Total Miles Traveled: 10,329
Just about everyone we talked to told us to spend less time in Bariloche and to move on to Villa La Angostura and San Martin de los Andes via the “Camino de Siete Lagos”.
Villa La Angostura is only an hour away from Bariloche and is an upscale, quieter alternative to Bariloche. It reminds us of Malibu the way it’s set up, with a few commercial and residential strips strung out along a highway. We stopped there for a few hours and were able to explore some of the area (La Cruce and Puerto Villa). Here are the couple of restaurants at Puerto Villa:
And a view of the dock at Bahia Brava in Puerto Villa:
And some stores at La Cruce – look! Lisa has a new amiga!
A Digression About Dogs
Despite being a quiet, picturesque town (which it truly was), we had a scary moment. As we were trying to hike down to Puerto Villa, we came across a pair of dogs that were running up to and barking (read: attacking) cars as they drove by. As we got closer, we saw one of them appeared to be foaming at the mouth and so the first thing we thought was rabies – strange, aggressive dog behavior and foaming mouth = probably a bad situation.
So we decided to walk back to town, but as we did, the two dogs started to herd us and follow us around, though not attacking or barking at us. A bit disconcerting, so we finally lost them (read: we high tailed it for a taxi). Later, on our bus ride back from Puerto Villa, we saw they were following another couple down the road.
So, crisis averted in the end. Out of curiosity, I wonder at what point municipalities around the world develop the notion of animal control, as in, after all the basic stuff like water, roads, education, etc., does it come after parks and traffic signals? Low priority? In general, probably. Thus far in our travels – from large cities to small – there have been strays wandering around. Some towns, like El Calafate, have many dogs on the streets. We were told that many, in fact, do have owners, but that they are not socialized and are allowed to wonder — and can be aggressive. A British citizen was bitten after trying to pet one and ended up in the hospital!
For the most part, dogs seem to do their own thing e.g. sleeping and peeing on a signpost, unless they’re begging for for food, in which they become very friendly and submissive. In Bariloche, at El Boliche de Alberto, a German Shepherd came to the door of the restaurant and started barking every 30 seconds or so. We then saw the hostess at El Boliche feed it a 1 pound hunk of raw beef! Man, that was a tenderloin or something! Maybe the dog belonged to the owner? Wow. Sure beats the kibble we feed our dogs in the States! Do they get a premium Malbec with that? 😉 More recently, in San Martin de los Andes, we had a dog follow us home to our hotel. She was actually sweet – she would only follow behind us (we could hear the little click clack of her nails on the side walk) and she copied our pace, so when we stopped, so did she. Then, when we got back to our hotel, she sat at the door wagging her tail with ears flapped back, hoping for food. We named her Sally.
El Camino de los Siete Lagos
From Villa La Angostura, we took a bus along a mostly gravel road called the Camino (or Ruta) de los Siete Lagos (or Seven Lakes road) to get to San Martin de los Andes. Here’s the route – you can see it passes through the mountains and along several lakes, hence its name:
It reminded us of driving down the California coast, albeit with lakes instead of the ocean. Unfortunately it was a bit cloudy, but here are some pics:
A Dirt Road and Argentine Federalis
We were surprised at how poor the road was given the popularity of this route and the towns located on the route. For much of the ride from Villa La Angostura to San Martin de los Andes, the road was not paved, it wasn’t even a gravel road. We saw that they had started major road and bridge work – presumably to pave it – but they have a lot of work ahead of them. It made for a very bumpy, swaying ride.
At one point, we were stopped (along with all other cars and trucks) at a road block. The Argentine federali (federal police) boarded our bus. They seemed to target young, seemingly single males and asked to see their ID. They actually asked one young man to get off the bus while they searched his bag and questioned him. They saw Tony – sitting next to me, wearing a hat and sleeping – and asked for his “documentos”. Since I had our passports, I quickly reached into my purse to produce Tony’s passport. The look on the face of the young federali was priceless! You could see the thoughts cross his mind – “Hmm, single man. Oh wait, he’s Asian…. Oh wait, he’s not alone…oh wait he’s American.” Luckily the process lasted a few minutes and we were quickly on our way. We later learned that this road block was probably the result of a child kidnapping in Chile. Apparently such roadblocks are part of the two countries’ collective efforts to stop human trafficking (which we understand is rare) – similar to our Amber alert.
After an eventful day of scary dogs, bumpy buses and federali, we were very happy to relax in San Martin de los Andes!
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