El Bolson was my next destination, "the big bag" which sits below Cerro Piltquitron, a long jagged cliff which rises steeply from the fertile valley floor. Its something of a hippy town; thousands of hippies flooded into El Bolson in the 1960s and they can still be seen in the market that is held numerous times every week. On my first day in El Bolson, I wandered around the market and soon saw an old barefoot man dressed entirely in white linen, sporting half moon glasses and a goatee beard. There are hundreds of stores selling knitwear, wooden clocks, "essential oils", alfaflores ( a type of Argentinian sweet) and anything else that you can think of. You also see a lot of people wearing the traditional clothing of the "gaucho"; check shirt, leather boots, kneckerchief and beret swept to one side. Apart from the tourists for whom they are an affectation, they are worn by genuine country folk who are often seen herding their horses outside town. They also seem to be worn by ordinary people who want to show that they are working class by differentiating themselves from the pomp of Buenos Aires. One good thing though is that El Bolson is inhabited by real people with real lives and real lives, unlike El Calafate and Chalten which were created entirely for tourists and look like theme parks.

When I arrived though, all the hostels in the centre were abandoned. I eventually picked one which was recommended in my Footprint guide as being "nice" and on opening the door, I was greeted by a surly man who showed me to a dirty room and seemed affronted that I coujldn´t pay upfront. It seems that everyone is travelling north with the weather. Or it may be that people skip El Bolson and travel straight to San Carlos de Bariloche to the north.

To my mind, this area, from Esquel northwards, through Trevellin to El Bolson, is one of the most beautiful in Argentina. It doesn´t have the raw, awe-inspiring monoliths of Torres del Paine, or the towering peaks of Chalten, but it makes up for these deficiencies with a fantastic climate. Cool mornings are followed by hot sun in the middle of the day and the four days that I have spent here have been cloudless. The whole area is more fertile than the far south, green fields and towering golden cypress trees providing a welcome contrast to the high peaks and jagged rocks of Cerro Piltquitron. It has something of the "modesty" talked about in The remains of the day.

Yesterday I climbed Pitquitron and ate a lunch of pizza and homemade beer surrounded by mountains on every side. Its truly amazing how lazy most people are. All the way up I was being passed 4x4s. Once kilometre from the summit, they get out of their cars and labour uphill with their walking polls, stopping for regular breaks to catch their breath and curse the steepness of the hill.

Today I went fishing on Lago Puelo to the south of El Bolson. My spanish was obviously insufficient because I ended up trawling from the side of a boat with a huge artificial lure rather than flyfishing. It was great fun and I caught three huge rainbow trout (arco iris), but it lacks the excitement or subtlety of flyfishing. You might as well chuck a grenade into the water, so little skill does it require. Instead of casting, you sit there with the rod motionless or slowly moving back and forth. While a fly is a small target with only one or two hooks, the artificial lure that I was using measured around two inches and was rippling with six hooks. Hooking a fish with the rod I was using this morning is nowhere near as exciting as with a lighter flyfishing rod; the tip of the rod barely bends and you are given no real idea of the fish´s weight. Because the fish is so well hooked and because the breaking strain of the line is so great, you can practically haul the fish in. However frustrating flyfishing may be, the knowledge that the fish could escape at any moment if the tension of the line is not maintained, makes catching it all the more enjoyable. Flyfishing is a much more even fight between man and fish, an art like bullfighting. Trawling is like walking up to the bull and firing a bolt through its brain.

Tomorrow I´m catching a bus to Bariloche, known for its chocolate, outdoor sports and nightlife. I see that the price of oil has risen, so I can now help myself to another ice-cream with a clear conscience. I´m reading "Oblomov" at the moment, a Russian novel by Goncharov following the fate of a man who is confronted with the earth-shaking question; whether to get out of bed! The day after tomorrow, I think I may answer, no.