Mountain biking around the lakes near Bariloche, Argentina

If the weather was too warm for good snowboarding, it was still too cold for a nice bike ride. But I ended up doing both anyway. Although the town of Bariloche is pretty and scenic, one can become tired of walking up and down the same street more than once. One Sunday afternoon, we hopped on a bus to arrive 18km outside of town and rented mountain bikes to do some exploration.

We had a vague goal of visiting a small village called Colonia Suiza (Swiss Colony) but the owner of the bike rental place gave us a map with other interesting routes around Lago Perito Moreno, with vista points high enough to also provide a good view of Lago Nahuel Huapi, the main lake where Bariloche is situated. The road changed from pavement to gravel and back, with moderate hills that made for a good workout. And fast downhill on gravel roads with potholes gave us a good brain rattling.

The whole region was surrounded by steep snow-capped mountains.

I can only imagine how fun it would be to snowboard down this bowl.

  

Happy cows.

Colonia Suiza wasn’t exactly what I imagined, but still interesting. After biking up and downhill for about 10 kilometers, we arrived at a rectangular dirt road surrounding a dusty rustic village. We parked the bikes and walked through a feria de las artesanales locales where we found a smoking fire pit for curanto -- a traditional Patagonian way of cooking meat. We weren’t able to see any meat actually cooking because it’s buried under hot rocks and burning sticks in order to cook. (Info / photos of curanto here)

The feria was like a local flea market with local crafts, food, chocolates and random trinkets. I almost bought a yerba mate gourd* to take back home but I didn’t think it was a good idea to carry this thing in my luggage for the next few weeks. We stopped at a little café, had a coffee and then continued down the dirt road to a vista point over the lake.

This café didn’t really match the style of other buildings in the area but it was crazy-looking, like from a Dr. Seuss book. The water source from the village is as rustic as you could imagine. Mountain flows are channeled into ditches along the road where people use small electric pumps to draw water right into their homes.

Here are some of the views…

After about 20 kilometers into the ride, and up a fairly steep hill, we reach this vista point facing East.

Steph, overcome by the clean air, fresh smell of pine trees, sound of water flowing down mountains and the radiance of a bright sun, engages in telepathic communication with the spirits of Rio Negro, Argentina

The remainder of our bike ride was all downhill from here. 

* In Argentina, you see many people walking around all afternoon carrying their mate gourd and a thermos of hot water. You fill the gourd with yerba mate leaves, pour in the water an use a bombilla to drink the tea. The first few servings are strong and bitter, but you use the same tea leaves are used over and over all day. (video here) 

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The day after the bike ride, we woke up early and were met by this sunrise from our room before departing Bariloche.