Bariloche and the Argentine Lake District

Over the past 6 months Bariloche has been affected sporadically by ash blowing across from the (active) Puyehue Volcano in Chile, so when I set off I didn’t know what the conditions would be like when I got there. Back in June there were pictures of inch deep ash covering everything – well it was nothing as bad as that, but the view across Lago Nahuel Huapi did vary from day to day. As did the weather, but that’s to be expected near the mountains… When I first arrived it was hot and sunny, but definitely very hazy with ash in the air. But I could tell there were mountains across the lake, and it would be beautiful when it cleared. I gave myself several days, both so that I could move on somewhere else if the skies didn’t clear, and to have enough time to do a longer trek if possible.

The first day’s hike – you can just about tell there’s a lake in the background…

and a hazy view down the lake

compared with the same lake a few days later

although the clouds are moving in, and the next morning there was fresh snow on the hills – I thought maybe I was going to have a white Christmas after all.

Bariloche has the look of a Swiss ski resort crash landed in Argentina, and is even known for it’s chocolate too. Just down the road in the small hamlet of Colonia Suiza, I saw restaurants offering ‘fondue de queso’. The surrounding scenery is similar as well (and it is a ski resort after all in the southern hemisphere winter), however despite some hot days, the temperature in those
lakes was freezing cold.