My First Odyssey

If you look at any guide book about South America, it will tell you to bypass El Bolson and go straight to Bariloche. Now i have never been one to do as i am told and the fact that Bariloche sounded so touristy turned my right off. El Bolson is quite similar to the tourist hot spot of Bariloche, but is quieter and smaller.
When I arrived there i had to find a hostel. This proved difficult as it was out of season. Eventually i settled for a hostel 4km outside of El Bolson town. It was a little log cabin in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by trees and i little creek that ran through the property. Inside the log fire rawed and the smell of people cooking delicious food hit you straight away. I was really glad that i chose this hostel. The first night was a night of card playing...mostly the game of "shithead" as no one seemed to know anything else. After a good few hours of card playing it was decided that the 7 of us playing the game would go up one of the mountains the next day and visit the Bosque Tollando (a art exhibition where local artists had carved shapes into some of the trees.
We got taxis up the mountain as it was a good 10km up and we felt lazy. When we got to the exhibition there were the most incredible carvings of people, faces and hands (among others) and the sun was shining so it made the carvings look even more spectacular. We walked to the refugio (a little wooden hut on the mountain side, where you can stay the night if you are hiking through the mountains). Two American girls, Nikki and Rachel, and I ate some homemade cake and played with the kittens that lived there. At about 3pm we had to start the hike down so that we would reach El Bolson before nightfall. The hike down took about 3 hours. It was beautiful at first, but soon became quite monotonous and hard on your knees.
The next day was a Saturday which equals Market Day! In the center of El Bolson people gather to sell their jewellery, homemade crafts, jams, bread and cakes, not to mention the chocolate!!! Nikki, Rachel and I walked around the market for hours, sampling the delicious jams and looking at the beautiful jewellery. In the afternoon, whilst everyone was packing up we thought it was only fair to buy a waffle from the waffleman, who turned out to be from south London, and to sample a nice BIG pint of the local ale...it went down very nicely!
Thats it from El Bolson!