Bariloche (Argentina) (AFP)

Snow-covered peaks, but not a single skier on the horizon: in the middle of southern winter, the winter sports resort of San Carlos de Bariloche, one of the most famous in South America, remains hopelessly empty, umpteenth victim tourist from the Covid-19 epidemic.

"We are closed, we have no activity," said AFP Belén Garcia Bertone, 36, who belongs to the third generation of a family of hoteliers in the city and chairs the Tourism Committee.

1,800 km south-west of Buenos Aires, San Carlos de Bariloche, which overlooks a majestic lake, is the fourth Argentine tourist destination most visited by foreigners. Brazilians and Uruguayans place it second after Buenos Aires as their favorite destination in Argentina, according to tourism operators.

In early 2020, when the coronavirus epidemic still seemed far away, Bariloche dreamed of surpassing the very good results of the previous season, when 112,000 tourists, including 15,000 arriving by direct flights from Brazil, had come to fill the hotels in the city.

"The city is beautiful, beautiful. We have had significant snowfall, but it is a city without tourists," laments José Lepio, 46, owner of a restaurant in Cerro Catedral.

20 km from the center of Bariloche, the Cerro Catedral ski area offers 120 km of slopes on 600 hectares. At this time of the year, we usually prepare feverishly for the season. But this year, the coronavirus pandemic has decided otherwise.

On March 20, compulsory confinement was decreed for the 44 million Argentines. If it has since been relaxed in a good part of the country, it has just been reinforced again in Buenos Aires and its periphery in the face of the progression of the epidemic.

But the borders remain closed and commercial flights suspended.

- Worse than the volcano -

"We have had a ski school for 22 years and this is the first time that we have been without a tourist. We have had it all: the ashes of the volcano, the H1N1 flu, the hantavirus, but that's not believable! ", laments Néstor Lopez Davalos, president of the Association of Entrepreneurs of Cerro Catedral.

In 2009, the H1N1 flu had undermined the student tourism season, a key sector of the city's economy which receives throughout the year between 80,000 and 100,000 high school students who come to celebrate the bac and fill the discos.

In 2011, the city's airport had to remain closed for several months due to ash clouds following the eruption of the Puyehue volcano, located some 90 km from the city. A local outbreak of a hantavirus that killed 11 people in a nearby village also deterred tourists in 2018.

But according to Bélen Garcia Bertone, who quotes the memories of his father, also a hotelier, we have to go back to 1978, when Argentina and Chile were on the brink of armed conflict for a border dispute, to see Bariloche, at the time three times less populated, without any tourist.

Not surprisingly, the economic consequences, in a country already in crisis before the pandemic, will be disastrous. "Many people will lose their jobs," feared Néstor Lopez Davalos.

In Bariloche, 140,000 inhabitants, tourism generates about 15,000 direct jobs and 34,000 indirect jobs, according to the Tourism Committee which estimates the losses for July, generally the best month of the year, at 3.6 billion pesos (42 million euros).

"The future is uncertain. We do not know what will be the (sanitary) protocol that we will have to follow when we resume ... if we ever resume", breathes José Lepio, the restaurateur.

© 2020 AFP