Bariloche and lakes

Some brief shafts of sunlight this evening - this is the stunning view from my balcony, over Lago Nahuel Huapi.  But much of the day was grey and bleak and chilly, much like Bariloche city center, or some Scottish provincial town on a bad day (it's the granite that does it, too).  Bariloche is a weird place: properly founded at the beginning of the C20th, although some didn't-end-happily mission activity took place in the region before then, and there were settlers - some British; the first road from/to Buenos Aires was built in 1913 and Theodore Roosevelt visited the same year (and was influential in helping the establishment of National Parks here); then Austrians, and Germans - a lot of Germans in the 1940s, and certainly local myths have it that a number of Nazis fled here (others debunk that, but).  It certainly tries to look like a Germano-Swiss sports town, which means that post-summer watersports and hiking, and pre-ski-ing may not mean that one catches the town at its best, right now.

It's also known for chocolate making - which is seeing the influence, like everything other than LA hotel bookings, of World Cup Fever.

The cathedral church is a pretty magnificent plain structure, made from granite blocks, and with stained glass history "showing local history" - for which, read massacres at the hands of indigenous people.

More interesting to me was the figure of Gauchito Gil, on the back of this food truck: Gil is a folk saint; a nineteenth-century hero who was like the Argentian Robin Hood; wildly popular after the 1990s, in particular, when he became an icon of resistance.

And then I hopped in the car and drove south down Route 40, which runs 5,194 miles down the whole length of Argentina.  No, it's not a big interstate: it's a two lane highway with a lot of potholes (I thought it was ominous when the guy at the car rental showed me where the jack and spare wheel are ...) - but more than that, precious few pull-out places.  So the trouble with driving is despite beautiful view after beautiful view, there are very few opportunities for taking pictures... This is of Lago Gutiérrez;

and the next of Lago Mascardi.  I then went past Lago Guillermo - and shortly after that not only did the string of lakes come to an end, but I was heading uphill, and the Andes looked very cold and inhospitable, and I was out of cellphone reach, so (when I could - probably about 8 miles further on - no houses, no side roads: I've always like bleak landscape but this was pushing it) I turned round.  If I'd carried on for another couple of hours, I'd have got to where Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid holed up, which was tempting... but the internet tells me their cabin is closed, and who knows where there may be gas stations??

You'd have thought this was obvious, but maybe there are days when that water looks more tempting than today ...