Cerro Otto Teleférico, 360° Revolving Café & Lago Gutiérrez Guide

Rising directly behind downtown San Carlos de Bariloche between Lago Nahuel Huapi to the north and Lago Gutiérrez to the south, Cerro Otto (1,405 metres / 4,610 feet) is the city's backyard mountain playground. Accessible in twelve minutes via a classic red gondola lift just five kilometres from the Centro Cívico, its rounded summit combines Argentina's only revolving mountaintop restaurant with winter sledding, cross-country skiing, and pioneer mountaineering history.

1. Teleférico Cerro Otto (1,405m) & the 360° Confitería Giratoria

• The 12-Minute Gondola Ride & Philanthropic Legacy (Founded 1974): Departing from the base station at Km 5 of Avenida de los Pioneros (reached by free shuttle buses from downtown intersections at Mitre & Villegas or Rolando & Mitre), the forty-two four-passenger red cabins of the Teleférico Cerro Otto glide 2,100 metres up the forested slope. Opened in 1974 by Boris Furman and operated by the non-profit Fundación Sara María Furman, the complex donates its annual operating profits to public hospitals in Bariloche and Buenos Aires.
• The Revolving Summit Café & Michelangelo Replicas: Crowning the 1,405-metre peak is the circular, glass-walled Confitería Giratoria, whose floor rotates smoothly 360 degrees every twenty or forty minutes while you sip hot chocolate and watch the panorama shift from downtown Bariloche and Lago Nahuel Huapi to the granite needles of Cerro Catedral, Cerro Tronador, and Lago Gutiérrez. Inside the summit complex you can also view exact-scale certified casts of Michelangelo's David, Pietà, and Moses, walk across the forest suspension bridge, or ride snow tubes and sleds in winter.

2. Piedras Blancas, Otto Meiling's Refugio Berghof & Lago Gutiérrez

• Piedras Blancas, Nordic Ski Centre & Refugio Berghof: Along the gravel mountain road winding up the back side of Cerro Otto sit the winter toboggan tracks of Piedras Blancas, the cross-country tracks of the Centro de Esquí Nórdico, and historic Refugio Berghof, the reconstructed wooden mountain cabin of Bavarian-born mountaineer Otto Meiling (1902 to 1989), who co-founded the Club Andino Bariloche in 1931 and taught generations of Patagonians to ski.
• Lago Gutiérrez & the Cascada de los Duendes Trail (15 km South): At the southern foot of Cerro Otto along Ruta Provincial 82 (reached by Mi Bus Line 50 to Villa Los Coihues) stretches crystal-clear Lago Gutiérrez. Because it is fed by rain and snowmelt streams rather than direct glaciers, its pebble beaches are noticeably warmer for summer swimming and kayaking than Nahuel Huapi. From the ranger station at the southern end of the lake, an easy one-hour forest trail leads past the Cascada de los Duendes waterfall and up to the Mirador del Lago Gutiérrez.