We are now in San Martin de los Andes, a lakeside town 200km north of San Carlos de Bariloche in the Argentine lake district. We got consistently rained on in Chiloe and slightly fed up with the busy roads so have hot-footed it back to Argentina, where it´s cheaper and the food is better. Chile must be the 'comida rapida' capital of South America - they are obsessed with chips and hot dogs and are proud to call 'Pichanga' (a dish consisting of a huge mound of chips topped off with deep fried chorizo, hot dog, beef, cheese, pickles, avocado, olives and hard boiled eggs) a local delicacy. Safe to say the novelty of fast food was wearing very thin so we sped up to Puerto Montt from where we planned to cross back into Argentina via the Cruce de los Lagos, a border crossing which involves some 200km of cycling, four lake crossings and finally drops you on the Argentine side of the Andes just below Bariloche.
We arrived in Puerto Montt in torrential rain, it definitely felt as if Autumn had arrived and we were thinking our luck with the weather may have run out. Puerto Montt came as quite a shock after emerging from Patagonia - it´s a dirty port town that looks like it´s definitely seen better days. We found out that the lake crossing into Argentina is now only sold as an all inclusive excursion and would have set us back 200 dollars so we made a snap decision to jump on the bus to Bariloche in a bid to escape the rain, grotty Puerto Montt and more hot dogs!
Getting blown away in Bariloche
After a night in Bariloche gathering supplies we headed north out of town on Ruta 40 pedalling through the Valle Encantada, an eerie valley with strange rock formations. The terrain looked so similar to what we´d seen much further south in El Calafate so we felt slightly like we´d backtracked on ourselves. After a solid day´s cycling we were overjoyed to see a sign for camping and parilla. Ben´s eyes lit up at the thought of the juicy barbecued cordero that he´d been craving pretty much since the day we left Argentina at El Chalten. The campsite was on the site of what had once been an old Almacen built in 1914 by the current owners´ grandparents. The old store is now a small restaurant and you can still see the worn out dip in the wood floor where the old counter had once been. Apparently Che Guevara stayed there on his motorcycle tour, so we felt in good company. Unfortunately our day´s budget didn´t stretch to both cordero and camping so poor Ben went to bed still dreaming of lamb.
The Valle Encantada
Next morning we turned off paved Ruta 40 and onto Ruta 234 also known as the Ruta de los Seite Lagos. It's a 150km gravel road that winds past 7 beautiful lakes, through rain forests and 3 national parks before ending up in San Martin. The scenery was fantastic, marred only slightly by the terrible head winds that hit us from Lago Traful. We finally made it the 50km to the small lakeside village of Villa Traful at 7pm that evening. Exhausted and starving after some rough stretches of gravel, some unexpected climbs and a big dose of head wind we hit the local mini mercardo with a vengeance. Our campsite that night had a genuine parilla so we treated ourselves to a leg of lamb and a bottle of Malbec, it was the most incredible dinner after a month of rubbish food in Chile and what felt like a Tierra del Fuego style day of cycling. I don´t think I´ve ever seen Ben look so happy.
Finally arriving at blustery Lago Traful after a long day
From Villa Traful we had another 100km to San Martin and a big climb up to 930 metres mid-way. Happily the wind had died down, Lago Traful was completely calm and we were so happy to have another beautiful sunny day again. After only 17km we stopped for a lengthy lunch break at a great beachy spot on the far western shore of Lago Traful and fell asleep in the baking mid-afternoon sun. We didn´t get moving again until 4.30pm so we had to do the last 40km of the day in about 3 hours. Luckily we managed to find a great wild camping spot just before the sun went down.
After another late start we got on the road at midday and started the last 60km stretch into San Martin. The scenery was amazing, more than making up for the constant climbing. We´d been told that the last stretch to San Martin was a piece of cake - all downhill apparently - 40kms in and we´d seen very little sign of this promised downhill. Just as I was beginning to wonder if we´d ever stop climbing we reached the top of the pass and had the most incredible view of a blue sparkling lake and the Andes rolling on and on ahead of us. We saw San Martin below us and finally there it was ... 15km of paved downhill. This was the first serious downhill we´ve come across that hasn´t been a totally horrendous gravel road so it´s hard to explain how exciting it was.
We sailed down into San Martin in 15 minutes, overtaking lorries and finally breaking the speed limit. A cold beer on the sunny lakeside was the perfect end to a day that I´ll remember for a long time and this time for all the right reasons!
We leave San Martin tomorrow and head 900km north to Mendoza where hopefully we´ll be able to find some time to do a tour of the surrounding vineyards.
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