Today was the day of our biggest hike and adventure throughout our time in Bariloche, conquering Cerro Lopez! A lot of the mountains nearby have chairlifts going to the top, and we decided that we wanted to earn our views (and not pay $20-30USD/person just to ride a lift…).

The hike up was super steep for the first hour- I’m not sure they know what switchbacks are here. It then leveled out onto a gravel road. We finally caught a glimpse of Refugio Lopez after about an hour (left pic). Still looked pretty far away… and they even asked us to bring up firewood when we hadn’t even been there yet!

After a couple (2) hours of hiking, we finally arrived to the Refugio.  From what we had read online, I thought it would be a quick little jaunt from there to the top of Cerro Lopez- I had read 400 meters. We soon figured out that they meant another 400 meters UP, not horizontal distance… So we reluctantly started the climb up.

It was probably the most technical hike/climb that we have ever done- lots of scrambling and climbing. I would compare it to a 14er, but not at the altitude of a 14er so not quite as bad as there was still enough oxygen around so my lungs didn’t burn with every breath. Then we thought we had reached the top! and it turned out to be a false summit.

Onwards we went. We finally reached the top (after 2 MORE false summits), and it was all definitely worth it. We saw at least 4 condors circling within 100 ft of where we were sitting (if you zoom in to the jagged looking top below, you can see a condor landing on it’s top). There was a 360 view of Volcan Osorno (the big volcano that we could see from Puerto Varas and on the way to rafting). as well as  Mt. Tronador.  We sat for a while at the top taking in the views then started the hike down.

Hotel Llao from above

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The refugio served Yerba Mate, which we had seen everyone in Argentina drinking, so we decided to stop and try some. Neither one of us was really a huge fan, but it was warming at least! And it made us feel cool.

We made good time on the way down then caught a bus back to town.

For dinner, we headed back to the same place we had been on the first night, and again, it was delicious. We started with a dish called Provoleta, which was a baked cheese (kind of like Saganaki if anyone has had that). So good! Alejandro had the Cordera (Lamb) and I had some cut of pork (still not sure exactly what it was). We both agreed it was the best lamb that we had ever had. And we may have had ice cream again at Juaja…