From the panoramic point the road descends and forks; a short detour on gravel leads into Colonia Suiza, 25 kilometres from Bariloche at the foot of Cerro López. The settlement was founded in 1895 by families from the Canton of Valais in Switzerland — the Goyes, Mermuods, and Crettons among them — who had come to the region via Chile. They found in the lake district a landscape that reminded them of home and an Argentine government offering free land to settlers. They built in local cypress wood, planted orchards of cherry, plum, and apple, ground grain by hand, and shipped goods east to Bariloche by boat across the lakes they could see from their doors. Descendants of the original families still live here.
The most characterful reason to visit on a Wednesday or Sunday is the curanto, a cooking tradition the settlers carried with them from Chile. The word is Mapuche and means roughly "hot rock": a pit is dug, stones are heated in a fire until they glow, and layers of meat — beef, lamb, pork, chicken, sausage — and vegetables are placed over the stones between coihue leaves, then covered with earth and left to cook for two to three hours. The settler Emilio Goye introduced the tradition to Colonia Suiza in the 1930s, adapting the coastal Chilean version (which used seafood) to what was available in the Andes. The preparation itself is ceremonial, and visitors can watch from the moment the pit is opened. On other days, the small craft market, tea houses, and the Cervecería Berlina brewery still make the detour worthwhile.
The return leg follows the circuit east along the south shore of Lago Moreno, crossing back to Av. Bustillo and retracing the lakeside route to Playa Bonita at kilometre 8. The beach faces Isla Huemul about 1,200 metres offshore and has restaurants and bars at the old jetty — a reasonable place to wind down, pack, and get ready for the road the following morning. The microcentro is a short drive further along Bustillo if the evening calls for it.
Deleting this waypoint is permanent and cannot be undone.