San Martin de los Andes

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We continued onward to San Martin de los Andes (plainly San Martin from here onwards). We were slowly making our way towards Buenos Aires, to meet LM´s dad and Karen. We had ample time, so we took it.

San Martin de los Andes is a smaller version of Bariloche and is much more tranquil. The village is also built on the shore of a big and beautiful lake; houses are made of stone and wood and the streets are lined with many trees which makes for a charming village. The plumb trees make for messy pavements, though.

At the bus station we were greeted by a local that rents out rooms in his house during the summer months (not a bad way to make extra money). He was very adamant that we stay with him and in the end we agreed. After walking the 300m with our backpacks (he would apparently have gotten into trouble with the taxi drivers if he drove us to his house), we arrived at our home for the next 2 days. His house was the last one in a complex of small wooden cottages. The room was nice but our host turned out to be a very nosy control freak. He would wake us up every morning at 8 am for breakfast and if we weren´t at the table within 5 minutes he would come knocking on the door again. He also constantly bummed cigarettes from Bernhard not even to mention the fact that Bernhard had to treat his warts on his back for him as he could not reach them himself.

There isn´t much to do in San Martin, except for a bunch of organised outdoor and adventure activities such as river rafting, fly-fishing, horseriding etc to be done around San Martin. As we thought we would do most of these activities when Liza-Marie´s dad visited, we didn´t do much. We had the opportunity to visit the Lanin National Park with views of Volcan Lanin, one of the big volcanoes in the area, but as it was quite windy and we were very lazy, we decided not to go, to the dismay of our host that just couldn´t understand that we just wanted to relax. We did relax well, though.

The one day that we did explore the surrounding areas, we climbed up a hill with views over town as well as the lake. As always, the views were great.

We eventually left for the 16 hour drive to Mendoza. We first stopped at Neuquen to change buses and to our surprise, we were booked on a very grand bus with the legendary fully reclinable seats (full cama)! It was a real treat to be served a proper meal and wine on the bus and to be able to sleep on a fully reclinable seat with a pillow and blanket. We felt like kings, traveling in comfort.

The last photos are from our second time, passing San Martin with Abel and Karen. We only stayed one night in San Martin the second time around and rather made our way to Pucon in Chile.

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