosed
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That is a summary of our trips from Bariloche. As someone who spends a lot of time in the Alps snowboarding and mountain biking, the waow factor of Patagonia wore off pretty quickly and I’m happy to be moving on to El Calafete and the rest of the trip.
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