Northern Patagonia is also known as Argentina’s Lake District, and Bariloche is an idyllic lakeside town. Many of the buildings resemble log cabins, and there’s s clock tower overlooking the main square, which currently has a large Christmas tree in the middle of it, making the already very picturesque town seem even more like the set of a Hallmark movie. There are many craft markets, an impressive church, a waterfront walkway, but, again, it takes little more than an afternoon to explore the town fully. We didn’t get into town until late afternoon on Thursday, partly because we made good use of the arrival lounge at the airport, so Friday was our day of exploring and planning our upcoming bike trip.

On Saturday we cycled the Circuito Chico, a day trip option that is popular with people who don’t have time to do the multi day bike trip. In true Creed and Ros fashion, we decided to turn the 27km loop into a 69km loop just to save a little money, and it was unnecessarily tough. The circuit goes around a small lake on a peninsular on the outskirts of town, with views of the larger lake on your opposite side. There are many viewpoints, beaches, and a couple of short hikes that we unfortunately didn’t have time for. There are also a lot of hills. It was a beautiful cycle, but it was a very long day and our legs and butts hurt a lot by the end. We were planning to follow this trip with a 4 day cycle of la ruta de los siete lagos, the route of the 7 lakes, so hurting this much already didn’t bode well.

The preferred route for the multi day bike trip is to cycle the circuito chico on day 1, and then stay out on the peninsular in order to get a ferry the next morning across the lake, with bikes. This cuts off the cycle back to town from the peninsular (20km) and the distance around the lake (80km), and you skip the boring highway section and jump back on the bike at the official start of the siete lagos route. Unfortunately, this ferry no longer runs, so in order to cross the lake you need to take a day trip for $110 and get off at the half way point. This was too expensive for us, and the buses would not take bikes as luggage, so that meant cycling the extra 100km.

We needed to pick up camping gear for this trip, and had to wait until 12 to meet the owner at the shop, as they usually weren’t open on Sundays but made an exception for us. So we had a lie in, and made a big early lunch with plenty of left overs to pack with us. We picked up our tent and sleeping bags, hit the supermarket to stock up on snacks, and hit the road at about 1pm. The road wasn’t too hilly, but it was the peak heat of the day, and this day was extremely hot. We stopped at a couple of beaches and struggled not to burn to a crisp without any shade to hide in. After passing all of the interesting stopping places for the day, the plan was just to get as much distance done as possible. But after a while the wind picked up until we couldn’t cycle in a straight line and had to pedal hard even to go downhill. We’d looked up the heat and the rain, but hadn’t anticipated wind would stop us. We’d moved away from the lake and the landscape was unexpectedly barren, with no protection, so we had to push our bikes for a while before we found a couple of rows of trees to set up camp between.

On the second day we were expecting to get some rain from around 1pm, possibly as early as 11am, so we set off early to make the most of the dry. The first 12km were downhill and very easy, and after only 45 minutes we were stopping at the camp we’d attempted to reach the day before to refill water bottles. After another hour or so we’d done another 10km and found a nice secluded beach for a leisurely breakfast. Creed tried to convince me to end the day there instead of going until the rain stopped us and having to keep going through it to find a camping spot. I tried to convince him that 9.30am was too early to quit. The issue was we were coming up on the only town on the route, and we didn’t want to be camping in any kind of urban area, which meant we either did less than 15km more, or 30km more. I convinced him to keep going, and the weather stayed great. It wasn’t as hot as the previous day, and this time we had lots of shady tree cover. We stopped at the beginning of town and found another beach for a lunch break, and then 2km down the road stopped at a local brewery for some beers on the terrace. We made it into the town at around 3.30, where there was a bike shop able to tune up our bikes for free, so we dropped them off and visited the supermarket. At 4 it finally started raining, and by 4.15 it was hailing so hard that all the shopkeepers were coming outside to see what was going on. We were glad to have made it to town and shelter, and were considering booking a hotel, but by the time our bikes were ready at 5.30 the storm had passed. We were able to do another 17km to a beautiful campsite on a different lake, with a few more viewpoints on the way. It was a long but not too tiring and very enjoyable day, in my opinion, though I made Creed cycle 45km more than he wanted to.

The third day was the big one hill wise. Immediately out of camp we had a steep climb, and then a long descent that was so steep we were squeezing our brakes as hard as possible to make sure we didn’t pick up so much speed we lost control, especially with all the sudden bends in the road and large pothole directly at the bottom of the hill. From here it got a little easier, with rolling hills where the momentum from the descent got us almost all the way up the other side. We passed 6 lakes on this day, and each one came with its own big hill – a push up to the viewpoint, and then a coast down to the beach. We arrived at our first possible campsite at around 3.30, very ready to be done for the day, but knowing that if we pushed on just 8km more (and 200m up) it would make the next day much more pleasant. We took a long 2 hour break before deciding, but eventually opted to continue, once the day had cooled off and our muscles had recovered slightly. It meant our total climb for the day was 530m, but it was the right decision, because the next campsite was much more scenic, and we were grateful to have one less big hill on the final day.

On our last morning we woke up to grey skies and a bit of rain, so we had a lazy morning. We went for a quick walk by the adjacent lake, but when the weather still hadn’t improved we retreated to the tent and played cards until the skies cleared a little. We finally left at around 10.30am, with a bit of wind but nothing impossible. The first climb was tough, it being our 5^th straight day of cycling, but as usual the lake views made it all worth it. The downhills today were extremely leisurely and pleasant, with many kilometers of no pedalling needed. Our final big hill outside of town was not as difficult as expected, and then the last 16km into town were all downhill, so we knew we were on the final stretch. San Martin, our destination, was soon visible across the final lake, with a pretty marina and beachfront area. We were able to drop off our camp gear and pick up some food on the way to our hotel, at which point we had a much needed hot shower and comfortable bed, and all plans to explore the town evaporated in favour of comfort.

The next day we explored town a little – as usual it didn’t take long, which was a good thing because it was cold and very windy. We booked our bus back to Bariloche, discovering that the only available option was 4 hours from now. We returned to the hostel and spent the rest of the morning learning Burako, a South American version of canasta played with tiles, which Creed quite effectively beat me at. We figured we’d enjoy the views from the bus, which took the same route we’d just cycled past all of the lakes, but shortly after departing it started raining, and didn’t stop at any point of the 4 hour journey. We were very glad that we’d had such good weather for our trip. The rain continued all night, so we abandoned our plans for a final night out in Bariloche and instead ordered pizza, watched tv, and enjoyed having wifi once again.

Thanks for following along on my crazy adventures!