The leaves are gone, chocolates become each day a better friend, children in the streets enjoying their two-week holiday from school, ready to cause trouble as soon as they feel they are not being watched, tasting freedom, and pushing limits.
Cinemas, ski resorts and the dramatic Atlantic Ocean scenes are part of the serial routine escapes for citizens to barbarian experiences, to recover strength and avoid responsibilities for a little while.
After a Pacific war, the country is slowly floating on a river, in calm waters, slightly advancing without propulsion, advancing without advance, causing the tiniest ripples in the surface, in the moment of tranquility before the storm, without wind or noise, at the gates of something which nobody knows what it may become.
Waiting for the snow, the ski resorts are wishing to receive you, and all the ski/board addicts. I was never a ski fan myself, but always frequented resorts. Argentine possibilities to practise this sport are many, and each has its own personality, and pros and cons, and none are perfect but all special, as everything in this calm flowing country by the river.
Ushuaia, a three-hour flight, takes you to this super southern spot in the world, were everything is the southern most everything, southernmost city, southernmost ski resort, southernmost hotel, hospital or casino. The good thing is where you are, cause you feel like…the southernmost weird feeling you’ll ever experience, though the resort isn’t that big, the lifts are modern, the people are nice, the options for hotels are enormous and there are some other things to enjoy beyond skiing. On the down side, the daylight doesn’t last long, it becomes something like the southernmost short ski day you’ll ever have. Anyway, it’s worth it.
Bariloche is, for the rest of the country, the capital for snow sports and end of school trips, wherever you go, you will be surrounded by noisy teenagers, ready to lose control, while a teacher or two try to control them. You have the city by the beautiful lake, then 30 minutes distant, is the ski resort ‘Cerro Catedral’ and its cute small town at the feet of the mountain. The runs are long and the off-piste possibilities are many. The closest feeling to a beach environment during the summer goes on during the day at the mountain, only with less skin and much more clothes. The tip here would be not to stay in the city of Bariloche, but stay at the ‘Cerro’, renting a house, or a bungalow, lighting a fire, drinking wine and eating pasta, and make some neighbouring friendships, which in some cases will succeed in romance.
The third choice is Las Leñas, in the wine-known province of Mendoza. In terms of ski, the real surfers prefer this spot beyond the others. In terms of the extra-life beyond ski, the place does not help that much. If you see a picture of the whole resort, maybe you agree with me, that it looks as a big penitentiary, something like an Alcatraz district in Siberia. Though people love it, I find it a little bit claustrophobic. But wait, the ski/board rocks, it really does. Airplanes only fly on Saturdays and are chartered, so you have to contact a ‘trouble agent’ like me to find place, it’s pure voucher-mania. You can also go by bus or car if you have some time, there is also a chance to go for a three-day ski weekend.
Chapelco in San Martin de los Andes would be the fourth and last resort in this recommending article that I will mention. The city is very nice and the resort as well, it has a huge problem with frequency of flights too, and the Saturday to Saturday chartered ski week rules here too. Many extra ski options, the place is alike a US version of a resort in northern Argentine Patagonia.
We do have some other resorts, but they are not as complete as the ones I’ve mentioned. I’ve never been to La Hoya (nothing to do with Oscar de) in Esquel, pretty familiar and small and cheap, but none of my skier friends ever recommended it as a hot spot. The other option is the now known as a ‘boutique’ resort Cerro Bayo in the Switzerland Andes at the other shore of the Nahuel Huapi. Beautiful but small and low, has more trouble getting snow on the runs.
Report has come to an end, and writer is going to bed so drastically I say goodbye till the next time that we say goodbye.