Six Weeks on the Carretera Austral

Day 2 – February 26: Buenos Aires

Another day of walking in Buenos Aires. We followed the main boulevard to small and intimate side streets, ending at the famous cemetery, filled like the one in Paris with elaborate mausoleums and ornate family memorials. Unbelievable, touching, just this side of grotesque. Of course we found Evita’s (Eva Peron) at the Duarte memorial, which was, of course, crowded. Afterwards, lunch at the upscale La Biella’s nearby, outside under the shade of green umbrellas, with obsequious waiters taking care of our simple needs.

Nearby, in a park with sidewalks winding up a hill, we wandered through a craft fair and on to a small whitewashed 18^th century church with a baroque interior encrusted in gold. On the altar, in front of the sanctuary, an effigy of the Holy Trinity with three painted faces. Odd; comforting?

And in the evening we were swept off to a suburb twenty kilometers outside of BA, where Marta our tour guide lives. She brought us into her home for a magnificent meal and an even more grand gathering of friends, with a tango performance and a sultry singer of Argentine ballads to cap it off. Pleasures involved eating more varieties of beef, pork and sausages than any of us had ever eaten before, accompanied by an apparently unlimited supply of famed Malbec wine, and topped off by fabulous desserts crafted by Marta’s 84-year old mother. The larger pleasures were meeting wonderful Argentine friends in the splendid home of our generous and delightful host.

Tomorrow, biking around Buenos Aires awaits.

Day 3 – Sunday February 27: Buenos Aires

Urban Bikes in Buenos Aires took care of us today. We met Daniel and Xavier near a park downtown at what seemed an unseemly time on Sunday morning, as we were still a little tender from the festivities the night before. Nonetheless we gamely mounted a fleet of mountain bikes for an all-day ride around the city. Daniel rode a bamboo bike which we all marveled at greatly. Through parks and barrios, out to the Boca – the oldest district of BA at mouth of the river Platte, which is now a ramshackle colorful tourist site near a huge soccer stadium. Lunch at the Hippopotamus Cafe and then back across town to high-security (and beautiful) neighborhoods housing lots of embassies. By 4:00 we were hot and dusty and tired. We returned to our lair at Los Patios, had a final monumental dinner at the nearby El Globo and packed our bags for the early morning ride out to the airport.

On to Bariloche! 

Day 4 – Monday February 28: To Bariloche

On the morning of the last day of February we made seamless connections from Buenos Aires to San Carlos de Bariloche, arriving at the homey Rosas Amarillas motel, about 3 miles from town and across the road from the gigantic Lake Nahuel Huapi. What a beautiful place: settled by Germans and Welsh (and Argentines of course), it exudes the air of a European mountain town crossbred with a national park lodge. A popular ski area, it has lots of alpine buildings, all arranged on a fairly steep hillside. Our suites include kitchenettes – but also breakfast is brought to our room at 8:00 each morning. Roughing it, heh heh.

In the afternoon we scoped out the town, looked for bike shops and maps and returned to meet our guides David and Dario. Easy going and alert, really smart and competent, they are treasures. Unfortunately they had run into trouble getting our bicycles through the customs bureaucracy in Argentina. All the customs forms were in order, but the transportation form was missing. So many forms, so little time. During that evening’s long and meaty/winey dinner we all pondered the question of how we might get the bikes over the border. 

The solution was inventive, oh yes; it was certainly legal, and yet (that pesky “and yet”!) – one might hazard that it would push the edge of bureaucratic cheerfulness. We would do it tomorrow.

Day 5 – Tuesday March 1: the Bariloche Bike Caper

So the plan was to get a big 12-person van, driven by the experienced and clever Marcello, and to drive across the Chilean/Argentine border about a hundred miles north. We would get the bikes, assemble them and ride them back across the border. No transportation papers necessary! And so we did, with all of us gaping out at the glorious mountain scenery. It took all day and part of the evening as we passed by pointy mountains and volcanoes, forested rivers, town and settlements. In the end we had a late lunch in Chile, secured our bikes and rode them back across the border. Now we’ll ride them south and back across the border, con gusto.

So the late late dinner was filled with good humor and hope and we collapsed in our beds well after midnight.

One more day tweaking our machines and scoping out the countryside. Then the ride begins. Bring it!

Day 6 – Wednesday March 2: Of waiting and a moment of darkness in Bariloche

Today was a day of shopping in Bariloche, tweaking the bicycles, setting up maps and routes and gathering supplies. The generally celebratory air continues, with one or two dark moments. Dario spent time putting new tires on the new bicycles while the rest of us installed gear we had brought down – saddles, bar ends, underseat bags, water bottle holders, and so on. A couple of people rode up the hill and down the lakeside road to help keep blood flowing, and we’re all impatient to get on the road.

It is a slow day here, but in any case it would be wrong of me to pass over the following. Near the center of Bariloche lies the town square with the lodgelike tourist information building taking up the whole uphill side and the log cabin police station on its left.  From the wide porch of the tourist information center one looks out over the town square to the pristine lake, with mountains framing the dark blue sky. The town square itself is completely paved, a statue of a hero on horseback rising above the central space.

But here’s the thing. All around on the pavement are painted innumerable simple, white, stylized hooded scarves, iconic, a foot or two wide. Underneath each is also painted a name and a date:  the date when the person named was “disappeared.” These are people still unaccounted for, a legacy of the time of the Generals that ended in 1994. And now, today, by sheer happenstance, four of us met there at sunset. Before us on that square were gathered perhaps a hundred and fifty women, mothers of the disappeared, dressed in black, holding hand lettered signs asking for justice. The women stood silently – though we saw a few weeping and some consoling – until just past sunset. Then they dispersed quietly. For me this was one of the most astonishingly touching display of grief and plea for closure that I have ever experienced, and it revealed a darker, a more sorrowful and a stronger face of Argentina than we had seen before.

Perhaps another list of people might bring us back to our Pategonia trip. It’s the list of all of us. We remember you all and are determined not to disappear. The names of the compadres:

Steve Jahn

Greg Sivertsen

Ray Studebaker

John Coldewey

Joe Dahlem

Bram Dally

Tom Brown

Steve Jones