The Circuito Chico

We awoke on Christmas Eve to a shockingly beautiful day, with the sun shining and a clear view of the amazing mountain range facing our hostel window. In high spirits, we got dressed and went to grab breakfast and check on our rental car. Breakfast was yummy (bread and biscuits with butter and jam and tea) but unsurprisingly, there was no information on the car. The man at the front desk spoke virtually no Spanish as he called around to the local rental companies with no luck. At 9:30, the time we were planning to pick up the car, a new girl came in, who spoke Spanish but couldn´t really be bothered to actually make a call. Finally, after practically shadowing her for 25 minutes, we figured out that it was indeed one of the rental car companies the man called earlier, so we took off to pick up our ride.

Our ride, a tiny little red Chevy hatch back with 2 doors and a huge crack in the windshield, was on the road by 10:30 with Abby at the wheel (even though she left her license in BsAs and we rented the car with mine...oops!). We headed west through town on Avenida Bustillo, the road that borders Lake Nahuel Haupi (looked more like the ocean it was so huge) to Km. 17.5, where we parked our car. We took a chair lift up to Campanario, a spot that National Geographic called "One of the 10 Best View Points in the World." And we found out why! The 360 degree panoramic views were incredible, stretching for miles and miles to lakes and mountain ranges in the distance. We spent a while just soaking in the beauty, the sun and the energy all around us, before grabbing a cafe at the restaurant (at the peak) and then heading back down to get back into the car and continue our journey. Before moving on, however, I have to mention that I tried SO hard to get a good in-flight picture of this fantastic bird that kept circling the area, without luck. :( It was large, light brown and had a thick white stripe of feathers on each wing. I did manage to get some pictures of it perched on a nearby tree.

From there, we headed west again on the Chico Circuit (the small circuit) past Lake Brazo Campanario, Port Pañuelo and into Park Llao-Llao, where we made a few stops to capture some amazing lake, mountain and forest photos. From there, we continued on past Lake P. Moreno Oeste and Lake Bahai Lopez to Punto Panoramico, considered the best viewpoint on the Chico Circuit. It was gorgeous. Here, we saw another amazing bird that I snapped a couple perched shots of. It was even larger than the first!

After the Punto Panoramica, we took a detour onto a dirt road and headed into the Colonia Suiza (Swiss Cologny). We attempted to follow the dirt road south to Villa Catedral (the ski mountain that you can hike or ride to the summit for another great view) but there was a huge landslide blocking our path so we turned back and grabbed the main road out to another (shorter) dirt road that lead out to the ski mountain. We didn´t have time to go up, so we just scoped it out from the car and grabbed another dirt road toward town. This road proved to be quite treacherous, with large cavernous pot holes and deep crevices to maneuver but Ab did a great job behind the wheel and we made it out safe and sound. We took our time getting back to town, filled up the gas tank (the gas gauge didn´t move at all throughout the day, so we figured it was broken and wanted to put at least some gas in before returning it. Good thing we didn´t run out of gas at some remote spot during the day!) and got the car back by 4:45. Right on time!

We headed back to the hostel on foot and decided to grab a nap before the evening holiday festivities began.