Gallivant 2.0: Bariloche to the Chilean Border (again)

We had a pretty chilled out morning after our big ride to Bariloche the day before. Did not head out from the campsite till lunchtime and then rode about 10km and stopped for lunch. We had to break up our ride to El Bolson so were on the look out for a campsite. Most organised ones seemed to be 10km or more off the road, which is not cool at all when your cycling. Too much backtracking. We stopped at a gas station to ask if there was anything around and the dude in charge pointed us to a sweet as free campsite beside the lake that was completely hidden from the road and out of the wind that was whipping down the lake. Getting there involved taking everything off our bikes and carrying it down a steep slippery hill but it was totally worth it!! We had a relaxing afternoon laying in the sun reading and generally chilling out.

After our ridiculously short day we had quite a lot of kilometres to get through before we got to El Bolson. Luckily the sun was shining, the scenery was beautiful and for about 15 to 20 glorious kilometres we had a killer tailwind which pushed us towards El Bolson and the brewery in time for a quick 4pm beer. It was time for a break from cycling and we rocked up to a hostel, were offered a nice cabin, took it and proceeded to explode cycling and camping gear everywhere. We were so glad we stayed in El Bolson instead of Bariloche. It is a much more chilled out town and has loads of breweries!! We tried out 7 of the breweries, had a lovely dinner out, got our washing done, watched lots of Friends on TV and chatted to some of the other lovely people at the hostel. It was very hard to leave but with the sun still shining after 3 nights we decided it was time to head off.

A long boring day bought us to Cholila and the most unhelpful info centre in the world. I cannot talk about it or my head will explode. Suffice to say we ended up in an expensive hostel after wanting to camp and as pay-back cooked all our food in the bathroom and could not wait to get out of there the next day. HA!!

The road to the border took us through another national park and another totally awesome free lakeside campsite. Serioulsy, they know how to camp here. As usual everything was made better by the sunshine. As you can imagine it is getting rather difficult to keep coming up with descriptive words about how beautiful the countryside is, so I am kind of giving up. ........I know very poor but you can look at the photos and see.

The highlights of our trip across the border was 1) Stopping in Trevelin. This town that was settled by welsh people and had scones. SCONES!! I tell you. Seriously the excitement in our campsite was immense. As was our consumption of jam. 1 jar, 2 days. Boom!! done 2) Crossing the border took less than one hour, which has to be a new record. AND on the Chilean side the road was asphalt, which I am sure is just them thumbing their noses at the Argentineans who only have gravel.........