South America Day 26 - San Martín de los Andes

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When I get up the old man has disappeared. I wait 40 minutes assuming he can’t have gone far, then find him in the restaurant on his fourth plate of breakfast.

A buffet is like playing Russian roulette when you have an allergy. Someone has double dipped in the condiments and there are brown blobs in the cream cheese. After some muttering and an extensive mining operation, I am fairly confident my breakfast isn’t going to kill me.

Today we are driving 120 miles north to San Martín de los Andes along the Camino de los 7 Lagos; a road which passes 7 lakes. Each lake has a viewpoint and tourist information. So we wind our way along through the forest stopping to take pictures at each one; Espejo, Corrientoso, Escondido, Villarino, Falkner, Maconico. They’re all beautiful. We keep meeting the same people every time we stop. By the end, our new best friends are a couple of caravaners from Chile.

We reach San Martín by mid afternoon and check into our Bavarian style guesthouse. It’s very quaint. So quaint it doesn’t even have power. After I’ve done a pee with the assistance of the torch on my iPhone, we go for a wander in search of food and WiFi.

San Martín is similarly quaint; a little tourist town on the shores of Lago Lácar. It has a distinctly German feel with officious police wandering around telling people off for minor misdemeanours. I’ve already got into trouble for not wearing a seatbelt (I was, he just couldn’t see it under my boob).

We walk along the lakeside beach, past the rose garden and find a café for dinner and checking in on the kids. On to la Pastera; a museum about Che Guevara, but it’s shut because it’s the village birthday. I’m not sure what that means, but it appears to involve a sh**load of barbecuing.

We return to the hotel, which now has power so we can shower and regroup after a long, hot day.

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