Who needs Spanish...

El Bolson, Argentina

March 15, 2007
S 41°57.942
W 071°32.091

We decided to hit the trails around El Bolson for a little day hike today. Lonely Planet, “Trekking the Patagonian Andes” suggested grabbing a taxi to the starting point, Camp Hue Nain, instead of hiking the 2 hours on the dusty road to the starting point. We thought this was a great idea. We shouldn’t have any problems finding a taxi.

We thought the taxi stand would be the ideal place to wait, so we stood there for several minutes without any luck. We strolled towards the bus station, but there weren’t any recent arrivals; so, we headed back to the taxi stand.

We finally saw a cab and got really excited. Marc walked aggressively towards the cab as he would in San Francisco and waited for the person to get out. Perfect, so we thought. The cabby turned off her motor, both the driver and the passenger rolled up the windows, and then they simply sat there and conversed. We weren’t sure what was going on, but clearly a new fare wasn’t a priority. The passenger finally got out of the car, but when we explained to the driver we need a ride to Camp Hue Nain she explained she couldn’t help us and suggested we try the bus station. Typical, never a cab when you need one!

We were very close to giving up when I walked into the bus station as Marc sat outside still scanning for cabs. We knew there weren’t any local buses to Camp Hue Nain, but maybe the guys in the bus station knew a secret way to get to our destination. After a few minutes of negotiations I got us a ride; I came back out and let Marc know we were on our way.

Via roads better suited for a Humvee, not his little Toyota Corolla, our taxi driver recklessly drove us as close as possible to Camp Hue Nain before the road simply became too much for his car. We quickly realized we needed a ride back. Lonely Planet suggested hitchhiking or walking back to town, but the chance of hitching a ride seemed very remote and we figured it would take at least 2 hours on foot. We decided to try and convince our cabby to come back and pick us up. In my elementary Spanish (plus a 4 peso tip) I asked the driver to come back at 6:30 PM. He promised us he would.

Next, the driver explained the route to Camp Hue Nain in Spanish and I checked with Marc to see if he caught everything. Marc later told me he wasn’t sure how to respond to me while in front of the cabby… he said his first instinct was to laugh in my face. He didn’t have a clue so he figured a smile and good firm head-nod would convince the cab driver we had everything under control.

We hit the road pretty fast knowing we didn’t have a lot of time, but figured we should be able to cover the 20 km in 4-5 hours. We covered the first 3 km in no time at all. We did slow down to cross a rickety suspension bridge to get over the river. The bridge had a limit of one person at a time and no more than 150 kg. We abided by the one person at a time for good reason.

When we finally reached the trail head and the 20 km hike quickly turned into 30 km. There was a sign indicating the average duration to be at least 7 hours and the round-trip to be 30 km. We decided to get as far as we could before turning back to meet our taxi, provided he was going to show up.

In the first 2 hours Marc (GPS boy) determined we climbed from 315 meters to 1010 meters in the first 8 km; that’s a 9% grade. All signs indicated our final destination was still at least 3 hours away. We were down to one liter of water in the hot sun and knew we had to make the smart decision. There was no way we could continue at this pace without water so we decided to only go as far as Miridor de Raquel, the lookout over El Bolson.

We had lunch and finished off our water at the top of the Miridor overlooking the sleepy little town of El Bolson. The views of the valley were spectacular and the massive condors soaring over head were impressive. We figured the condors were probably searching for the cow remains we found on our scramble up to the Mirador. I guess Cox would have been really scared (see, Top 10 Lame Excuses).

As we started our descent we could hear massive thunder claps echoing across the mountains from the north. We were able to make our way down a lot faster than up, of course, and we returned to our starting point by 4:45 PM. We had almost two hours before our cab driver was "supposed" to show up. Luckily, there was a little sign for Cevezeria Kelly; yet another artesanal brewery. Wow, we really like these artesanal beers that seem to pop up everywhere.

Not knowing Cevezeria Kelly was actually a guy’s house, we wondered into the front yard of a dilapidated dwelling looking for a pub. When the owner casually sauntered out his front door we finally realized Cevezeria Kelly wasn’t a pub. Apparently “Mr. Kelly” is just a guy selling home-brewed beer out of his kitchen. We ordered two beers in plain brown bottles and sat down by the river to pass some time. The beer was light and refreshing, it really hit the spot, especially since we were out of water. Just as we finished our beers it started to rain. We returned the bottles to “Mr. Kelly,” thanked him for the brew and headed up to our waiting spot.

We still had 45 minutes to wait before our cab arrived. The rain was really starting to come down and we hoped my Spanish didn’t let us down. At 6:15 PM we heard the sound of a car approaching… it was our cab driver and he was fifteen minutes early—YAHOO!

Despite a little rain, the overall weather was perfect; we had a nice 20 km hike, and got a nice view of the El Boson valley. And of course we had the opportunity of sampling the very rare Argentinean beer at Cevezeria Kelly.