This past week I had the most amazing experience of my life in Patagonia, Argentina, a place I never thought I would visit in my lifetime. As I sat on a bus ride from our cabins in Villa la Angostura, a small village where we were staying, to San Carlos de Bariloche, a bigger, more popular city in Patagonia, I was scrolling through photos of my study abroad trip and realized that I have completely fallen in love with Argentina. After this realization, I am not ready to say goodbye to this amazing, beautiful place.
Patagonia was an experience of a lifetime, to say the least. It was one of the most physically demanding trips I have ever been on, but easily the most incredible. I was exposed to sights I never thought possible, climbed mountains I didn't think anyone could climb and pushed my body to unknown limits.
My abroad group and I stayed in beautiful cabins, part of the University of Buenos Aires, and were about a 20-minute walk from the village. If we walked just a few feet out of our cabins and past the dining hall, we found ourselves on a beautiful, open grassland with strawberry plants that overlooked the water and the mountains. It was one of the most breathtaking views I've ever witnessed. There were logs carved out into seats that we could sit comfortably into and looked out at the view ahead for hours. There was a path through the forest that led to the water where we spent our first and last days skipping rocks and relaxing.
Villa la Angostura reminds me of Lake Placid in New York. It's a long main street filled with little shops and cute restaurants, aligned with sidewalks flooded with people. On one of our very last days there, there was a marathon through the mountains, and the village was even more crowded with food vendors and tents set up for the race.
When we visited Bariloche, only an hour away from where we were staying, it reminded me of Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy. Both villages have a wintery feel to them, with the mountains in the background and beautifully built ice-skating rinks and hotels for tourists. It was an even bigger version of Villa la Angostura, with even more people and tourists everywhere, which I learned contributes to the Patagonian economy significantly.
We spent most of our trip hiking through rain and snow. We had a guide who took us through mountain trails, led us uphill and downhill through national parks, forests, and across snowy mountains. One day, we actually hiked from 10 am until 5 pm through the snow and crossed rivers along the way. Our guide tied a rope from one side of the water to another, and we stepped from rock to rock, holding this rope to help us get across, as a waterfall was streaming and splashing behind us. After we got across, we literally climbed the steepest mountain I have ever seen on a narrow path through the snow. At the top, you could see how high we were, and knowing that we hiked all the way up ourselves, with our very own feet, was the coolest concept to me.
We spent another day biking and kayaking. We took a 45-minute boat ride to a national park and actually hiked the entire way back on a peninsula. We ate delicious banana bread and pound cake in the mountains underneath the trees as we sat in the freezing snow. And every night, we came back to a delicious meal at the dining hall and a fireplace with couches, where we sat and chatted about our day. It was almost as if I was on another planet, in a new, mysterious place, seeing things I never thought I would see. If anyone told me two years ago that I would be living in Argentina for three and a half months, I wouldn’t believe it for a second. Yet here I am, fully and completely in love with this beautiful country, having seen the most breathtaking views I have ever seen in my life, and I am not ready to leave.
