San Carlos de Bariloche

Last Sunday, I decided to leave hippy town and travel to Bariloche to the north. Unlike El Bolson, Bariloche definitely is a tourist town, but it is charming at the same time. It has a large, paved central square that opens out onto Lago Nahuel Huapi, a huge lake that stretches out into the mountains and the mist and has huge arms (or brazos) that make for great boat trips and walking. Just as in the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires, the names of desaparecidos have been daubed in white onto the paving of the square, along with the year that they were taken (most seemed to be in the mid seventies). In the middle of the day, the square swarms with huge St Bernad dogs, the mascots of Bariloche, little wooden barrels around their necks, waiting to have their picture taken with tourists. Men with saws and chisels attack huge slabs of wood, crafting them into sculptures of lizards, gnomes, naked women and indians, the best being displayed in front of the town hall. As the sun begins to sink low, the square is filled with golden light and the skater crowd turn up, their baggy jeans hanging around their thighs just like in England. They turn up in Vauxhall Corsas and other pieces of crap, neons lights flashing and music booming out. They would often leave the engines running with the music blasting out through the open windows.

Bariloche is also famous for its chocolate, whic I sampled at Mamushka after almost drowning in a huge crowd of people. It was Easter when I was there and eggs of every different shape and size were displayed in the windows. One mechanical chocolate egg opened and closed to reveal a big, yellow chick. After staying the first night in a hostel out of town, I transferred to 1004, a fantastic hostel on the tenth floor of the biggest apartment building in Bariloche. There are no signs, neither at the entrance to the building or on the floor itself. My dorm room, the kitchen and the lounge all have huge windows which look out west over the lake to the mountains, Cerro Campanario and Cerro Catedral, behind which the sun sets every day. Going out in Bariloche, I was astounded by the number of Irish bars, Wilkennys, Pilgrim and others. Some just call themselves Irish bars as a marketing manoeuver; we found a bar in Bolson that was called "Boulevard", had a mock alpine interior and called itself an Irish bar. The Argentinians have also inherited the Spanish contempt for good time management. Even in a sleepy town like Bolson, the bars only started to get busy when we were leaving at around 1, and the clubs don´t kick off until about three. I met a guy working in a pub in Buenos Aires who shuts up shop at around seven in the morning, goes home to sleep until about two and then returns to clean up, waiting for the clients to turn up at around one in the morning.

After taking a chairlift up to a local hill, Cerro Otto, on the first day (and being bought a coffee by a Uruguayan couple because I didnt have any money), I met up with an Irishman from Cork, Tadhg, and did the Circuito Chico, a bike ride on the second. Tadhg is a twenty eight urban planner but he looks like anything but; with long shaggy hair, skinny jeans and a Bob Dylan neck-scarf, he looked exactly as a traveller should look. He started travelling in Vancouver, and has travelled through the states, staying in the National Parks for free with his tent. He loved Montana, and wished he had time to camp in Bariloche too. To camp in Patagonia is the best way of experiencing the dramatic landscape. On the circuito chico, we passed glassy lakes bordered by sandy bays and steep hills of pine trees. The tourist who stays in hostels or hotels only sees a tiny fraction of the Patagonian countryside, just as a normal fisherman could only physically fish 10 percent of the rivers and lakes. I was told that Tiger Woods and other American stars charter helicoptres to take them to remote fjords and rivers in Patagonia, far from any settlements and even more abundant in fish than the lakes that I have seen.

The day before leaving, I decided to go rafting on the Rio Manso which starts in Argentina, cuts its way through the mountains into Chile and ends in the Pacific ocean. After a two hour drive in a cramped minibus, we arrived at a campsite next to the sparkling, green water of the Rio Manso to a breakfast of Medialunas and coffee. I struggled into a wetsuit and a life jacket and then was off down the river with a great guide who took sadistic pleasure in waiting until we approached a rapid and then describing in graphic detail all the disasters that could befall us; "if you don´t paddle hard enough, we´ll get sucked down towards that rock, raised up and tipped over". The water is almost totally transparent, allowing you to see the river bed and in its upper stretches, the river is relatively wide, bordered by tall, golden alamo trees (which I had previously mistaken for Alamo trees) and ancient Alerces. Floating down the river, we could see ahead into Chile, hillsides covered with red and brown nire trees. In the early morning sun, hatches or mayflies skipped off the surface of the water and rose in small clouds as we passed, no doubt providing rich food for the seething life below the surface of the water. Because the season is drawing to a close, the water level has dropped, revealing over a metre of rocks covered in moss. As a result, the rapids were not as exciting as they could have been, but it was still exhilerating to see the rapids approach as the river narrowed and deepened, passing through steep gorges of rounded rock which loomed above us and extinguished the light. You´d stop paddling, hear the roar of the swirling water, and then begin paddling like madmen, even when the waves reared up and crashed over the boat and spray soaked your face. Two hours later, we were in Chile and rounded the trip off with a parrilla of char-grilled meat and beer.

I am now in Pucon, Chile. Tomorrow, I´m going to climb the active volcano, Villarrica, and after that, relax in one of the hot springs that surround the town. I almost feel that I have the opposite problem to Oblomov. Instead of lazing around listlessly or falling into reveries, I always feel that I have to be doing something when I am travelling, given that there is so much to feel and see. This afternoon, though, I think I´m going to buy a beer, sit on the beach and finish my book. Just a shame that I don´t to dress me and feed me like Oblomov. Oh well, life´s hard.