And so we packed some layers and some snacks for the road, and just barely caught the bus to the town with the boats, Villa La Angosturra. There we inquired at the tourist office as to the whereabouts of the water taxis, and their hours, and costs. It turned out, however, that the day we had picked for our little jaunt was some kind of holiday in honour of mariners, and therefore none of the boats were running. Whether this was an international, national, regional or municipal holiday I have no idea, and subsequent if half-hearted googling hasn't turned up anything. For the Spanish-speaking research-o-philes among you, readers, feel free to dig around the old interweb and see if you come up with anything. (It was not, at any rate, a strike, which in itself is noteworthy.) But: we were right there! It was so close! We wouldn't have another chance! Plus, we didn't feel like just taking the bus back in defeat. It was well into the day, though, so walking was out; and the bike rental place was half a block away, per the woman in the tourist office. We resigned ourselves to the fact that we would just have to bike it.
Twenty minutes later we were strapped into our ill-fitting helmets, and we took off down the street towards the park entrance on bikes that shifted through about 60% of their advertised range of gears, and not smoothly at that. More astute adventurers might have taken this as a sign from the universe to reconsider, but we reckoned that if all the bikes were like that the trail wouldn't demand all that much of them or their riders. This reckoning, it turns out, was way off the mark.
It was three paved kilometers from the rental place to the park entrance. It wasn't long into this stretch that the road began to climb, and it continued to do so for two of these three kilometers. Soon it became as steep as any street in Toronto heading north to Saint Clair Avenue, and we were forced to dismount and walk our bikes to the top of the hill. Eventually the slope reversed direction and we descended steeply, braking squeakily all the way, until we finally reached the shore, the park entrance, and, to our considerable consternation, another bike rental agency that the tourist office failed to mention, which had we known about it we would for sure have picked, saving ourselves the trouble of biking six very hilly extra kilometers.
Then we were in the park and the trail began in earnest. Twelve kilometers to the forest. Seemed doable.
The trail began with stairs. Two hundred stairs. Steep ones. Grudgingly, we hefted our bikes onto our shoulders and set about climbing them. At the top we finally got on our bikes, thinking the tough part was over. We pedaled for maybe a minute before the trail rose steeply, forcing us off our bikes again, this time without the benefit of stairs. We pushed and carried our bikes uphill for another kilometer, on an unrideable switchback trail past cliffs with signs warning us not to stop due to the risk of falling rocks. At last we reached the summit of the peninsula, where we were greeted by a sign indicating that our destination was... 12km away. This, then, is the first lie: the trail is more than 12km long. And the first, uncounted bit, is not bikeable and is all uphill. (It turns out, incidentally, that pushing is much harder than carrying. The latter allows you to walk with a normal gait, more or less, while the former causes you to walk all hunched over and to lean most of your weight into your bike, which is neither comfortable nor efficient.)
From kilometer 0 the next three or four clicks were very hilly, and our lack of experience coupled with our less than fully functional bikes meant that we had to walk the steep bits, both up and down, to keep from losing all momentum and/or wiping out. Eventually the trail leveled out and we were able to make better progress, but by then we were getting tired and frustrated, and by the time we approached kilometer eleven your humble scribe was in a bit of a huff. Where the hell was this magical forest? It sure didn't look like we were within a kilometer of it. Maybe its magic was really that those who tried to find it were destined never to reach it. The prospect of having to do the whole damn trail in reverse only made matters worse, and it was taking so long that we'd barely have forty-five minutes at our destination before having to turn around and head back. Nor did my mood improve when, after a very steep decline, we reached kilometer 12 and were still not at the forest's entrance. Instead, we were at the fence that demarcated the forests boundary. Lie 2, then: 12 kilometers brings you to the forest, but not the forest's entrance. Instead we had to follow the fence for another kilometer, this stretch littered with tree roots that once again were beyond our novice capabilities to ride over. I'm a little ashamed to admit that when at last we reached the gate to the special forest, I was in no mood to even look at the trees let alone fall under their spell; and as for the language I directed at the contraption that had brought me there (or rather, it seemed to me, vice versa), this is not that kind of venue. I should mention that my lovely and talented companion was not in such a foul mood as I was; in fact we've noticed that we have a remarkable tendency to balance each other out, so that if one of us is being a cranky-pants the other is invariably more optimistic, which good humour eventually proves contagious so that nobody is really pouty for all that long. And so, after letting me vent for a while and participating good-naturedly in the verbal abuse of our now-parked bicycles, she eventually led me reluctantly into the forest we'd come to see. I remained unreceptive to the place's charms, though, until we happened to look out onto the lake just below and spotted two docks, with one boat parked at each. Lie Number 3: boats were running! At least two of them, and that was one more than we needed. The further one was a big yacht, and looked as though it had come carrying a tour from Bariloche, but the closer one was much smaller, and just tying up, and had, as far as we could tell, only two passengers. This second boat, we thought, might just prove to be our salvation. I wasted no time approaching it and inquiring as to the possibility of getting a ride back to Villa La Angostura. Sure, they said. For 80 pesos each. We had found ourselves a water taxi -- for all we knew the only one of the day. Thinking it might be unlikely that we would have exactly 160 pesos, and taking advantage of Argentines' horror at having to make change, I offered 150 for the two of us. They agreed. Huzzah! But:
We had bikes, I added.
No problem, they said, they would strap them to the deck; but it was up to us to bring them down to the dock.
Yes, yes! I said. There is no problem. We were saved! We didn't have to bike back! Everything was marvelous! We practically skipped off the dock and into the forest, where we followed the deserted boardwalks -- our choice of day had this benefit, at least: there was virtually nobody else there -- through the forest, appreciating every nuance of dappled wood and twisted trunk with the utmost receptivity and wonder.
And then we loaded our bikes onto the boat, and held on to our hats in the wind like glamorous old-timey movie stars as we sped back to town across the sparkling blue of the lake, and we laughed at our earlier surliness. And when we docked, and got our bikes back, we hardly noticed the long push up the hill towards the centre, and we cruised down the other side and into town feeling relaxed and satisfied. We even had time before our bus left to search out and find me a new pair of sunglasses, the loss of whose predecessors occurred somewhere around kilometer 7; and my most important audience considered them an improvement, so even that worked out alright in the end.
 |
| Boardwalk and magical trees. |
 |
| Salvation! |
 |
| Twisty branches. |
 |
| Sun-dappled bark. |
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment