El Bolson

so......cold....

El Bolson is framed by two spines of mountains running parallel to each other and straddling the town. Hostel Patagonica is a building in the swiss/german wood'n'stone style that makes up a good portion of the architecture in this part of the world. The hostel is set on a piece of green farmland about a kilometre form the town 'centre'. Chilling out and browsing the local markets took up most of the day, and the next few days after that, although we did manage to visit Lago Puelo one day (and suffered our first encounter with Argentina's 'tourist prices'- double what the locals pay). Lago Puelo is a big patch of icy cold agua, surrounded by faded purple and green mountains. The day we went it was being whipped up by frosty winds coming straight off the top of the snow capped mountains (snow capped, snow capped... someone please send me another way to describe snow capped mountains).

View from the hostel

Angie, never afraid to put herself at risk for the shot

On another day, we went walking up the mountains to have look at the place from on high. The views were stunning- there's not really any way I can do them justice in words or pictures, but take a look at the shots anyway... The river you can see squirms its way through the valley down into Lago Puelo. On the walk home we stopped in a little stone and timber cafe, El Resguardo, about 3 km from the main town and got some coffee and pizza and beautiful hot waffles with hot raspberry sauce.. The Heart of Saturday Night by Tom Waits wandered out of the speakers and I thought of Phil. Hi Phil! El Bolson is your kind of place! Get over sometime....

Come here for afternoon tea