To get from Puerto Montt back to Bariloche we decided to stop for a night in Entre Lagos. To get there we hopped on a bus north from Puerto Montt to Osorno and from there we switched to a local minibus that dropped us off in the tiny lake-front town of Entre Lagos. There is very little information online concerning Entre Lagos so we weren’t sure what we would find when we arrived. We wandered around for a while until we found a whole street lined with signs for “cabanas.” We zigzagged our way up and down the street checking prices and looking at rooms until we settled on a place to stay. We then took a self-guided tour of the town which took only a few minutes. As there wasn’t much to occupy our time while we were in Entre Lagos, we decided that one night would be more than sufficient and we set out to figure out how to catch a bus that would take us into Argentina.
We found out that one bus company had a kiosk along the main highway that passed along the side of the town. We asked the man working in the kiosk but he apologized and said that he didn’t have any bus tickets going that direction for the next 4 days. He told us our best bet was to travel an hour and a half back to Osorno and pick up a bus (that would then backtrack along the same road) headed to Argentina. Frustrated, we headed back to our hostel to see if we could find another way. Looking online we found the bus company that the man worked for and we found the bus that he told us he couldn’t book us tickets on. We were surprised to see that the bus was almost completely empty on the website. The down side was that it was more than double the cost to book tickets online as it would have been to book them at the kiosk. Since our only other option was to spend an extra 3 hours on the bus backtracking to Osorno, we bit the bullet and purchased them online.
The next day the bus stopped along the side of the road on the outskirts of town to pick us up and we had an uneventful trip crossing the border back into Argentina. We had planned to stay in Villa Angostura a tiny mountain town an hour or two from Bariloche. We had a difficult time finding affordable lodging and finally settled on requesting an AirBnB room in a woman’s house. AirBnB stipulates that a host has 24 hours to respond to a booking request, but in our case it was barely 12 hours from when we found the place online. After waiting another hour to see if we heard from the host we decided to cancel and take the last bus headed to Bariloche that evening. This still gave us several hours to explore the town and the surrounding lakes.
As we walked around we noticed many people in running gear with race medals around their necks. We realized that this was the second tiny Argentinian town that we decided to visit at the same time as thousands of trail runners (see our post about San Martin de Los Andes). This race was sponsored by Marrmot and covered 100 miles over a 3 day span. This also accounted for why we couldn’t find affordable lodging in town.
We spent the rest of our time in Villa Angostura hiking to a couple different lakes, watching kids jump off the pier, and walking around the picturesque town. We then caught the evening bus down to Bariloche.
We were happy to have a few more days in Bariloche before heading further south. It gave us a chance to go on walks around the lake and relax in town. We were able to cook in the tiny kitchen at the hostel and meet people from all over the world who were staying there. One day we took a long walk that wound around the side of the lake. It took us past a kilometer or more of blackberry bushes. These bushes were on public land spanning the space between the lake and the road. So we spent an hour or so searching for ripe berries. The bushes were so full of clusters at all stages of maturity that we both ate way more than we probably should have but it did provide a great snack during our walk.
From Bariloche we headed down to El Bolson. El Bolson is touted as being the relaxed and “hippy” neighbor of Bariloche. Our hostel was tucked in the woods, up a hill and across the river from the main part of town. It felt a bit more like a tree house than a regular hostel with the inside made out of wooden planks and logs. We were met at the door with a bottle of a cold microbrew that was made by the caretaker of the hostel. Most of the people who were staying there were all sitting around a long wooden table with benches, talking and laughing. No one was in a hurry to check us in so we sat and chatted with everyone for an hour or two. When we were taken to our room on the second floor of the hostel we noticed that all the rooms had walls but the rafters were completely open an reinforcing the air of a treehouse. The showers were raised containers that you could fill with hot and cold water and then open a small spout and let gravity down on top of you. All these things added to the charm of this place.
We spent most of our time in El Bolson either talking to everyone in our hostel or walking around town. The parks were full of people relaxing and drinking mate (a type of hot tea that is drank through a straw with a filter). People were setting up for a brew and hops festival taking place that weekend.
El Bolson was a wonderful stop before we get on a 23 hour bus ride down into Patagonia.