Highway 40, just before sunrise, in a small town called Picun Leufu.
The road south from Mendoza to Bariloche was an adventurous 1300km, spread out over four days. We had experienced one of our toughest days of travel before even arriving in Mendoza when our bus broke down, leaving us stranded on the roadside for half the day (El Rapido proved not to live up to its name!). We decided then and there that we would try to tackle the last portion of our overland journey from southern Peru to Patagonia by thumbing rides.
We had a slow start the first day, barely making it 200km south after a friendly doctor and her son from San Rafeal picked us up on their way home from Mendoza. We nearly gave up on the second day after spending nearly five fruitless hours outside a town called General Alvear. However, in a reversal of fortune it proved to be our most productive day when a truck driver from Buenos Aires picked us up at 5 p.m. and took us almost 700km south to Neuquen.
This picture of Melanie was taken on the third day outside Neuquen. Ironically, the truck passing in the background belongs to a Brasilian guy named Elian who gave us a ride the following day. When we caught up to him at a gas station in Piedra del Aguila he said ¨You know I saw you two yesterday by the side of the road. I said to my friend last night, I hope they find a place to sleep tonight, because it´s really cold outside and there aren´t a lot of towns between Neuquen and Bariloche.¨ We did. The last night before reaching Bariloche, in the Andean Lake District, we stopped in Picun Leufu, where we found one of the cleanest and cheapest hotels in Argentina.
When we arrived in Bariloche in early June we were surprised to find a green landscape. For weeks we had been looking forward to our first encounter with the southern winter. The views west toward the Andean Cordillera over Lago Nahuel Huapi were breathtaking enough though, even without much snow.
We used the fair weather to do some exploring of the area on foot, riding the teleférico (gondola) up to Cerro Otto just outside town.
Thew views from Cerro Otto gave us more perspective into the Patagonian lake district extending west from Bariloche into the Cordillera.
Bariloche (below in the distance) lies on the eastern shore of Lago Nahuel Huapi, at the point where the brown desert landscape that makes up the majority of the Rio Negro province begins to rise toward to the green foothills of the Andes.
Make that the white snow-covered foothills of the Andes...
The first snow came just about a week after we arrived. We took advantage of the situation and improvised a ´culo patín´ out of a plastic bag. After a few runs down the steep drive down the block, the neighbor kids were nice enough to lend us their fancy plastic one.
Some of the local trees still hung on to their berries well into the first snows, setting a nice contrast to the white landscape.
The clouds just before sunrise looking down the street from our first home in Bariloche.
