Bariloche

San Carlos de Bariloche

Fancy Hotels, Fancy Food, & Fancy Chocolate

Thursday March 27, 2008

It's been but a few short days since we left El Bolsón on Monday morning and drove up to San Carlos de Bariloche. The name is quite a mouthful but fortunately, it's commonly and more conveniently referred to by locals and just about everyone else as simply "Bariloche." Most maps and perhaps even airline itineraries honor the proper historic name though, despite the trouble of somehow fitting 23 total characters (including the intermingled spaces). Various abbreviations abound.

I'm almost ashamed to admit that we only spent three nights in one of the most iconic travel destinations in South America. Not to slight Machu Picchu or anything - OK, perhaps it would be better to say that Bariloche is the most renowned "Outdoor Adventure Sport and Chocolate Lover's Holiday Destination" in South America.

Not to slight Pucón on the other side of the Andes over in Chile or anything - but Bariloche has way more if not better chocolate shops (and even a renowned chocolate factory and chocolate museum), and certainly a better ski resort. That is, if you're after some seriously good skiing vs. the novelty of shushing on the side of an active, smoke-belching volcano. If volcanoes are your thing, Chile's the place for you.

Bariloche is also a Mecca of sorts for Argentine High School students who come here from all parts of the country to throw rowdy graduation parties. Autumn and a new school year both just recently began, so we arrived a little too early for skiing and way too early to get bombed at a graduation party. Darn.

Bariloche does have Chilean roots of a sort. The original permanent European settlers were of German descent, and they migrated here from the lakes region of Chile in the late 19th century. The first road was paved in 1913 in honor of a visit by Teddy Roosevelt, who likened the place to a North American frontier town of the "true old West." A rail connection to the rest of Argentina was completed in 1934. In the same year South America's first (and still the largest in Argentina) national park was established upon lands immediately to the north. The territory for Parque Nacional Nahuel Haupi had been donated twenty years earlier by the great explorer/naturalist Perito Moreno (a South American John Muir of sorts). With a train bringing people to enjoy the fabulous beauty of the surrounding mountains and lakes, the tourist industry of Bariloche expanded rapidly. Three quarters of a century later, the boom hasn't slowed a bit.

Without trying to repeat the list of interesting places to visit in the city proper, or places to hike or boat or fish or ski or raft or kayak on nearby mountains and/or in the nearby national park, I'll offer a very brief summary of what we did and saw during a three-night, two-long-day visit. And as a preface, I'll try to explain why we spent so little time in a place that has so much to offer.

We've been up and down and over and through some amazing terrain, and still we've only seen a tiny fraction of what this amazing continent has to offer. So in one sense, to us, spectacular mountains and beautiful lakes are a bit "more of the same," at this point. And although Bariloche is "the" place to visit in the Argentina Lakes District, we've been warned about the highly-developed tourist industry and advised that there are other places with just as spectacular beauty and perhaps a slightly more homey feel. With the thought in mind of renting a house or apartment for a couple of months, and having been told that San Martin de Los Andes (another mouthful which I hope can be shortened to "San Martin" or perhaps "Los Andes") can offer all the physical beauty of Bariloche combined with a better sense of community, we want to arrive in S. Martin de Los Andes early enough to have a chance at finding something to rent for the month of April. And San Martin d. L. A. is close enough to Bariloche that we could still come back to Bariloche for a brief visit or to buy chocolate if ever the desire or longing arises.

Excuses, rationalizations, and explanations aside - now finally, here is what we did and saw in S. Carlos d. B.

For starters, we had to drive here, which took barely a couple of hours on a wide, smooth, asphalt highway snaking northward from El Bolsón along the side of various hills and ridges. Marcela, the dueña of Posada Los Mimbres in Gaiman had told us stories about the horrors of driving this road a few decades (or just years?) ago before it was paved - a narrower version of "La Cuarenta" with plenty of truck traffic and blind curves to boot. As she described it, laughing (seemingly because she was relieved to still be alive), it sounded like an experience we were glad to be able to miss.

As you can see from this well-recycled map, Bariloche is located on the southern shore at the eastern tip of Lago Nahuel Huapi, which is in the southern part of Parque Nacional Nahuel Huapi, which should not be confused with the nearby pueblo of Nahuel Huapi, or the many nearby hosterias, cabañas, restaurants, and other businesses with either the word "Nahuel," "Huapi," or both in their name.

Within city limits proper, Bariloche is less elegant than I expected. There are a few famous buildings down by the lakeshore, and several blocks of city center featuring plenty of souvenir and chocolate shops. Two of the most beautiful buildings are the cathedral and cultural center, both designed by the famous Argentine architect Alejandro Bustillo. The rest of the city slopes up into the hills to the south in a disorganized jumble of mostly un-paved dusty streets. The principal lakefront avenue continues along the shore to the west for about 20 kilometers. There isn't much room for development between the shore and the sharp mountain ridge rising almost directly above it, but a narrow strip of build-able slope ranging in width from a few hundred meters to a few kilometers has been fully utilized for suburban sprawl featuring tourist lodgings, restaurants, and vacation villas.

It was along this road, about 3 kilometers west of downtown, that we found our hotel/cabaña complex. The view from our second floor window was great, and the large heated pool was fantastic.

The weather forecast for Tuesday was iffy, so we made indoor sorts of plans for the day - of course including some schoolwork in the hotel for starters. Visiting one of the most famous hotels in Argentina, another Bustillo creation, was an excuse to enjoy an excellent lunch in a very elegant setting.

Hotel Llau Llau is located in the small town of Llau Llau about 20 kilometers west of Bariloche, and reached by following that lake-shore highway. The hotel is as fantastic inside as out. Initially constructed in the mid-1930's entirely out of wood and stone, over 5000 trees were removed on the hill to make an acceptable space for it. I said "initially constructed" because it burned to the ground one year later. Then they rebuilt it. Beginning in the 1970's the hotel at vacant for almost 20 years when the cost and bother of running the hotel was something the government didn't want to deal with anymore. A private enterprise finally took over, renovated the building, and re-opened in 1993 with a new golf course on the grounds.

This new incarnation of hotel and golf resort hosted the Pan-American Summit of 1995, and still seems to be quite successful. It certainly hosts a lot of wealthy tourists. We saw and heard a greater density of (north) Americans in the lobby, hallway, and restaurant than we've been around in quite a long time.

The weather report had forecast drizzle, but for the most part the rain held off and there were just a lot of high clouds - allowing for some dramatic if not postcard quality views of the lake and hotel (taken from the grounds of an old cathedral on the adjacent hill).

Chocolate from a chocolate museum is an excellent way to top off an elegant lunch in an elegant restaurant. Our hotel gave us a complimentary pass to the museum and told us they were open between 2 and 8pm. When we arrived a little after 6, the worried looking receptionist informed us that all the remaining tours for the day would be in Spanish, and recommended that we come back tomorrow at 2pm for the once-per-day English version. We politely declined the offer (the weather was supposed to be better the next day and we wanted to do outdoor things). After some sort of back and forth consult with another employee, she nervously led us around the corner and told us we could tag along with the tour that had just started. We tried our best to understand, but it was difficult, and we weren't sure if we were supposed to really be part of the small group of 4 young woman tourists or not - until the guide told us directly to join them after about 15 minutes of snooping. Fortunately, many of the visual displays had both English and Spanish descriptions so we got the general idea just by looking and reading.

Here's a short summary of the thesis of the museum: Europeans learned about chocolate from indigenous Americans. The Aztecs were the first to use cacao beans in order to make a spicy version of hot chocolate that only important chiefs and priests were allowed to drink. Likewise, when the Europeans first started drinking hot chocolate, it was a drink reserved for royalty and the social elite. Chocolate was strictly a beverage until guys with names like "Nestle" and "Hershey" figured out how to make solid bars of chocolate candy. Most importantly, as far as the Fenoglio Chocolate Museum in Bariloche is concerned, an Italian guy named Fenoglio came to Bariloche in the 1940's, bringing chocolate making supplies along in his suitcase. Since then, many others have arrived and followed his lead, so the current city is virtually and almost literally dripping in the assorted products of numerous chocolatistas.

The weather was indeed much brighter and nicer on Wednesday. We took an afternoon boat trip northward on lake Nahuel Huapi. The boat made two stop, the first on Victoria Island, and the second on a peninsula famous for an old grove of large arrayan trees. "Naheul Huapi" is a Mapuchi name which supposedly means "Tiger Island." I'm a little curious how the native American Mapuchi knew about tigers, but I suppose it's more believable that they might name an island after a tiger than have a queen named Victoria.

Our ship, the Modesta Victoria

Cruising out on Lago Nahuel Huapi.

On Victoria Island, we walked through what they called an "experimental forest," featuring groves of non-native trees like North American sequoia and Ponderosa pine.

Our short one-hour visit to the island also barely allowed us time to walk up the shore to visit this small cove and beach,

and climb the nearby bluff for an overlook.

The second port of call - docking at the peninsula.

The first plant to catch our attention after leaving the boat wasn't a tree - it was this amazing mushroom.

Then there were the trees. A staff photographer for the excursion had been touting his 30-peso photo CD's of the forest as the boat headed for the peninsula, explaining that because it is so dark and shadowy in the forest, and that because most of us surely don't have the proper equipment to take pictures in these conditions, we should buy his CD. Well, he was essentially correct, but we still managed to take a few decent pictures. It was difficult endeavor without a tripod and with that crowd of tourists galumphing along on all sides of a narrow boardwalk. And we only had 45 minutes to complete the little circuit hike through the trees. Now I know why our guidebook recommends coming in the morning on an earlier boat and just hanging out for the whole day.

This is one of the most amazing virgin forests of old arrayan trees in the world. We saw some big old arrayan trees in Chile, but not such a large thick stand of them. The arrayan tree is similar to the myrtle trees of California and Oregon, and has the familiar characteristic (like both myrtle and manzanita) of an almost non-existent paper-thin bark. Because of this, the capillaries carrying water up the trunk run directly along the surface and evaporation makes the trunk very cold to the touch. We call manzanitas near our home in California "refrigerator trees."

The boat disgorged its load of passengers at the dock in Llao Llao village a little after 7pm. After cleaning up back at the hotel, we drove up into the hills to have dinner at a place the hotel staff had highly recommended. It was a fantastic dinner at a fantastically elegant place. So fantastically elegant that all of the other diners (save one couple) spoke English and were obviously visiting from the US. It was pretty expensive - very expensive by Argentine standards - I'd estimate somewhere between a third and a half of what something like that would cost around where we live. Ignoring price and the other diners around us, it was simply fabulous food served up by the head-waiting owner and cooked by his fantastic chef of a wife.

Today we left Bariloche and drove north to San Martin de Los Andes. The weather was perfect, and the road we drove is a famous scenic route passing through a region known as "Siete Lagos" (Seven Lakes).

First, we had to stop in Bariloche to try to get a decent picture of Alejandro Bustillo's cathedral. The dog just happened to be in the vicinity, charging only a few pesos (or biscuits) to sit still for a photo. The lighting wasn't the best, as the only open vantage point from which to view the entire building faced into the morning sunlight. One of the undesirable aspects of the congested development in central Bariloche is that the most historic and picturesque old buildings are surrounded and shadowed by newer, taller, and uninspiring modern edifices.

One of our guidebooks warns that although the scenery along the Siete Lagos route from Bariloche to San Martin is incomparably fantastic, it can be difficult to enjoy the drive during peak summer tourist months of January and February. The traffic, which includes a regular stream of large tour busses, kicks up so much dust from the narrow, winding, unpaved narrow road that you spend most of the time navigating and viewing scenery through a blurry and dangerous (lots of blind curves!) haze.

We were fortunate to be able to make the drive on a clear, crisp day in early autumn. There were few other cars on the road, and I don't recall passing any buses at all. Even with so few vehicles on the road, Lynn had to wait a minute or two for the cloud of our own dust to settle before being able to take pictures whenever we stopped at a viewpoint.