Caviahue - Copahue

In the morning, we drank our coffee in the sun and talked to other travelers. An Argentinean who stood with us in the sun told us about his travels. When we told him where we wanted to go, he asked if he could give us some tips. Of course he could! And that was the start of a completely different route than we had planned so far. Actually, we wanted to drive to Bariloche that day and stay there. But it should turn out differently.

So we went to Capahue first. Because the Argentinean had used the magic word that immediately hypnotized Heike: massages! In the small town that we initially didn't even find on the map, is apparently the Argentine center for massages, and there are also famous hot springs there.

So Heike decided, without talking to the family first, to break off immediately. The path there was extraordinary: we drove for 2 hours through river valleys and along mountain ridges. When we got out in between to take a closer look at a spectacular river course, we heard...nothing. We hadn't been so secluded since the desert in Oman. It was a special feeling to be so alone. At the same time, we hoped that we wouldn't have a breakdown here.

On the further way, we drove, as often, along a gravel road. Suddenly there was a small sign with a signpost to a waterfall. Since we had already looked at more than enough waterfalls, we wondered if we should really drive there. But since it should only be 2 km away, we followed the path. We wondered if the waterfall might be dried up in the local summer, because we really couldn't see anything. But when we saw cars parked by the roadside shortly afterwards, we realized that there had to be something beautiful here. When we saw the waterfall, we were really amazed! We had never seen such a beautiful waterfall, with the color play surrounding it! None of the books we had read had said a single word about this natural spectacle. The children of course wanted to run down to the waterfall immediately and swim there. However, the family's chief security officer saw this very critically. However, he was overruled and the family made their way down. A few heart attacks later, even Christian could relax. The family splashed comfortably in one of the many ice-cold pools under the watchful eyes of the chief security officer. For him, the water was much too cold and the risk of a heart attack too high. It was really great! We could have stayed there much longer, but the search for accommodation was pressing. Fortunately, the place where we wanted to stay overnight was only a few kilometers away. So we went to Cavahue. It is a beautiful little village by the lake. There we went to the only wooden cottages on the lake. Unfortunately, all the cottages were fully booked and even the landlady did not give us much hope of finding any. She even said that a couple had to sleep in their car last night. She therefore sent us to the neighboring town of Copahue. There should be many free cottages and hotels there. In addition, this place is supposed to be very touristy. The most touristy thing we found there were the price agreements of the accommodations. We asked in almost every hotel and they all demanded exactly the same price. So it took hours until we found accommodation that slightly exceeded our budget. We were horrified at how poor the accommodations were in relation to the exorbitant prices.

We were once again very surprised at how people could live like this. The whole village was run down, although the residents there earn very well because there is a tourist season all year round.

When we moved into our accommodation late in the evening, we noticed that it was dripping from the roof into our bathroom. I thought we would have to move on, but fortunately the landlord was able to repair the damage.

After self-made pasta with pesto, we went tired to bed.