El Bolson & Esquel – Argentina

Hammocks, Craft Markets, and Very Angry Bees

Garden of the La Casona de Odile Hostel, El Bolson (Not my photo)

After Bariloche our contining travels southward took us to the cities of El Bolson and Esquel, and despite only being seperated by a few hours of winding mountain road they were utterly different places.

We visited the slightly more northerly El Bolson first, and after a short taxi ride from the bus terminal we arived at La Casona de Odile, our hostel for the next 3 nights. Set in a spacious, lush garden dotted with hammocks and hanging chairs, and backing onto a babbling mountain stream, the surroundings were rather idylic; a large proportion of our time in El Bolson was spent rocking gently in a hammock, kindle in hand.

When we managed to extract ourselves from the digital pages of our books and force ourselves to leave the verdant oasis of the hostel gardens, we visited the El Bolson craft market.

The market is probably the city’s most famous feature, and with good reason. Filling the entirety of the semicircular road that skirts the edge of the central park, it took nearly two hours to wander to the end and back, pausing only occasionaly to inspect an item of handicraft. We could easily have spent our budget for the week on paintings, sculptures, glasware, or locally made traditional foodstuffs.

On the journey back from town we were walking the long, dusty, sun-baked road to our hostel, and having met up with a fellow traveller with whom we had chatted over dinner the night before, we were a little taken aback when she casually thumbed a lift from a passing pick-up truck. After a brief conversation we jumped onto the back of the truck and set off, bouncing precariously down the rocky road, happy in the knowledge that we had ticked off another backpackers rite of passage. After being dropped off much nearer our destination, my reverie at joining the ranks of the hitchhikers was rudely interupted by a bee, which had perhaps snapped under the presure of a particularly poor days nectar harvesting, flying directly into my face and then leaving a small sharp part of its anatomy to remember it by.

After more hammock time, and waiting for my swollen face to return to normal, we left El Bolson and travelled a few hours south to Esquel. From our three day stay there, the highlights consisted of;

1. we left Esquel and travelled to Puerto Madryn on the Atlantic coast.
2. that is all.