While the small Argentine town of El Bolson has been marketed as a ‘hippy village’ in many of the guidebooks and travel literature, Colin and I didn’t get this feel at all on our visit there. Since an influx of hippies from Buenos Aires in the 1970s, crafts, arts and organic farming was the stock in trade until backpackers and, eventually, adventure tourists cottoned on to the town. While we could see a few former free spirits here and there, most of the town seemed pretty touristy and very commercialized with North Face shops and expensive restaurants along main street. We weren’t too let down though – most of our experiences in the town were going to be out in nature so we were ready to get more fresh air anyways. We arrived on the 20th of November and checked into a beautiful hotel, Cabanas Tunquelen, which was one of my favorites on our trip. It had its own kitchen, bath, and dining area downstairs while the cozy and blanket-filled bedroom was upstairs on its own. This gave the space the feeling like we were in our own little home which was a really nice change.
In order to keep this feeling we ventured out that afternoon to get some groceries. Might as well take advantage of our private kitchen with a few home-cooked meals! We started that off with a delicious dinner of veggies and sausage that Colin prepared that evening.
The morning of the 21st we walked down to a plaza near the center which had a little festival going on. There were all these stalls set up with homemade crafts and other art of El Bolson. One of the stalls sold beautiful painted pants and dresses which had a pattern on them popular from the UNESCO site ‘Cueva de las Manos’ (Cave of Hands) in Santa Cruz, Argentina. I thought they were so fantastic I ended up buying one of them. Here is a picture of me with my new dress! There are different ways to tie the dress I bought but I have lost her card – does anyone know where I can find her YouTube video? Let me know, please!
Editor’s Note: I found the card and her blog (AvivaLuz.blogspot.com) which you can go to see the videos! (And I will as well, when I need to tie my dress/skirt in different ways!)
We went to Museo de Piedras Patagonicas where owner Isabel Lucio led us around, helping us understand the items in her collection. The first thing she showed us (which was by far the most impressive!) was a lithophone or a musical instrument made of a volcanic rock or rocks which produces various pitches when hit. I go to try this out – it worked! When I hit different parts of the rock it sounded like different notes on a keyboard. We learned that this effect is because the volcanic stone is filled with tension; the stone itself has been so compressed that its inside holds tension in the same way as a taught guitar string. Watch the video to see what I mean. 
One of the minerals she had was a piece of purple-pink fluoride – a relatively soft mineral which was beautiful to look at and good for tooth health, yet dangerous to consume in large doses. She also had some bright red jasper or “speckled stone.” Isabel told us the red color was because of the iron concentration the stone contained. The majority of her stones were divided into sections based on the age of the item – how many tens or hundreds of millions of years ago the stone or mineral was present on Earth.
The first section was stones from 400 – 250 million years before present, during the formation of the igneous metamorphic belts of the upper Paleozoic era. One of these stones is called gneiss, which is a unique-looking stone with layers or stripes along it. The stone is formed when a stone comes under a condition of high temperature and high pressure. The stone becomes flexible and stretches– as a result other elements can become part of the stone in layers. These layers include different compositions (the darker layers have heavier elements such as magnesium and the lighter layers have lighter elements such as silicon.)
The following section was stones from 190-180 million years before present. At this time the batholith, (plutonic rock crystalized from cooled magma from below the Earth’s crust) part of sub-Andean Patagonian, formed from volcanic magma. There were also pieces from 150-120 million years before present when the main Andean Patagonian batholith formed. These rocks were quite creepy in appearance, which is pretty apt because they are named plutonic after Pluto, Greek god of the underworld. This part of the museum ended with rocks from 40-15 million years before present which was the beginning of the formation of the Nirihuau basin in Argentina, a place where our guide told us she uncovered all kinds of interesting rocks and even dinosaur bones.
There were even a few meteors in the collection – one iron and nickel piece which came from a 15 ton meteor which fell from the “Campo del Cielo” or Field of the Sky according to the indigenous people of Northern Argentina. Another meteor landed in Esquel, and there was a slice of it in the museum. This piece was just stunning to look at with its transparent crystals. This meteor contained numerous different elements (such as magnesium, nickel, silicon, etc.), but the interesting part is that these elements are not found together on Earth! But they are very close together in the meteor below!
Adjacent to the museum was a rock garden which had more interesting rocks to look at among the colorful flowers. Here’s some of what we saw!
After learning all about the minerals in the area we decided to see some of the nature. We chose a difficult (quite steep and long) hike rather unknowingly to get to a place where two rivers, the Rio Azul and the Rio Blanco, meet near a little area called Wharton. It took us ages to get there, even with a hitchhike for 1 km of the way. By the time we got to the bottom we were soaking in sweat and exhausted! We enjoyed our packed lunch (while guarding it from a rather brave chicken) and took photos. Colin started to walk down one of the bridges over the water but before he could get very far we discovered it was pretty unsafe… he cut his hand on the metal bridge wires! Thankfully we had a mini first-aid kit with us of bandages and hand sanitizer to protect it straight away, plus the ice-cold river water we dunked it into probably killed any swelling. We went back and took a second look at the bridge and saw that many of the wooden planks were missing or loose. Let’s give that a miss.
While by this point we were pretty eager to get back to our hotel we didn’t have any choice but to take the long and difficult hike back uphill – there were no roads where the rivers meet so no taxis or cars could be seen! Back up to Wharton we went, arriving at a campsite after about an hour. Thankfully we were able to get a taxi from here back to El Bolson. At least it was practice for the next day’s even more difficult hike!
Early the next morning we checked out of our hotel and decided to risk it – try hitching to the entrance to Bosque (Forest) Tallado near the Piltriquitron Mountains. This hike was supposed to be a strenuous 1000 meter uphill climb culminating with entrance to a park of 50 sculptures carved out of dry trees in a beech forest. We managed to get a ride with two people going for the same hike and ended up at the start rather quickly. (Which was really lucky because it IS an insanely long walk to the hike entrance from the road. Try this on a Saturday!) We took a deep breath and began the climb…
Once we made it to the top we took a look around. There were fantastic views of the city below in the distance (we were 1,500 meters above sea level at this point), and even more striking views of the burned forest and the landslide resulting from the fire. “Bosque Tallado” literally means the “carved forest” and its named this because of the carvings we saw all around us in the trees or out of the trees which had formerly just been remnants of a horrible fire which burned the forest in 1982. The first few carvings were started by local artists as a way to bring tourism to the forest despite its devastating fire!
It was during our exploration of this area that we heard a knocking noise against a tree in the distance. Looking carefully we spotted a Magellanic Woodpecker – we could tell it was a female by the bit of bright red around her beak. These birds are impressively huge, ranging from 14 to 18 inches in length! We’ll talk more about those guys later on when we spy another one, because the males are much more impressive!
After the hike we got lucky and caught a ride back with an Argentine couple on holiday – the walk was a bit too rough for them and they quit early so I showed them my photos of the carvings. They dropped us back in town and we waited around for the bus to Esquel we booked for that afternoon to arrive. It ended up being pretty late (it was delayed from Buenos Aires) but we weren’t in a rush so it was OK. I’ll let Colin take over to tell you about our time in Esquel!
Francesca
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