Waterfall, What Waterfall?

We set out early on a drive to Villa Angostura. Our mission? Summitting Mt. Belvedere and checking out the sweet Cascada Inayacal. The drive was scenic and accompanied by some great '80's tunes. The views were absolutely fantastic and the radio, well there's just nothing like Bariloche radio. We arrive at the cute, ski mountainesque town and begin our search for the trail head. Which, according to Lonely Planet, "starts northwest of the tourist office." The trail is nowhere to be found. We find a map of the small town and the area around it. On the map we find the trail to Mt. Belvedere and Cascada Inayacal.

Being the good map readers that we are, we have both taken extensive classes on reading, even some of the most difficult, maps, we follow the road/trail to where we should begin on our adventure. We can not find the trail or the waterfall for the life of us. We trekked through a new housing development, up steep and muddy roads, and dealt with stray dogs and Argentines. One Argentine couple even told us to "go away". This unsuccessful expedition took us the entire day and we didn't even accomplish the slightest bit of what we had set out to do.

On our return to Bariloche, I remembered a poem my aunt loves and passed along to me, Ithaca. I pulled it out of my bag and read it aloud to Annie. The message fit our day perfectly. Life is all about the journey, not the destination.

Although we did not get the chance to summit Mt. Belvedere, we did laugh at our selves, our map reading skills, the the general lack of information on maps in Argentina. It turned out to be a pretty good day.