Jannis & Martine

As Jannis wrote in his last post, I´m supposed to write a bit about our outdoor actvities around Bariloche.

Well, last week has been one with quite some exercise….

First of all we started off to go along with Fernando and Gulaya, an American couple, who went on a horsebackriding trip in the mountains. For me it was the first time, so I wasn´t very happy with the drill-instructor we had. We didn´t get any time to get used to riding on a horse and feel comfortable with it, as we almost immediately went into a steep hilly part (even Jannis had to get used to riding in the mountains). The instructor certainly didn´t help: all he did was shouting ´use the stick, use the stick, USE THE STICK´, to hit the horse.  But I didn´t want to use the stick, mostly because I didn´t want my horse to go any faster.

Luckily I had this really nice horse which seemed to feel that he had to be careful with me, and he took me gently to the top. Arriving there I even get to enjoy the great view a little bit. The way back down already went much better, as I had more confidence in horsebackriding. I don’t know if I’d ever go again, though….

On another day we decided to hire a bike, and Fernando, Gulaya and 3 other people from our hostel decide to come along to cycle ‘Circuito Chico’ (the small circuit) – a 25 km circuit along a hilly peninsula close by.

The last activity we did was trekking trough the national park. We planned to do a 3-day trekking, so stay 2 nights in refugios on the way.

We left the day after the bike ride, but because the first day was going to be an easy walk, we thought we wouldn´t need a day rest in between. We thought…….
But after arriving at night at our refugio at 1700 m high we knew it hadn´t been an easy walk!! The walk was going to take us 3 hours, but after we had walked for 2 hours, we suddenly came across a sign saying it was 3 hours more to our refugio. Having started late in the afternoon, we happely just made it before sunset.

After we started our walk the second day, we knew why the walk on the first day was called ´easy´. The second day the walk was even harder.
We had been informed that the second day we had to cross two mountain peaks. We started fresh and we looked with confidence at the first peak we had to cross, as we were already on 1700 meters high. So it couldn´t be too hard. But we were wrong. After climbing this peak, we realised we still weren´t at the peak itself, the other half was hidden. So we only had climbed just half of it…… We had a fare bit of the other half to go, while the track became more and more difficult.

You think of a track as an path you can walk over, so it´s obvious where to go. But this wasn´t such a track. The track was a marking of some red dots. You see a red dot on some rocks a bit away, so you know where to go, but you have absolutly no idea how to get there. At one stage we had lost the red dots at all and ended up in this really uncomfortable situation on a scary slippery part. But because it has been really difficult to get to the point you are at that time, you also do NOT want to have to go back the same way. It feels like a ´point of no return´.
After this heavy climb my left knee really started to play up.

In one of our hikes in El Chalten we met this guy who was stumbeling his way down to get back, which took him ages, but it was the only way out. Very painful. I didn´t want to end up like him, so with him as an example and knowing we still had another mountain peak to climb, we decided to go back to civilization when we found a way out.

Three Argentinian men had told us that after the first peak, there was another path leading to Cerro Cathedral, a big ski area. This path was staying on the same level, so we wouldn´t have to climb or decent anymore, and from this area you could go down with a skilift. We could even see this skilift in the far distance.
So we took the oppurtunity to go back.

It was one of the most beautiful tracks I have ever hiked, looking over this impressive valley. But for us it definitely was also the toughest and most scary one ever! The whole way we were climbing on slippery rocks looking down the valley.  What made it more scary was that during the 3 hours hike to the skilift we saw nobody. Then we found out that the skilift was being repaired, so it was totally abandoned. We were stuck on the mountain at 2000 meters high!

Just before we arrived at the skilift, luckily, 3 guys had showed up behind us. But these guys had no clue whatsoever, as they were stubbernly looking for a non-existing refugio.

So we looked further, but we only found more abandoned skilifts, and in the meanwhile it started to get pretty misty.

Then we found a fresh car track, and we thought following this track would take us down. When this car track ended at another abandoned skilift (and by this time the mist had really taken away any view at all) and it became later and later, we started to get panicking.

We rang the Argentine 112/911: no connection!! Calling with our Dutch mobile, we didn´t know the countrycode for Argentina…

Luckily just 5 minutes later the mist cleared up, and we saw a little village in the valley, which turned out to be the base of the Cerro Cathedral ski area. It was still a long walk going down, but at least we got somewhere to go.

We just made it before dark, so we stayed overnight in the ski village and we had never been happier to enjoy a nice meal and have a proper bed to stay in.

Love, Martine.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 7th, 2009 at 11:25 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.