Equestrian Ecoturism in the Lakes Region: with its serene glacial lakes, snow-capped mountains, and endless emerald forests, the Argentine lake district provides the perfect backdrop for outdoor adventure and exploration.

• Author: Balaguer, Alejandro
• Position: Patagonia Argentina - Travel narrative

A ray of sun makes it through the clouds that are currently dumping rain over the nearby city of Bariloche and tinges the surface of Lake Nahuel Huapi with silver. I have set up my tripod and camera alongside this temperamental lake in the hopes of photographing some of the whimsical manifestations of extreme climate at this emblematic mirror of water in the province of Neuquen in the untamed Argentine Patagonia.

The howling of the wind gets more intense as the storm passes, forcing me to take refuge in an old building made of corrugated zinc walls. Inside, Carol Jones. the granddaughter of American settlers, welcomes me. Carol is the owner of ah ecotourism and equestrian adventures business.

"I grew up in the Estancia Nahuel Huapi." Carol tells me. and you can hear the pride in her voice. 'I'm a descendent of the Texan pioneer. Jarred Jones. Since 1985, I've been organizing horseback rides in this vast territory of the Nahuel Huapi National Park so that people can be in nature and experience what life was like in the rime of my grandparents."

The Jones family is local legend and part of the history of Bariloche According to the Bariloche Tourism Secretariat. "the strategic location of the Jones property on a crossroads, anal the fact that it is the only population on the shores of Nahuel Huapi. means that everyone who comes to the region will inevitably visit it. [Jones] received scientists, government officials, and academics of all kinds, as well as traders, businessmen and pioneers.'"

The human adventure of colonization was never an easy task here in the Patagonia, and highway posts like these were crucial way stations for many Patagonian towns. According to documents from those years, "these posts were near lakes and streams, or in places with enough protection from the wind that it was possible to set up a general store and a bar offering the lonely traveler a place of succor and support."

Jones's old trading post is now called "el Viejo Boliche" (The Old Store). It's a place where visions of the past break through to the present, reminding us how the inhospitable nature and geography of the extreme south creates fierce challenges that force men and women to yield or to stand their ground, persist, and evolve. The granddaughter of the legendary American settler is a good example of persistence and evolution.

I tell my hostess that I've come to photograph "the lake route" and she offers to be my guide. We get into her old Land Rover...