Jaguar Island & Bariloche

We took a short bus journey (4 hours is now nothing) on the 18th November from San Martin de los Andes to San Carlos de Bariloche. There are two routes you can take – we chose to go through what is known on the tourist trail as the ‘seven lakes’ route. I recommend doing this, even though it takes an hour longer than the route which joins the trans-American highway ruta 40, which connects Patagonia with North America.

The seven lakes route, rutas 234 & 231, take a scenic stretch of the Argentine Lake District; passing through Villa La Angostura which marks the last town in Neuquen province before you pass into Rio Negro province. This town is on the shore of the last and largest of the several beautiful Andean lakes seen on these roads: Lago Nahuel Hapi.

The name Nahuel Hapi is from the Mapuche language for Jaguar Island, but only a few pumas survive nowadays, far to the West in the Andes. The lake is in Nahuel Hapi National Park, the oldest in Argentina: created to encourage European ski tourism in 1934. The park is bordered to the East by the Limay river, to the North by the Lanin National Park from where we had come, and to the South and West by the Cordillera de los Andes. The lake itself is the deepest lake in the Lake District, at 438 meters, and, for being the clearest lake, it still holds many secrets. From the nuclear research project in the late 1940’s which took place on Huemul island, to the Loch Ness monster-alike ‘Nahuelito’; Lake Nahuel Hapi has been a source of fascination since it’s discovery by Jesuits in 1670. It is also not without it’s dangers. In 2011 the lake was blanketed with volcanic ash when a Chilean volcanic complex blew it’s stack, and with temperatures reaching as low as 7 degree Celsius, hypothermia is a real concern for bathers – we decided to give swimming a miss!

The glacial lakes that form the Lake District are surrounded by extremely beautiful and unique rock formations, leftover from high volcanic activity and subsequent erosion. Rapids, waterfalls, mountains, forests and glaciers themselves are all represented in the large 7000km squared park. The largest city from which to see all of this? Bariloche itself: the Honeymoon Capital of Argentina.

Established in 1902, Bariloche is located near the pass used by Poya Indians to cross the Andes secretly – they kept the pass hidden from the Spanish Jesuits for years. Jesuits missions had been in the area since the late 17th Century but were destroyed by the Poya, and were never rebuilt. Argentina began populating the area again just before the territorial war with Chile, the ‘Conquest of the Desert’, to help lay it’s claim to the region. Once Nahuel Hapi was designated Argentinian soil in the treaty of 1881, a German immigrant called Carlos Wiederhold settled a shop where present day Bariloche is found on the Southern shore of Lake Nahuel Hapi. Legend says that the name, San Carlos de Bariloche, comes from a letter that was mis-addressed to San Carlos, rather than Don Carlos.

This city is tourist central, there is no doubt about that. Unlike Paraguay it is totally geared up for tourists and tourism, and even has its own chocolate industry like so many tourist towns do. Like Paraguay, however, it did become quite the haven for Nazis after WWII, a fact that should make Argentina embarrassed, even though it appears to show no contrition whatsoever.

We arrived later than our couchsurfing host was expecting us, but he kindly gave us some maps of the area before we settled in and slept (literally on the couch). The next morning, we spoke a little to our host, and found out he was working on an energy research project (maybe nuclear research again?), and then we left for some hiking walks around the unique Lake District areas.

Bariloche is a part of the annoying Argentinian club of cities that require a bus tarjeta, or electronic card, to take public transport. You have to find somewhere where they sell the card, then somewhere where you can top it up. That would be OK but our host was located outside of the city, and the only shop in the neighborhood had run out of cards. The bus driver’s cannot accept cash, and they do not sell the cards, so the only thing to do is borrow a card, or ask someone at the stop to use their card and pay them in cash. Ridiculous. Anyway, we managed to borrow a card and get people to use their cards to get around, so we were OK.

One of the buses that takes you to the hiking sections of the National Park go around in a big loop. We got off at Puerto Pañuelo where tourists can get boat tours to various points of interest, including the National Park within a National Park, Los Arrayanes. Knowing that there were some Arrayán trees (Chilean myrtles) on our hike, we decided to stick to doing that. Opposite the port is the prestigious Llao Llao Hotel, which was built by the famous architect Alejandro Bustillo whose buildings we kept seeing everywhere. We didn’t visit, but it looked like the place to stay if visiting Bariloche in the future.

Our hike began about a kilometer further along the road (the bus we got turns around at the hotel and goes back to town). There are numerous trails you can choose to do here, including ones which take an overnight stay in a mountain refuge, or refugio. The one we chose, sendero de los arrayanes, was a light and pleasant hour long stroll along the side of Lake Perito Moreno West, where we hoped to catch the bus at the other side.

Francesca noticed a house opposite the Park rangers station that had a strange gate which she told me was made of whalebone. The ranger confirmed the story, and told us the house now belonged to some design company or other, but I am not sure where the bones originally came from or how they ended up there as a gate. If anyone knows, please tell us.

We found the walk to be extremely pleasant, an only met a few people on the way, which gave us some real peace and quiet. The sun was shining, and the weather was warm enough to do without a coat. We saw lots of large clumps of cane growing together, and, after 30 minutes, a small wood of the orange or cinnamon-colored Chilean myrtles. The trees grow into a strange twisted shape, with smooth orange-brown bark that peels off as it gets older, giving a feeling like you are in the Lord of the Rings when you walk through a forest of them.

After a while we came to a perfect spot for some lunch next to the lake. Named after the explorer Perito Francisco Moreno (Perito means expert) who donated the land for the park in 1903; the lake was amazingly beautiful, tranquil and clear. Being a glacial melt water lake, there were no fish here – although the larger Nahuel Hapi lake had been populated with several species of trout to promote fishing tourism.

We barely made our bus on time (the maps in South America are rarely to scale so we had to rush the last kilometer or so), but we did catch it and made it back to the outlying neighborhood in about half hour to the edge of town. From around the 8.5KM marker (everything here is measured from Bariloche center) we caught another bus out to the nearby village of Villa Los Coihues where a recommended geological museum was located.

Francesca can describe the museum:

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I’ll take over from here! The Museo del Lago Gutierrez contains the geological and paleontological work of Dr. Rosendo Pascual. This collection is one of the most complete and impressive in Patagonia, and includes dinosaur eggs, dinosaur teeth and bones, as well as fossils of ancient creatures including megafauna and huge marine creatures. Seeing so many prehistoric items in one place really gave me and impression about the area’s past and more understanding of just how massive and varied creatures were millions of years ago. At the start of the museum was a section of crystals and minerals from around the world, some of them absolutely stunning in color. At the end of these cases was one large case containing a bunch of meteors, the largest being this 12 kg monster in the center of the case.     

While the crystals were beautiful, my favorite part of the collection was the fossils– trees, pre-historic marine creatures, dinosaurs, and megafauna. There was a workshop near the back of the museum where fossils were ‘put together’ and catalogued. Seeing fossilized tree trunks and pinecones was really strange… they almost look like crystal pieces because of their ‘stone’ texture and interesting colors from minerals penetrating their bark.

There were also trilobites and ammonites – some which had just been purely fossilized and others which had crystalized as well. Most of these creatures started off as small marine animals, which then evolved into ferocious predators as time, and survival of the fittest, continued. This section ended with massive shark teeth from a megalodon! 

What I was most floored by was the size of the dinosaur pieces in the museum. In the center of the exhibit stood a miniature model which looked like it could be some child’s set of toys. In the model were two of the dinosaurs we had seen in Neuquen: Argentinosaurus and Giganotosaurus. It was really interesting to see these guys with “skin” on them, as it helped you understand just how much bigger the largest herbivore dinosaur was when compared to the largest carnivore dinosaur. There was a leg bone from the Argentinosaurus, along with a femur from a sauropod found in Rio Negro.     

There was also a display containing information about dinosaur life such as their breeding and eating habits. The dinosaur eggs on display were made way more interesting by being paired with an image of what the inside – the dinosaur embryo skin – looks like under a microscope. The dinosaur’s eating habits could be gathered by investigating their dung. I looked closely at the piece in the museum –and yes, I did see bits of plants trapped in the mess! Definitely a herbivore.    

While the dinos were really cool, we must not forget what came after them! This museum was one of the best places I’ve found yet for skeletons and information on different megafauna that existed. I’ll go through the most interesting of the lot here, starting with a guy called glossotherium or the “tongue beast.” This ground sloth was 13 feet long, and its size would have meant it was not approached by many predators, except perhaps the smilodon. The smilodon was a saber-toothed cat with massive canines which could stab through the skulls, throat, belly – pretty much anywhere it wanted - on its’ prey. And we think jaguars and pumas are cool… imagine one of these guys!    

Here are a few more images, and depictions, of cool megafauna such as the guanaco’s predecessor, a camelid called the hemiauchenia which looked very much like a llama or guanaco just much bigger, with a much longer neck. There was also the toxodon, which looked kind of similar to a modern rhinoceros, but again much bigger. Finally, the most massive of them all, a vertebra from the 20 foot long, 4 ton, giant ground sloth called the megatherium.  

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Once we had caught our bus back to our couchsurfing host’s place, we discovered his next guests had already arrived, so we decided to move on to the next destination. We gathered our bags and jumped on the bus to the center. We had one more museum to visit before we left – the Museo de la Patagonia.

We spoke to the tourist information office about if t was open, and they told us it had closed an hour ago. We saw people coming in and out of the museum, so we approached it and it was open for another hour, so it just goes to show that these ‘information’ centers are usually wrong or out of date. In South America we have learnt to take EVERYTHING with a pinch of salt. No one seems to know anything.

The first room in the museum was a room dedicated to ‘Perito’ Francisco Moreno. Other than the philanthropist who donated some of the land (about 75km squared) that now make up the first National Park in Argentina, Moreno was also an accomplished archaeologist, curator and explorer. He surveyed many areas in Patagonia for Argentina to be able to claim them for their own. He discovered and named Mount Fitzroy (after the captain of the Beagle), and was once even captured and condemned to death by a Tehuelche tribe (he escaped). The most famous monument to him is the Perito Moreno glacier that we will be trekking on in the New Year. On display were some of his possessions, such as his revolver and the original letters concerning his donations of land.

Most of the rest of the museum was dedicated to the Mapuche and Tehuelche peoples and their antecedents. Pre-historic objects such as arrowheads, and other weapons have often been found all over South America. More interesting were the Mapuche silver jewelry and the maps of the different cave art that have been found in Patagonia (we are planning on seeing some of those in the New Year also).

We learnt that the Southern Tehuelches had a very familiar creation story. Kooch, their omnipotent God figure, felt so lonely that he cried, creating the oceans. After crying, he let out a huge sigh, creating the wind. Due to his loneliness, he then created an island which he populated with animals, flowers and trees, but evil giants came to this new land and so it was flooded by Kooch. A swan bought Elal, a man-God to Mount Chalten (which we now call Mount Fitzroy), and it was Elal who saved the animals from the flood and bought them to Patagonia. Elal was the first man-God, from which all modern Tehuelches have come from. It is amazing how similar these stories are to our own Old World creation myths. Even the Mapuches have a flood story with two giant snakes wrestling for control of the sea and the earth.

The Northern Tehuelches creation story features a huge armadillo with armor on its back. He is the father of long ago people who had armor on their backs, and if one is found, the Northern Tehuelches would scrape the armored rock into powder to give to their children to make them strong. I wonder if these armadillo creatures were the Glyptodons that lived in the Americas until about 10000 years ago, and whether the armor that they found were the fossilized remains we have seen in museums from Uruguay to Patagonia.

There were some other impressive objects in the museum related to the colonists, but my favorite was a huge wooden canoe made from the Coihue tree. A room with all the different National Parks in Argentina provided a nice check list that we went through in our heads, and a cool geological exhibition which explained the topography of the region and its volcanic origins. The last section of the museum was dedicated to the animals of Patagonia, including some excellent examples of birds. The sheer variety of the land, from desert to glacier, from mountains to sea – provide such a vast array of animals – it really is a nature lovers paradise.

We sped around the museum in about an hour, but I would give it a few hours because there is a lot of fascinating information in English in the many rooms and exhibits. We grabbed a taxi to the bus station with all of our bags and left that evening to our next destination – the artist community of El Bolson.