Weekend trip to El Bolson

Wayne and I took a side trip while in Bariloche to El Bolson which is a 2 hour bus ride to the south. We didn’t make any reservations because we planned on camping both nights to save some money. There are plenty of advertised camp sites near town so we walked and walked and walked to find these camp sites and they were all HORRIBLE! We spent the entire evening walking around trying to find a nice place! Neither of us were staying in these places so we booked a night at an in-town hostel and we were quite pleased! Maybe during the height of the season these camp sites are better, but we didn’t see any other campers when we were there.

El Bolson is considered the “hippy” town in the region. I expected to see a lot of people with dreadlocks, but we only saw a few. The town is famous for it’s “feria artesanal” market, held every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday and one we were told not to miss it. I didn’t really think the market was anything to brag about after being to the markets in Central America. It seemed small and the booths were hit or miss with what they were selling. Luckily, we didn’t head to El Bolson just for the market – we were there to hike and that was brilliant! This was the last weekend that most of the refugios were open for the season. We hadn’t really done much research on that so I’m glad it worked out for us. We decided to do the the hike to refugio Hielo Azul, going in on one trail and out on another – it’s a 5-7 hour hike with a 1200 meter ascent. The taxi dropped us off at the Dona Rosa campsite and we were like “where do we go now?”. It felt like we were in the middle of no man’s land – good thing there are not mountain lions and bears in Argentina! After a few minutes of figuring out our location we started the hike. Once we hit the 2nd campsite (can’t remember the name), we saw a swinging bridge that says you must not start this hike after 2pm because it’s 7-9 hours…YIKES, it was 2:30pm and I was not going to hike in the dark, even without bears! We both agreed that the time could not be right and I’m a fast hiker…hehe!

The next hour was some of the hardest hiking I have ever done. It was straight uphill and there were no flats for breaks. That 7-9 hour thing was looking like it might be for real. I think the complaining probably started around this point! We didn’t have the Garmin with us, but on the map we seemed closer to the refugio than 7 hours, or so we hoped! We hiked on and to our surprise we made it to the refugio in 3.5 hours. See, I’m not so slow after all!

We also had another fabulous surprise when we arrived – we were allowed to make a fire. I don’t think I’ve made a campfire since the girl scouts and I’m not sure of Wayne’s last attempt, but we probably needed a few lessons in campfire making. We were almost giving up when Wayne decided to wave a flat piece of bark near the flames and voilà– we had fire!!!! Lesson remembered: oxygen fuels a fire! This allowed us to stay warm through the evening and attempt to heat up our empanadas and roasted bananas (you’ll do anything for food when camping!).

The refugio was very basic, but it had the best bathrooms to date! They also have hot showers for a fee, but we never shower when camping – too cold when getting out and it’s not camping unless you smell (on a side note, we always smell these days even with daily showers. Wearing the same clothes over and over while traveling definitely gives them a very distinct odor). We didn’t spend much time in the refugio since we brought our dinner and breakfast.

After a cold night, again with no mat for the sleeping bags, we decided to hike the 3 hours to the glacier sharing the refugio name. It was a very steep, rocky ascent and not really worth the effort at the top. The glacier was small and there were gray skies which really washed out the glacier. We also had a 5-6 hour hike back to El Bolson that was supposed to be pretty flat. The first 2 hours were flat, but then it was a miserable loose downhill, just the right angle to destroy my knees for the next 3 hours. I was to the point of walking backwards to relieve the pain as the trail never seemed to end. When we were finally down, we had to walk another 5k just to reach the road for the taxi to take us back to town. We were hoping to catch the 5pm bus back to Bariloche, only to watch it depart as we arrived at the station. Oh well, only another 2 hours to waste.

It was a long weekend of hiking, but it was fun and we were glad to have different views from those in Bariloche. I wouldn’t want to spend much time in El Bolson unless I was hiking between the refugios. I didn’t think much of the town or the artesan market.