Bariloche is a very touriste town reminding me of Big Fork, MT, but on steroids. It has over 80,000 people,whereas Big Fork has several thousand. It even has a lake the size of Flathead Lake called Lago Nahuel Huapi. The Andes jut out from the west side of the lake. The lake is a glacial remnant over 100km long and covers more than 500 sq km. The west of town lies the Andean divide separating Chile from Argentina. The tallest peak is Tronador at 3554 meters, which is an extinct volcano meaning the Thunderer as blocks of glacial ice rumble and tumble down from its lofty summit. The city is also like a city in the French Alps with all the French villas and chateau-like building styles abound lining the lakes and towns edges. Bariloche is the chocolate capital of Argentina and has the biggest ski resort in all of South America. The snow is a soft, light, dry, fluffy powdery snow like the kind they get in Utah making for the best powder turns. I stayed in the GreenHouse Hostel the last few nights.
Yesterday, the morning of the summer solstice in the southern hemisphere, I rode a bus on a long and winding road through a jungle-like temperate rainforest to the town of El Bolson (the hops capital of Argentina and provides 3/4 of the country´s hops). El Bolson is just south of parque de Nauhuel Huapi and is as busy as Yosemite in California, which attracts so many visitors that the very values of its founder Moreno expressed are at risk. It is being loved to death like many of the parks in our own country.
I rode the bus next to a man my age named Antonio and we tried and tried to communicate. We kept passing dictionaries back and forth and finally breached an understanding of really not understanding at all. Finally, he pulled out his IPOD and handed me one ear piece and he took the other and we settled for thumbs up and smiles as he played and shared his musical tastes with me. Music truly does bring the world together. El Bolson is a small town of 20,000 inhabitants, nestled in a very fertile valley surrounded by mountains. The fertile valley produces tons of strawberries, raspberries, hops, apples and cherries. It is a laid back little town synonymous with pony-tailed back to nature hippie folks who began to flock here in the 1970´s (a.k.a. hippie headquarters of Argentina). It is the first town in South America to become a nuclear free zone or an ecological municipality. Tons of artisians and musicians. I went to the local art fair which is an all day event that happens three days a week. It is as if every hippie came out of the woodwork and everyone is an artist of the highest calliber like a little Renaissance.
Last night I went and heard live music about five blocks away from the current hostel I am at and it poured down rain and snowed high in the moutains. Some of the music was great with tons of freaks, everywhere! I felt quite at home. El Bolson is also the town where Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid hid out and the movie was filmed. He escaped here in the late 1800´s or early 1900´s when he was wanted in several western states for being a cattle and horse thief and a highway man.
El Bolson also lies along certain energy meridian lines that transect the earth at different locales that older civilizations definitely knew about where to build, grow and live. Machu Pichu, Easter Island (Rapa Nui) and the Great Pyramids are just a few examples of places that lie along meridian lines. I will admit I was sort of skeptical about this, but I have to question my being a skeptic because I notice walking around the streets with a perma smile alot and kind of feel groovy all the time without being high on anything and the early feeling of traveling and being in a new place is now the norm. The energy meridian line passes through a mountain on the east of town and I am planning on climbing it tomorrow.
No comments:
Post a Comment