San Martín de Los Andes and The Lakes District

We wound up staying three nights in San Martín. We hadn't planned to stay so many days, but we really liked it there. I don't know that I've ever visited another city that was such a joy to be in. Our guide book highly understated the wonderfulness of this place! We almost skipped it. It is a small ski resort town, known to be a somewhat upscale vacation spot for Argentinians. The architecture has some sort of German influence and there are log and stone cabins everywhere, chocolate shops, beautiful parks and gardens filled with roses, lavender and lovely trees like weeping birch and monkey puzzle trees! San Martín is located in a region known as the lakes district, an area filled with tree covered mountains with stone faces and rock formations, there are countless finger shaped lakes, and clear rivers. San Martín sits on Lago (lake) Lacar and is located within a national park zone (Parque Nacional Lanín).

We stayed at a really nice hostel in town called Hostel Puma. It was a cool log and stone cabin with tons of rooms. There were quite a lot of people staying there, but somehow we still had our own dorm room the whole time we were there. We haven't met many other foreign travelers yet, mostly just Argentinian college students. They are in their summer break from school. It is neat to see locals being able to travel, this is not something I have ever seen in the countries I have visited in Central America, no one can afford to travel there. Argentina reminds me more of the US than it does any other country I have visited. The quality of life here is so much higher.

While in San Martín we took advantage of outdoor activities, which we will continue to do as we tour the Lakes District over the next few days. The day after we arrived we hiked to a lookout point above the town and the lake. The area that we were hiking in belongs to native people called Mapuche, they charge a small fee for hikers to pass through their land, but it was well worth it. This is something that we will continue to see when we visit natural areas. They sure have a prime piece of land up on that hill! From the top we could see the town, the surrounding mountains and the lake. The forest was like no other we have ever seen, it is dominated by an evergreen beech tree which is very common in Patagonia, called a coihué. While at the top the natives told us about a beach along the lake that we could also walk to, which led us through more of the Mapuche community, their houses and some farms, we saw sheep and llamas! It seemed that the natives had very little impact on the land, the houses were all built in amongst the large trees and it was a pretty area to walk through. The beach was a beautiful little cove with a small island a short way out. The waters of the lake are tropical looking because there is white sand and rock along the shore and it quickly gets deep, giving the water many different shades of blue and turquoise.

The next day we visited the nearby national park on a tour. We would have liked to go on our own, but there isn't a very good public transportation system. We could have taken a bus out there, but then we would have had to stay for many days before getting picked up again, and since we don't have a tent, it wouldn't have worked out. The tour was fun, but all in Spanish, and I am having a very hard time understanding Argentinian Spanish. They have a crazy thick lisp like accent that is so hard to understand! The pronunciation and vocabulary is much more similar to Spanish from Spain than it is Central American Spanish. So I quickly gave up trying to understand the guide and just enjoyed the scenery. We visited 3 lakes, Huechulafquen, Paimún and Epulaufquen. The dominant feature in the scenery at the park is the snow capped and perfectly conical Volcán Lanín. We also got to see many Monkey Puzzle trees, which are the coolest trees I've ever seen! They are evergreen with all these monkey tail looking branches hanging from the trunk. We had some free time for a little hiking. The forest around the volcano has a very old feel to it, like you expect dinosaurs to be walking about. We finished the day with a ride on the lake to an old lava flow. It was a neat area to see, because there is a forest growing on top of this lava rock but all the trees are small and gnarled looking like bonsai trees!

Yesterday (New Years Eve), we took a bus from San Martín to Villa La Angostura. It is the next town South in the lakes district, and an even richer ski resort town. The name Angostura is derived from the word narrow in Spanish. The town is named as such for the narrow (91m wide) peninsula on which it sits on the shores of Lake Nahuel Huapi. The ride here was about 2 1/2 hours and was insanely gorgeous. We took a winding mountain road known as the 7 lakes route, because you pass 7 lakes on the way, along with many clear rivers and rocky mountains

We are staying at Italian Hostel, which is in another cool log cabin type building. We are in a dorm with entirely Argentinians and last night the hostel threw a New Years Eve party. It was fun sharing in the Argentine traditions, they made a fantastic barbecue of steak, lamb, chicken, and sausage, we even tried blood sausage, which I have to say aside from the texture is not bad! We went to bed just after midnight and will soon get going on some exciting outdoor activities here!