Discovering Nahuel Huapi National Park in Patagonia near Bariloche
Last week we hired a car and drove around Nahuel Huapi National Park, next to Bariloche.
Bariloche is located in Patagonia and is a town that thrives on tourism.
Last week a member of my family and I got a vomit bug. So that was an interesting couple of days. We had a hire car, so we made the most of it and managed to go on a few adventures. Even if that meant stopping every now and then to vomit.
The first day of our adventure we picked up the rental car and drove around some lakes nearby. My mum and I were tired because I had been up all-night vomiting. We ended up having a nice picnic next to a lake. My mum and David decided to have a swim in the lake even though it was really cold.
The second day of our little road trip was the most eventful. We went to go see the Cerro Tronador also known as Mount Tronador, meaning Thundering Mountain. Referring to the sound that the ice makes when it falls from the glacier. The native peoples gave the mountain the name "Amun kar" meaning sacred mountain crowned by glacial tongues.
Why is Tronador so special? Tronador is a dormant stratovolcano nestled in the southern Andes along the Argentina-Chile border, near the city of Bariloche, Argentina. Cerro Tronador is Bariloche’s highest mountain at 3,554 metres above sea level.
We managed to see many of Tronador’s glaciers. Cerro Tronador has seven glaciers in total, one of them being quite unusual. The glacier is known as a Ventisquero Negro also known as a black glacier. What are black glaciers you may ask? I didn’t know that black glaciers existed before I was standing in front of one. Well black glaciers are caused by fragments of a higher existing glacier and rock particles of all sizes tumbling down the mountain walls, they get mixed with the ice in the reconstructed glacier. This combination creates the dark-coloured layers that make the black glacier so unique.
When we were heading back down the very bumpy, windy, gravel road the other member of my family started to get sick and the drive that would have taken two hours took four because we had to stop quite often for them to throw up. So, it became a very big day.
The third day we were going to see the Seven Lakes. But we ended up only seeing two because we were so tired from the day before. My mum and brother swam in the second lake and we had a picnic on the shoreline. Even though we didn’t get to see all seven lakes, we got a good impression of the area, and it was still an enjoyable day out in a new area.
The next three days we were just relaxing and getting ready to fly to Buenos Aires and of course my mum and brother got sick in those three days and eventually I got their sickness too – sick again!
I think now is the time I should tell you about what we had planned after Buenos Aires. Our next adventure will be to Iguazu Falls! But more on that in the next blog.
Sorry for this blog being a week later than I would have liked as you have read, I have been sick again. I do not know how many times I’m going to say this on this trip. I feel like I get sick every week.
