Scenery on one of the many bus trips, brilliant! Moving south from Bariloche we took in a handful of smaller towns, El Bolson-marketed here as a hippie village but to be honest it just had a pretty cute artisan market and some good restaurants and the Welsh towns of Trevelin, Gaiman and Trelew.
Our most ridiculous and fun day came in El Bolson. There is a sculptured wood here where local artists have carved characters and sculptures out of tree stumps, you can take a taxi there and back but it was recommended to us to taxi there and walk back. The weather was really chilly and there had been a fresh dump of snow over night so we knew it would be cold but went for it anyhow. After a 45 minute taxi ride up an insanely steep mountain with twisty windy roads we jumped out and walked a further 45 mins in light snow to the top of the mountain where the sculpture forest was. It was cold but it was nice to see the artwork. We started strolling down avoiding the scary looking bulls wandering around until we got back to the carpark where we had been dropped off. We stopped for a banana and some drink each before heading down further. A girl at our hostel had advised me not to take the road the taxi took up and that in fact there was a little path that cut through each bend in the road making the route down quicker and easier. We spotted the path and headed on our way, slowly the path disappeared so we’d spot a little one off it, follow that and then return to the original path again each time. The girl had said if we got lost we could easily spot the road again and just return to it but the road never came into sight.
After two hours of slow walking down-slippery and steep-we came to a stream, at this point we realised we really had taken the wrong path. We had a stream to our right and were tempted to just follow that down as we figured it had to take the most direct route down but unfortunately there was just no path near it, we carried on for another 20 minutes or so as Ed thought he had found a new path, at this point I was thinking we were going to end up getting lost in the bloody woods and spending the night there. My main worry was that a) we only had a banana to see us through and half a bottle of water and b) that we had been to a museum highlighting the local wildlife of Patagonia and Pumas are their scary neighbours....
Eventually after a bit of a panic and close to tears we decided to double back on ourselves and go back the way we came all the way to the top in order to find the road and simply follow that down. It was nudging 4pm and we knew we had to get moving to get out of the wood/path before dark at around 6.30pm.
By some sort of miracle-I think fear- we got up the hill in the same time we took coming down, there were a few times Ed literally pushed me up as this is the most exercise we had done in 4 months, and we are talking steep hills so for both of us our legs were like jelly. Two thirds of the way up we could see a car go past in the distance and this gave us the energy to get to the top, knowing that we were on the right path (as in the one we took down not the proper path!) We got to the top of the path and celebrated with a banana and a giggle, easy now, we just had the massive hill to climb down but at least it was on a road and we could just follow that. An hour into the walk down we were so lucky that a local man came past in his very new white pickup truck and offered us a lift back to the town. The car journey took another half an hour so we are so relieved he picked us up. Although we were pretty dirty and stinky so he may not have been so relieved. We got back into town about 8ish so if he hadn’t taken us we wouldn’t have been back til gone ten.
Eventually after a bit of a panic and close to tears we decided to double back on ourselves and go back the way we came all the way to the top in order to find the road and simply follow that down. It was nudging 4pm and we knew we had to get moving to get out of the wood/path before dark at around 6.30pm.
By some sort of miracle-I think fear- we got up the hill in the same time we took coming down, there were a few times Ed literally pushed me up as this is the most exercise we had done in 4 months, and we are talking steep hills so for both of us our legs were like jelly. Two thirds of the way up we could see a car go past in the distance and this gave us the energy to get to the top, knowing that we were on the right path (as in the one we took down not the proper path!) We got to the top of the path and celebrated with a banana and a giggle, easy now, we just had the massive hill to climb down but at least it was on a road and we could just follow that. An hour into the walk down we were so lucky that a local man came past in his very new white pickup truck and offered us a lift back to the town. The car journey took another half an hour so we are so relieved he picked us up. Although we were pretty dirty and stinky so he may not have been so relieved. We got back into town about 8ish so if he hadn’t taken us we wouldn’t have been back til gone ten.
We laugh about it now, but at the time we were both a bit worried but even in that moment we didn’t squabble or get angry. I guess we both knew if we were going to get stuck we’d most like to get stuck with each other!? Although I may have made a quiet comment that either of the other Mr Rosses probably would have got us out a bit faster ; )
Celebrating at the top (the first time) for our wonderful friends enagagement ; )
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