Pot Holes and Casseroles

Sunday morning we left the hotel early to embark on a trip to Tronador, an inactive volcano which has a black glacier at the base.

We were told we'd stop off at the lake of seven colours, Heart Island and see many more beautiful sights on the 2.5 hour drive to the glacier/volcano combo.

What we weren't advised was that 2 hours of the 2.5 hour drive would be on gravel pathways (you can't really call them roads) which contained, I would guess, 90% of Argentina's pot holes. They were distributed perfectly so that, as soon as the bus rose from one, it immediately dropped into the next with a huge crash. Imagine having a minibus seat attached to a pneumatic drill and sitting on it for 2 hours.... You get the picture!

As soon as the driver told us how long we were going to be on this 'road', Lauren and I both popped some back pain tablets as some kind of pre-emptive strike!

Fortunately it worked and neither of us suffered much back pain as a result and saw some amazing sights en route.

You can see in the background of this picture, the snowy peak of Tronodor. 

After Perito Moreno Glacier last week, we were wondering how impressive a black glacier, in fact, ANY glacier would be as we were so blown away then. However, it was a completely different experience.

The black glacier is black because it is formed from another glacier at the top of the volcano which keeps disintegrating, causing mini ice avalanches down the North side. As the ice plummets downwards, it picks up volcanic ash on its journey and ends up settling and re-freezing in its new position as part of the black glacier.

As we took the picture directly above, we were really fortunate to witness a small avalanche and even caught it on video! The bus party missed it and spent the whole rest of the day willing the top glacier to break another chunk of ice off to cause another avalanche!

As with Moreno, the glacier sits in a milky-aqua lake full of minerals and mini icebergs that are constantly falling from the glacier's face.

It's not that easy to see due to its colour but, right on the centre of this picture, at the back of the lake, is the face of the black glacier. It rises up the volcano from that point to the right of the picture.

After this we took a quick hike to the foot of the volcano (which hasn't erupted for 70,000 years according to our guide so my Mum can stop panicking now!) And sat by a fresh mountain stream. For the first time in South America we were able to drink water that didn't come out of a bottle!

The journey home seemed twice as long as the outbound ride but eventually we arrived back at our hotel, packed our rucksacks and headed out for our last Bariloche meal.

Out of 5 nights in Bariloche we had eaten at Alberto's 3 times already and with memories of steak like this, it was hard to resist a 4th:

But resist we did and after a delicious house specialty casserole at Cervessa Manush, we headed back for an early night before we ventured out the next day to El Bolson, a curious looking hippy town, 2 hours south of Bariloche.