Villa la Angostura

«There is a glimp of hope, when ever it's a rainy day!»

Villa la angostura is a little village north of bariloche on the lake nahuel huapi. The 4th of july 2011, is a date which the people of this village wont forget so easy. The Puyehue vulkan in chile, close to the boarder to argentina, erupted. This day the wind directly blowed in to Angostura. Within two days, 40cm of ash and burned stones landet on the village and buried everything under it. It looked like a snowstorm went over, the only difference was the ash. Two days of darkness, the sky became pitch black and it was night.

The armee came and of course the press was there and everyone else who tried to help. Now five mothes later, the vulkan ist still active, the press is gone and the armee only staid in small numbers. 8 out of 10 days you can clean your table and chairs in the garden, and two hour later they are covered again. Its all about the wind, he desicedes who get's his share of ashes.

We arrived at 6:30 pm, when we got surprised of a foggy wall of ash everywhere. When we decided to come here, we thout there would be little ash left, but there is still shit loads of it! As i left the bus i was kind of shocked what i saw. It was still a grey place covered in dust. We took the cheapest hostel in town, which was a very good choise. The Italian Bike Hostel is a place that i can heartly recomend. Santiago took really good care of us. The last few days we walked around this area and tried to talk to the people living here. To get an understanding of what the peoples drives to stay here.

This town lives from tourism, there is nothing else what you could make a living of. The season starts in Dezember, which is sommertime in argentina, but everyone knows there wont be much this year. The hole city is on their feet to cleaning this place, but it looks like there is no end to it. A friendly man working in a bungalow resort had a little talk with us. "he dosent know what will happen next;" he said. The situation is difficult, the goverment pays to clean angostura, but they have no idea when the vulkan is stoping to pull his ash over the village. Most invested all there money in this wonderfull place and cant leave — so the just try to go on and wait for better times.

We wish all the best to this place which we learned to love, even thou there is ash!