Through The Nothing, Part I

In retrospect I think nothing could have prepared us for the 1385 km long bus journey from Bariloche to El Chaltén that lasted for 2 full days, had countless and seemingly endless sections of dirt road and let us traverse the... big nothing. When people look at the map of South America, Patagonia seems actually quite small. Well it isn’t. It's a bit bigger than a million square kms which is 4x the UK or 2x France but unlike any of these Patagonia is quite narrow and long with a population of two million people which results in lower densities than Scandinavia. And the big nothing.

Before we embarked on the epic bus journey we had quite a fabulous last day in Bariloche. We exchanged all of our remaining dollars at the best possible black market rate (even my 20 dollar notes got a nice quote after some searching around), did a little hike (since we are lazy bums, we took a chairlift and came down 1000 metres in altitude that hurt us more than walking up), had one last great dinner at Alberto’s (this time without ordering ourselves silly amounts of food) and got pretty drunk with our hosts who invited us to their house before we said our final goodbyes to Bariloche.

The Seven Lakes and The Amphitheatre

After the insect escapades of the previous days we were quite happy to wake up to a rather windy but still clear morning in Bariloche. My head was still a bit dizzy from the copious amounts of internal insect repellent aka Malbec consumed the day before but the fresh air, the sunshine and the prospect of a great day trip made me quickly forget about the headache.

We were about to discover the route of the Seven Lakes, drive up to San Martin de los Andes and then back t Bariloche. This road, according to all the guidebooks we read about Argentina is one of the the most beautiful things you will ever see in Argentina and / or Patagonia as a whole. I always give respect where respect is due, the lakes were alright but they could not compare in beauty or adventure with the road we took back to Bariloche. A road that wasn’t mentioned anywhere. A road we found by complete accident. How did we get there?

The Christmas Taliban

Surprised by the title? Well so were we by the little beasts that were set out to suck our precious European blood (in fact ANY blood that came into proximity) in the Andean forests of Patagonia at Christmas. We were vastly outnumbered but we won. Not because we beat them, but because we had a reliable little steel horse (our luxury Chevrolet Corsa) we could jump into and escape.

We were warned. We can’t say we were not. But still. Nothing can prepare you and we were not prepared either. Tabanos are horse flies (the type that like to suck your blood) and when I say horse, I mean it. The size of the beasts is around 1.5 inches (4 centimetres). That is big for an insect. And when they circle around your head and your whole body by the dozen, this is an understatement. Circling would be nice, but they actually want to land and land they do, dear padawans. They also have stingers that go through your clothes. Now I think everyone will understand the title as I decided to call tabanos Los Talibanos. These beasts are relentless terrorists.