El Bolson

After 28 hours of traveling, we arrived in El Bolson. Known for its fertile soil, community market and as a haven for hippies, we thought we would stay a few days before heading north to Bariloche (a larger, more touristy town - famous for its beautiful lakes, surrounding mountains and streets lined with chocolate shops...seriously they're everywhere). Even better, the night before Alexa had found what appeared to be a very hospitable organic farm with a hostel on the internet. We reserved some beds intending to chill out and perhaps collect eggs or something.

However, once we caught a taxi to the farm, El Cielo, we were greeted with a slightly different situation. Although the owner, Nano, was very friendly, the "hostel" was a room in the back of the house jammed with bunk beds made out of planks. The whole place was rather dirty and after meeting the wife - Rosa (an American woman with two small children, but looking much older than child-bearing age, perhaps weathered the sun, drugs etc.) we were plotting our escape. Initially, we thought we could stick it out for one night for the "experience," but as we left to walk into town (Nano and friends smoking weed in the living room as we exited) all 4 dogs followed us. (There was no fence on the yard or anything). Annoyed but thinking it was their normal routine, we made our way down the mountain, a 45-minute walk. Just as we reached the traffic-filled main street, Rosa came roaring up in her beat-up red station wagon, slammed to a stop just in front of us and freaked out about the dogs. At that point we had to catch the dogs (no collars) and load them up in the station wagon. Rosa, without a word, got back into the car and roared away.

And thus our El Bolson experince came to an end. We marched the rest of the way into town, went directly to the bus station, got tickets for the next bus to Bariloche, hired a taxi to take us back up the huge hill to retrieve our bags, made a lap around the farmer's market (quite nice) and jumped on the bus for another 2.5 hour ride.

We've since settled into Bariloche very nicely. In a real hostel. KKG