Bariloche Christmas Eve – all 50 hours

Bariloche, Argentina – We Celebrate Christmas Eve

Thursday, September 24

As I mentioned yesterday, breakfast is leftovers – share a roast beef sandwich — and some grapefruit juice.  Today will include hiking, a gondola ride to a mountain top, Christmas Mass and Christmas Eve Dinner.  We’re off and running pretty early, maybe 9:30 am.   First stop, a little more laundry.  This laundry routine is great.  You can either pay 15 pesos in your room at the hotel to wash two pairs of socks or one underwear and have it delivered in a gold lined box by King Stahlman and a couple armed guards, or have two shopping-bags-full washed and folded for the same price and ready in two hours at the corner laundry service – no armed-guard delivery though.  Then we also had to make our dinner reservations for tonight, and pay up front – our largest single expenditure so far.

The plan for the afternoon is to hike at Lake Gutierrez, and take in the Teleferico Cerro Otto for lunch – more on that later.  Lago Gutierrez is just maybe 10 km south of Bariloche – we passed it on the way to El Bolson the other day.  The woman at the tourist office gave us a couple suggestions for hikes.  We drove around the west side of the lake for a few clicks (Km) and parked outside a camp area.  On the way we passed another of the ubiquitous groups of teenagers out on camping, kayaking or other activities – sort of like the rituals of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, except these kids are more sober and civilized.

Cascada de los Duendes

The target of the hike is La Cascada de Los Duendes.  This translates to “Waterfall of the Gnomes”.  You see, there are gnomes living in this section of the forest and ….  To get there, we hiked through a magnificent cypress forest, with babbling brooks running through.  It really is one of the most beautiful short hikes I have taken.  The cypress stand is gorgeous, but endangered.  Because of previous hiking traffic, the younger trees have not been able to get adequately established.  So there are warning signs everywhere explaining about how important forests are and encouraging proper support of the ecological efforts of the government.  Stay on the path.  Be nice to Mother Nature.  Don’t linger – seriously. The waterfall is small but very nice — I happened to find a nice video of it on youTube:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2th_dYmeQI.

View ‘mirador’ from hill above Lake Gutierrez

Farther down the trail is a “mirador” – viewpoint.  No gnomes, but a nice view of the lake.  This hike was a total of about 3 miles, the up part of it very steep.  It’s nice to get the heart pumping again.

Back in the car, returning to Bariloche, we pass El Catedral ski area, the most complete alpine ski area in Argentina.  The picture here shows a mountain with snow on top, but if you look closely you can see about 8 ski lifts and over 50 runs.  I may have to check this place again some winter (July??).

Cerro Catedral ski area

Circling around town to the west, we come to Cerro Otto, which is the highest peak “in town” at about 1405 meters.  There is a teleferico (cable car) to the top, where there is the only rotating restaurant in Argentina.  Wow, this beats the Hyatt in San Francisco.  A quick hamburguesa and insalada.  Out on the deck you can see the snow-capped Andes peaks surrounding you to the west, and lakes and forests covering the valleys below.

I do not remember ever seeing a panaroma like this before in my life.  Fortunately, there is also a museum there with full-sized reproductions of Michelangelo’s Pieta, David and Moses.  Hmmmm.  Have to think about that one.

Ok, onward to Christmas Eve.  Picked up the laundry.  I had brought a sport jacket, nice shirt and slacks for this, and Carol a dressy blouse and slacks.  After a quick nap, we are ready for church.  We parked at a spot midway between the restaurant and the cathedral, and walked to the cathedral.  This service is lot more casual than we expected.  The choir, which we could not see, consisted of maybe 10 people accompanied by Spanish guitar.  The Catholic service was completely in Spanish, so we were pretty much lost but we could catch the basics.  The modest, medium-sized cathedral was packed.  We had to leave in time to get to dinner at 9:00.

They were ready for us at La Alpina, at our prepaid, reserved table, and proceeded to force us to eat more food than a person should eat.  No, actually it was a very enjoyable two hours, with various antipasti like smoked salmon and cheeses, then chicken and beef brochette, and a fantastic strawberry and ice cream dessert with champagne.

Oh – forgot to mention.  Apparently 10:00pm on Christmas Eve is the culmination of the Bariloche youth ritual.  At about 9:45, hundreds of young people were lining the streets with Santa hats on, on their way to the local square.  We feared for our parked car, but I went outside and found them to be jubilant, celebratory and goodhearted.  Jorge was safe.  Apparently a couple thousand kids showed up in the town square and had a good laugh.

Wow, what a day!