Biking the Circuito Chico, Bariloche, Argentina

The Circuito Chico is a 35 km loop around Penninsula Llao Llao (pronounced Jau-jua), featuring spectacular views of the many lakes in the area, as well as interesting side hikes and landscape. Below is Michael in the lenga (a type of southern beech) forest.Yellow lupine--another oddity!The moutain cemetery, with one of the many alpine-themed headstones below. This tiny cemetry is set in a high pass, against a backdrop of mountains and waterfalls, and it looks out over one of the lakes. Many of the graves are marked with stones and planted with minature gardens, and also have depictions of climbing or moutains. According to the local Argentine we rented our bikes from, you don´t have to be a mountaineer to be buried here, you just have to love the mountains and want to be close to them..

A beautiful sculpture creates a stained-glass-like frame of one of the famous views of Lago Perito Moreno, with Lago Nahuel Huapi and the Andes in the background.

Look--it is Scot´s Broom (the yellow flowers) gone nuts! Yes, Washingtonians will recognize this exotic species, and it is exotic down here as well (blame those European settlers who always wanted to re-create home wherever they went). But it was ridiculously pretty, as every branch was drooping with bright yellow flowers at the height of their bloom.

Flores 2 - Parque Nacional Nahuel Huapi

For all you flower and plant people, here are some of my favorites from the flora of the national park. If anyone can identify them positively, please add a comment. Otherwise I will just go with my own conjecture (i.e. make things up). This was my favorite. It looks like an orchid to me! Check out those green veins in the leaves!

This one grew very high, in otherwise completely barren areas--very rocky talus fields. It was only about two inches high--and half of that is the flower, as you can see! This was also in the area where Michael and I were getting sand and ice-blasted from the wind! What a tenacious pioneer.

An alpine rock garden!

Definitely from the wild pea family. Almost (!) rivals our cultivated sweet peas at home. (Michael says I cannot say they are prettier than our sweet peas, since he loves them. I´ll let you decide.)

Not sure if these are native (one Argentine I talked to whose wife works in a native plant nursery thought they were native) but around Bariloche are some of the most gorgeous displays of lupine I have ever seen. This is at the very start of the trek, which was also a ski area. White lupine!

Trek 1, Parque Nacional Nahuel Huapi, Argentina

It looks like they forget a few of the planks! Not as bad as it looks, though. This is about half-way up our hike to Refugio Frey in the Cerro Catedral area of the Lakes District of Patagonia. The hike starts about 45 minutes outside Bariloche. We went in for two nights / three days.

Since real estate is so expensive in the U.S., we´ve decided to buy some property and move down here. How about this little place? Actually, this is a small refugio (hut). It is built entirely up against and under the huge bolder above it. Inside is a little wood stove, some pots and pans, and a wooden platform that would sleep about eight.

This was our basecamp for the two nights of our trek. You can see our little blue tent sticking out of the rocks on the left side of the picture (remember, you can click on any of these pictures to see a bigger version). The hut is Refugio Frey, where people with brains spend a few bucks to have a bed out of the wind! Actually, we were pretty happy in our tent and we were able to use the kitchen facility in the hut. There were many other trekkers braving the conditions in tents around us. It seems that there are huts everywhere down here and many people just go hut-to-hut, and travel light. It´s a very European style of backcountry travel.

The view from our campsite right before sunset. The big peak is Cerro Principal.

Michael works on tightening the guy lines for the tent - a frequent activity. Luckily, our knots held and neither the tent, nor we, blew away.

Rosemary either praising the beautiful scenery or hoping to take flight in the strong gusts.

Michael channels warm thoughts, while lying in the tent reciting the entire Ballad of Sam McGee. The tent was one of the few places to escape the relentless, and very cold, winds.

Just above camp we could easily scramble into the heart of the crazy spires and rock towers of the large mountains above the lake. The area reminded us of a mix between the North Cascades and the crazy rock formations of the desert southwest.

Scenes from Bariloche, Argentina

The park ranger´s office in Bariloche. Very cautious people! They told us the trail we had just been on was closed (due to snow).

The main square of Bariloche, looking down toward Lago Nahuel Huapi.

This is the lake the town of Bariloche, Argentina, sits on. In the distance are the Andes, where we hope to be trekking in a few days time.

Puerto Varas, Chile from bike track

Looking south over Lake Llanquihue, to the town of Puerto Varas, where we stayed a few nights. This is a sporty region: lots of hiking, biking, kayaking, rafting, sailing, etc. and is part of what is called the "Lakes District" of Patagonia. (There are a lot of lakes. Pretty crafty name, no?)

Flores 1

Biking to Puerto Varas, Chile. Here are some wildflower shots for mom and others craving some color. Amazingly, lots of flowers are the same as we have in WA. These flowers were growing along a gravel track behind some very wealthy houses. It is notable to see wealthy houses just out in the countryside, like you might find in the US. It is not something you see so much in a lot of Latin countries that are poorer. Chile is definitely a richer nation than others we have travelled in, as also evidenced by the better roads, newer cars, less trash, less chaos, etc.

Knee high by the 4th of January?

This is during our 27 km bike-ride back to our hostel in Puerto Varas from Frutillar.

One of the most amazing things about the trip so far has been to step off into spring. We have travelled to the tropics before, where the weather seasons are hot and hotter, but to land in springtime is something else. It is fresh and lush and green and it smells just like spring in WA (this is almost the same latitude south as Marblemount is north). And people are planting their gardens and crops, just like we would be in June (note the corn seedlings in the background).

German kuchen y torta!!

Pies and the prettiest cakes you have ever seen!

The Lakes District of Patagonia, both the Chilean and Argentinian sides, have been heavily influenced by German immigration. Apart for boasting spectacular views of volcanoes, it also has some very cute villages that look like something more out of Europe. This is in the town of Fruitillar, which was a colorful town of distinct wooden German architecture. It is a real delight to find great baked goods. I have to say, the Germans have that down pretty well! We biked from here along Lago Llanquihue (we can´t pronounce it either, and we´ve heard it spoken many times--part of the indigenous heritage is in a lot of un-pronounceable names) back to the town of Puerto Varas where we stayed. Two volcanoes dominate the skyline across the lake.

En route to Puerto Montt, Chile

We flew from Seattle to Dallas to Santiago, Chile, went through customs then got on ANOTHER flight to Puerto Montt. Long trip but all went well. Here are two of the 50 some-odd volcanoes in Chile, as seen from our flight to Puerto Montt.