Caviahue: feel James Bond at the foot of a Patagonian volcano

During the last week of June, a snowstorm isolated Caviahue from 48 hours of the world. The storm cut the light, buried cars, houses and clear roads, while the white wind descended from the summits with a ghostly howling, darkened. In all hotels, even those who had their own generator to ensure heat, one could imagine Jack Nicholson with an ax and a crazy face.

But Thursday, July 4, seven days after the official start of the season, the sky has become light blue in this small town, with more than 90 centimeters of snow trampled at the foot of the hill and a capacity of 2,300 skiers per day, with glory. won that none of them will have to queue to climb the mountain chairlift or poma.

Caviahue is one of those ski resorts that can withstand a winter season without much snow (although this is not even the case this year). And that's because it offers a very wide range of walks and excursions, including snowmobile, dog sled, snowshoe and quasi-soviet tours and, for some, miraculous sources. hot springs of Copahue.

To begin the tour, you must first stop to watch: a town of 800 stable inhabitants, four and a half hours from the airport of Neuquén, founded at the source Alfonsinista by Governor Felipe Sapag.

It is a small community immersed in a mountainous silence, bathed by Lake Caviahue, also called Agrio, as it is one of the few naturally formed acidic lakes in the world. In the background, the volcano Copahue, master and lord of the landscape, one of its kind on the Argentine side, spits its smoke with the patience of Buddha. Here, thankfully, the wifi does not work well and people can still leave their house open and the car's key on without the wasps starting to plow. "Nobody was born in Caviahue," say the locals, because if you want a medical care of a certain complexity, you must go to Loncopué, about 50 km.

As in all cities, the characters are stable. The most famous duet is Nito and Guevara, which would be a neuter version of John Wayne and Yul Brynner (but with hair and beard).

Nito has the merit or misfortune of being lucky enough to have fallen into the crater of the volcano, with the ski bike and all the rest. Nobody still understands how he could walk for seven kilometers in thick snow, with an orthopedic leg, to save his life. Some think that the volcano has a hidden energy (most believers say that a cacique lives in its interior, an energetic entity that regulates everything), which prints a semi-contagious hyperactivity to its inhabitants.

There are other local celebrities: Gloria, the owner of the chocolate factory; Monica, who rents skis; Cristian, the snowmobile enthusiast; Sepu, the extreme adventurer; Paniagua, the great off-piste skier eachño; Fernando Volij, the experienced guide; Juan, who makes his own beer (La Gringa); Pablo, the sabbatical officer who built a hotel that allegorizes the Copahue volcano; or Nicolás Gurnik, medical director of thermal springs and hydro-energy researcher.

One can meet them at any time of the day, as if it was a groundhog story in a mountain range.

Frozen waterfall

The most obvious program in a ski resort – in this case, granted to Andorran Jaume Ros several years ago – will always consist of spending the day on the hill. Just 15 blocks away from the city, it has 13 lifts and 22 open runs for your enjoyment, which adds to the off-trail appeal for the daring. Among the pros, something has been said: the media do not queue, the public is familiar and, the mountain being close, we can go to his cabin for lunch and return to the hill to continue skiing. But, if you want to innovate in this area, there are two or three walks as well or more enjoyable than going up and down the mountain from 9 to 17 years old with a camper camping office worker.

The first excursion is on the snowmobiles of Cristian Agostini, from Eneqene Tourism. It is a walk of about eight kilometers in the Jara Valley to the Cascada de la Vega, which is frozen at this time of the year. The experience of driving these motorcycles is an adventure in itself, because once up there, you have to swing your hips towards Sandro, according to the variations of the ground (the risk is to fall on the side, but that does not make not bad, because it falls on a snow mattress). You feel like an overweight James Bond, furrowing the mountain; only the music of Duran Duran (who plays A view to a kill) is missing for Roger Moore to appear with glbades. The landscape is astonished by its vast white silence and the exciting feeling that if one left one's destiny with so much snow, it would not last more than two hours.

Whoever is not encouraged to motorcycle and wants to be towed by another type of traction, clean or otherwise, has more options. To know: Sleigh excursion with Siberian dogs, along the coast of Lake Caviahue to the viewpoint of the volcano, or snowshoeing in the deep snow through the Araucanian forest, in the direction of cascades of the river Agrio and the stone bridge, basaltic formation ten kilometers from Caviahue.

A city with a radiant slab

Another fascinating excursion is that of Caviahue at the Copahue Thermal Villa in a tracked van (special for advancing on deep snow) or motorbike skiing. These are 17 kilometers of an Antarctic landscape in which, suddenly, in the middle of nowhere, appears a structure of metal pipes that releases a jet of steam from the deepest part of the earth.

And here is a mysterious story. In the late 1980s, the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) installed a geothermal power station in this part of the world that heated Copahue for two years. We still remember that in the winter of 2000, we could walk along the main street of the city in rémerite and down, as in a huge radiant slab. As usual, the Japanese have returned home, the original mechanisms began to fail – the direction of the province then did not know what to do – and the factory broke down at all never. In remembrance, the lifeless pipes remain on either side of the street, now buried under the snow, in the manner of a Dharma project (of the Lost series) left in time, in a unknown dimension.

Approaching Copahue, going down the mountain, you will see a city filled with fumaroles, like a giant stew cooking in the heat of steaming lagoons, with the flavor of meat stew, although in reality it is the taste of sulfur in the air. The city, as it is known today – sacred place of the indigenous peoples – has a very strong mysticism: the thermal complex was built in the late 80s and has an almost Soviet air for the austere (the properties of the soil eventually collapse everything that is built above). Only a team of Russian gymnasts training and fogging to participate in the Artistic Gymnastics Championship in Budapest (1983) would be missing.

While the thermal treatments have a strong activity during the summer season (the hot springs welcome about 250 people a day), four years ago, you can also go to the villa in winter, because a hostel, the grill Nito and the famous Laguna del Chancho have opened their doors, with their sulphated water and organic mud, as well as their steam cabins.

"More and more young people are coming in. In a week of heat treatments, results are still surprising traditional medicine," says Gurnik, medical director of hot springs. For several world experts in the field, water, mud and vapors of Copahue have almost zero properties on the planet.

Finally, weather permitting, you can also visit the volcano, which inside has a lake so acidic that, say the most fanciful, "the people of NASA came to measure the PH and gave them an error" . The truth is that the pH of the lake in the crater of the volcano is between 1 and 0.9 (to get an idea, the pH of a lemon is 3). "It's like drinking battery acid," swear Adrián Sepú Sepúlveda, one of the region's most experienced guides. And you do not need the approval of NASA to believe you.

Useful data

How to arrive: By Aerolineas Argentinas to Neuquén, from 3616 pesos round trip in August. From Neuquén to Caviahue – 360 km – by bus. Three frequencies a day from the Neuquén bus terminal (20 minutes by taxi from the airport).

Or sleep: Ignea Hotel. From $ 5000 a night for a double room with breakfast. www.igneacaviahue.com.arNevado Hotel. From $ 4720 per night, double room, breakfast included. www.hotelnevado.com.arGrand Hotel & Spa. Starting from $ 12,470 per night, double room, with breakfast, in high season. www.grandhotelcaviahue.com

Where to eat: Sol de Noche and Nito Parrilla (in Caviahue and Copahue). Specialty Chivitos. On Facebook: Restaurant Nito ParrillaKraken. On Facebook: Krakenrestocaviahue Sweet Village (house of chocolate and tea). On Facebook: Dulce Aldea Caviahue CopahueRestaurant and Cervecería Manolo's. On Facebook: Gringa Cervecería Artesbad de Montaña & Manolo's Resto.

Caviahue Hill: Daily pbad in high season: $ 1920. Weekly: $ 10,270 Daily rental of shoes, skis and poles in high season, on the hill: $ 1,150. Weekly: $ 6170. Private ski lessons in high season: $ 3,760 for two hours Reports: www.caviahue.com

What to do: Day trip to Copahue, between 2400 and 3000 pesos. Includes caterpillar transfer, snowshoeing, hot spring tours and optional lunch. Inquiries by e-mail: [email protected]. On Facebook: Caviahue Aventura Snowmobile ride through the mountains (eight kilometers across the Jara Valley, up to Cascada de la Vega). Guide: Cristian Agostini. Starting at $ 2,500 per person walk for an hour and a half. By email: [email protected]. www.eneqene.com.ar. By mobile phone: 02983-15-520636 Snowshoeing near waterfalls, lagoons and forests. Starting at $ 650 per person for four hours of excursion. By phone, Fernando Volij (154-1614485); e-mail: [email protected]

Dog sled along the lake shore up to the volcano point of view. Contact: www.facebook.com/lahuellacaviahue.Copahue Terms: Medical consultation: $ 160; hot tub: $ 240; local fangotherapy: $ 290; immersion baths: $ 180. Reports from 155-5012005. www.termasdecopahue.gob.ar

More information: Official tourism entity Patagonia Argentina: www.patagonia.gov.ar Tourism of the province of Neuquén. www.neuquentur.gob.ar Tourism Secretary of Caviahue-Copahue. www.caviahue-copahue.gov.ar

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