By Ewan Moffat

Myself and my girlfriend are staying a fairly central flat in the northwest of the city. We’re renting from the apartment from a Bariloche native who we were put in touch with prior to arriving in the city. The apartment had already been booked for a three day period overlapping with the beginning of our stay and our landlord suggested that we leave town for a few days and stay at his parent’s farm in El Bolsón. Dubbed the ‘hippy capital’ of Rio Negro we jumped at the chance taking a stunning scenic car ride through the mountains passing lake after lake. After Spanish lessons at La Montaña it is a great place to practice your Spanish in Las Montañas.
Our few days in El Bolsón were beyond anything we could have expected - and it is a place that I would thoroughly recommend checking out. Waking up to snow-capped peaks and falling asleep with the stars lighting up the sky behind our curtains the trip has rejuvenated us in both body and mind.
In the town itself my girlfriend treated me to an early Christmas present and we both spent an hour on the massage tables at Lumina ‘Espacio Holistico (‘holistic space’). Lumina is somewhere that will amaze, inspire and heal any weary traveller passing through. On a warm day in El Bolsón be sure to swing by for an afternoon yoga class, a spot of aromatherapy or just to admire the remarkable architecture of the ecobuild slap bang in the middle of town. From the giant eye window in the yoga studio is a view of the mountains that you will not forget.