G’day Everybody,

Most people doing the clockwise trip of South America travel to Pucon, Chile from Bariloche. Most people take a leisurely overnight bus for the 10 or 12 odd hour trip through the Andes. Most people. Not us. Nope, 10+ hours on a bus at this point in our trip was fairly frightening for me at least. 10 hours couped up in a small seat without food and with the person in front reclining their seat all the way no matter how much i press my knees into the back of the seat. Terrifying!

Instead i consult a snowboarding mate i met on the Internet. Yup you’ve got to love the world wide web. He tells us of a quaint little town much better than Bariloche, only 6 hours from Bariloche and has a short route to Pucon. Brilliant! The places name, San Martin De Los Andes.
San Martin De Who?
Yup San Martin for short.

Pretty Trees

And scary graffiti

San Martin De Los Andes is a small pretty little ski town. The lonely planet has a paragraph or two about it but essentially it is a ski centric swiss type village with great food and scenery. According to the lonely planet it’s frequented by the elite of Argentinian society for their ski holidays. Unfortunately for us it’s not the ski season, so no spotting the likes of Evita or other celebrities. Oh and the fact she’s dead would of also made it a tad difficult.

We arrive mid-morning from Bariloche and struggle to find a taxi or any transport other than feet to get us to our accommodation. It seems the off-season is pretty quiet here. After a half hour or so we manage to arrange a taxi and venture the whole 500m up the road. Doh!

Our B&B, Las Lucarnas, was amazing. It arrived in the same fashion as large mountain might arrive however it’s timing was impeccable.  It was just the time in the trip where we were getting tired of hundreds of people cramming the shared kitchen, lounge and bedrooms. Tired of the nostril stinging bleach all hostels seem to use. Las Lucarnas was clean, cosy, friendly and as Jess said it had the comfiest nicest sheets ever! We even wrote a review about it, it was that good: http://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowUserReviews-g312843-d1572908-r63336003-Hosteria_Las_Lucarnas-San_Martin_de_los_Andes_Province_of_Neuquen_Patagonia.html

Besides the B&B, San Martin is a gorgeous place, nestled in a small bay on a river surrounded by beautiful forest’s scaling the mountainside.

Without the ski season there isn’t much that goes on in San Martin, lots of walking, relaxing and mountain biking. Of course, we chose mountain biking. Suckers for punishment after the our De Bariloche. We packed a picnic, hired some bikes and started off up the hill. The hill makes Perth’s hills look like Sand Dunes and we spent most of the time on gravel roads walking our bikes up the steep incline. I was excited though, thinking if it’s this steep up it will be this steep coming back down and on gravel woohooo. And it was sort of, the path winds it’s way slowly back down through the forest, past a bunch of cows who munched grass and moo’ed as we zipped by. But then it ends abruptly onto a major highway, certainly a break tester. We meandered our way down the highway, occasionally being blown off it by massive lorries. We perched up on a cliff overlooking the town and had our lunch before cycling back to bed.

Jess in autumn colours

Taking your horse for a walk

Vew from lunch

San Martin was a lovely place and was certainly better than the city that is Bariloche. It’s small cosy with a lot of character, i just wish we timed this trip to coincide with the snow.

Cheers
Hutch

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