VILLA LA ANGOSTURA and SAN CARLOS DE BARILOCHE: Nahuel Huapi National Park

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Villa La Angostura (narrowness-ville) is nicely located between two arms of the Nahuel Huapi lake, inside the Nahuel Huapi national park. The town hosts a regional museum showing the history of this area where mapuche people lived until around 1850. At this time the argentinean and chilean colonization policies and fight for the souveranity over this region opened the door to immigrants from northern regions but also from mid europe (Switzerland, Austria and Germany), giving new and existing towns the alpine character they have today.

Not far from the volcanic Andes, Villa La Angostura was declared a disaster area in June 2011 when a massive layer ash dumped on the community by the eruption of a volcano in neighbor Chile.

I arrived to Bariloche in the late evenning. My first impression was that the town has lost its "small village" feeling and is now a mid city without the charm San Martin and Villa La Angostura still have. Nevertheless, the lakeview is still impressive.