A Gol named Geof

We have a tendency to stay put when we find a place we like - remember our first trip to San Clemente del Tuyu? A trip planned for 2 days and we stayed for 2 weeks. We have started to follow suit again here in San Martin de los Andes. This is such a beautiful town on the shores of Lake Lacar, like Bariloche but without a scent of city life. The town is surrounded by mountains painted in colors for fall. We are staying just a bit out town at the cabins of our friends Carlos and Marisa, who own the campground in San Clemente. Sadly they are not here right now, they are in Europe with friends and visiting family. However, their German Shepherds are here and every morning they come and knock on our door to come out and play.

One of the best parts of our little road trip is that we are not in tourist season right now. Here in Argentina, tourist season is a very drastic change from non-tourist season. And so, when we go places, we are usually the only one´s there. Yesterday for example, we drove about an hour north to another lake which is fairly inaccessible, only by a single lane dirt road. We drove along the edge of the lake on an even tinnier dirt road until it ended after about 2 hours of driving. There we did a short one hour hike to the foot of a big water fall. The scenery was so quite with grey clouds looming over all of the surrounding mountian tops, and during all of this, all we ran into was wild horses, cows, birds, sheep and one cat and a kitten... not a single person.

To get here to San Martin from Bariloche, we drove the Ruta de Siete Lagos (7 lakes). Instead of driving the larger highway, there is a double lane dirt road which winds through the mountains and for a while passes the shores of 7 or 8 mountian lakes. It only takes about 3 hours to drive, but we made a whole day out of it. We would stop often and walk around and take pictures, we would bring our delicious chocolates from Bariloche and our mate with us and have impromptu picnics. For lunch we made a slight side trip from the traditional route to a very small town called Villa Traful. By very small we mean, inhabitants less than 25. We ate lunch at the only place that was open. They had a large menu, but the super friendly lady who worked there had to tell us what they had made that day, since we were probably about 25% of their business for the day... it was delicious! A wonderful homemade lasagna and a very tender milanesa sandwich. It was a great day all around.

Now our plan from here, is tomorrow to cross over the Andes and at the foothills of the volcano Lanin into Chile. There we will drive north for a couple of days stoppping in small towns and then cross back into Argentina at the level of Mendoza, the wine country. Instead of crossing over the Andes there, we will drive almost to the tops of the mountains and there there is a tunnel through the peaks of the mountains. We are definitely excited for this... and the wine!

Here are some more of our pictures from our road trip so far:

http://picasaweb.google.com/martinswims/SieteLagosBarilocheSanMartin