Camping and Our Second Hike

After our first hike up Cerro Catedral, we limped back to Bariloche and claimed a small area of a campsite called La Selva Negra. It was a perfect place, right off the bus route, not far from town, spacious, quiet, and with Wi-Fi!

We love camping, but being so far from home and our supply of gear, there were a few problems: 1) Mosquitoes, 2) No pots for cooking, 3) High, high up on the hillside (especially for sore legs), and 4) The freezing cold.

That last problem was the worst. See, we didn't really pack for very cold weather. Since we're backpacking mostly through cities and towns, it isn't very efficient to carry all the necessary cold weather camping gear. We'll rent gear in Patagonia when we need it, and we have sleeping bags and mats to keep us off of the ground, but our stuff is for, say, Europe in summer, the beaches of Greece, etc. We didn't think this would be a problem in Bariloche since the days were 65F and sunny... but we were wrong.

I really suffered that night at the campsite. Nothing terrible and nothing life-threatening, but it was cold enough that we didn't sleep very well. We pulled out the emergency blanket and draped it over us in the middle of the night. If you've ever used one before, you know how unpleasant it is. You feel like a tightly-wrapped potato, because really, it's just a blanket of aluminum foil. So I lay there on the hillside awake and turning in the early hours of the morning, my head stuffed under the blanket and the condensation dripping off of it and into my mouth. It was terrible, but since the alternative was being really really cold instead of just really cold, I suffered the taste of my own watered breath. 

By morning, we were damp and tired.

As you might guess, although we were going to spend two or three nights at the campsite, we opted for that one night alone and crawled into town the next day to find a decent bed in a warm room. We spent the day resting, drinking hot chocolate, and filling ourselves with meaty soups. It just took that one day of rest, because by the next, we were ready to hike again.

We caught a bus to a small Swiss colony at the foothills of the mountains. There is a trail right off the stop that leads to Refugio Italia. The hike was beautiful. It winds up along a river and through the forest.

After our camping adventure and another day of hiking, we rewarded ourselves with some locally brewed beer which was conveniently sold in the Swiss colony just as we exited the trail.

- Tom