This is a day of gradual descent — in altitude, in pace, in the general feel of things. You leave one of Patagonia's most visited cities and travel south into quieter country: a bohemian valley town, a glacial lake at the foot of the Andes, and finally a Welsh-inflected city that most international travellers skip entirely and most Argentines consider one of the region's best-kept secrets.
South on the Ruta 40
The day begins at 10:00 am from San Carlos de Bariloche, heading south on the Ruta Nacional 40. The road out of the city passes along the lakefront before climbing through mixed Andean forest and then opening into a wide, green river valley. The corridor between Bariloche and El Bolsón — roughly 120 kilometres of paved two-lane highway — is one of the more scenic sections of the Ruta 40's northern Patagonian stretch, flanked by the forested foothills of the Andes to the west and the beginning of the steppe to the east, with the Río Quemquemtreu tracing through the valley floor.
El Bolsón
By mid-morning the road arrives at El Bolsón, a valley town of perhaps 35,000 people sitting at around 420 metres (1,380 feet) above sea level, sheltered on both sides by jagged Andean ridgelines. The setting creates a microclimate warm enough to grow hops, berries, and herbs — and it was that combination of mild weather, cheap land, and mountain beauty that drew a wave of counter-cultural migrants from Buenos Aires in the 1970s. The bohemian character they instilled has persisted, and El Bolsón retains a distinctly alternative sensibility that separates it from the more resort-oriented towns to the north. The main avenue, Avenida Sarmiento, is lined with trees and a loose assembly of small restaurants, chocolate shops, and craft breweries — hops cultivation is a point of local pride, and most bars pour something made nearby.
On Tuesday, Thursday, and weekend mornings, the Plaza Pagano at the centre of town fills with the Feria Artesanal, one of the better craft markets in Patagonia: textiles, ceramics, leatherwork, smoked meats and cheeses, preserves, and fresh produce from the surrounding farms. Cerro Piltriquitrón looms above the eastern edge of town, and a partially driveable track leads partway up to the Bosque Tallado — a grove of trees killed in a wildfire and subsequently carved by local artists into a collection of over sixty figures, the work begun in the 1990s as an act of creative mourning for the forest.