Erin & Regan's South American Adventure

Hola,

One of the things we had planned to do here was rent a car and drive the "Siete Lagos" (7 lakes).  We had heard it was best to get a group of four people together in order to split the costs.  We had mentioned it at Refugio Frey and Ewan and Katrin had both expressed interest.  We also had a note up in La Bolsa which I wrote when I booked the room before the trek.

Upon our return from the trek we found two names on the note, but Ewan and Katrin were both still keen to go with us.  Luckily the guys on the note had found three others and were going to go as a group of five.  So, no worries there.

We visited a few car rental places and found the prices all pretty similar.  We took the option that allowed all four of us to be registered as drivers for free (one place wanted to charge) and we confirmed there was a spare tire and tools to change it, you never know what can happen...

We picked the car up the next morning, after buying snacks for lunch (unsurprisingly much the same as lunch on the trek) and headed on our way.  Katrin was the first driver due to being the only person used to driving on the right hand side of the road.

The road was at first sealed, then there were road works, then gravel but nothing too bad so far.  Certainly nothing to be worried about.  Ewan took over driving at the road works as Katrin hadn´t had much experience on it.  We arrived at the first lake which was unimpressive.

We had been told by an Israeli we met at Refugio Frey that we shouldn´t miss one lake which was a short drive off the main road.  When we arrived we found a camping ground sort of place and pulled up for lunch only to discover they wanted us to pay for the priviledge.  I asked "why" ("Por Que") he replied "what do you meant why" ("Como Por Que").  Needless to say we drive the 20 meters or so down the road to a wide patch and pulled up close to the shoulder instead.

I just happened to notice something odd floating in the waves lapping at the shore and pulled it out with a stick.  It turned out to be a yaby (as Ewan reminded us, I had forgotten the name) and it was still alive and oddly not really keen to get back into the lake.

We visited a bunch more lakes, none of which rated too highly on the cool-factor.  I mean, a lake is a lake, once you´ve seen one...  Everything was fine until Ewan stopped the car, opened the door, looked at the front right tire and said "Bugger" (or something to that effect) "We´ve got a flat".

We jumped out and Ewan showed his practicl experience changing tires for his 28+ year old mates who hadn´t a clue.  I was happy enough to play tire changing assistant.  In record time we were back on the road, perhaps we should form a pit crew?

Eventually we came to a lake of some note due to it being fed by a waterfall, it was a bit cooler than your average lake.

Erin took over the driving and we took another short trip off the main road to Lago Hermoso (Beautiful Lake) which was only really a little better than average to be honest.

From there we arrived in San Martin a nice town on the shore of... you guessed it, a lake.  It was a cute place with fake wooden huts etc.  There was even a boat or two on the lake though not as many as you´d expect.  It was something that had been puzzling us, in NZ there would have been boats everywhere.

From San Martin it was time to head back to Bariloche by an alternate route through "Valle Hermoso" (Beautiful Valley) along another gravel road.  The countryside here was funky.

It was then that disaster struck for the 2nd time.  As Erin and I were changing places (for me to drive) I heard a strange hissing noise... as I bent to inspect the left rear tire Ewan guessed what was going on and I could hear muffled swearing from inside the car and phrases like "you´ve got to be joking" (you´ll have to imagine the Aussie accent).

As it was a slow leak and we thought we had only 30kms to go to the small town of Confluencia we quickly jumped back in and took off.  After perhaps 5km it was feeling pretty flat so I stopped on a straight stretch to check it and sure enough it was almost flat.  There was no way we were going any further.  At least the scenery was nice.

 

Lacking a 2nd spare we went over our options.  There was no cell phone coverege, but there was plenty of other tourists behind us so we figured we could get a lift to Confluencia.  There was also a small place a few ks behind us, there were no telephone lines but maybe they had a radio.

In the end Ewan and Katrin hitched a ride to Confluencia with two kind Israeli guys (a father and son, one of which was a photographer who had planned to take a bunch of photos on this stretch of road, sorry guys!) taking along one of the flat tires in case there was a place to get it repaired and also the phone number of the rental agency.

They left behind Erin and I, plus all the food and water.  One of the Israeli guys gave us another half bottle of water to keep us going.  We waited, flagging down each passing car and checking if they had a spare tire the correct size.  No such luck, they were either too large or had the holes in the wrong places.

Four hours later at approximately 11pm Ewan returned in the Automobile Club rescue truck with a new tire.  The guy quickly put the new tire on and then we were off.  It turned out there was a lot of road left, more than we had thought and the road was very windy, add to that the dark and our excessive care in case we got a 3rd flat and it was a very slow trip.

It was now that Ewan informed us that the countryside we weren´t seeing ("Valle Hermoso") was the most spectacular of the entire trip, great, just our luck.  This was the salt in the wounds of an otherwise average day.

We picked Katrin up at the service station in Confluencia where she had waited with the attendant (who also lived there) until she had finally convinced him he could leave her to wait alone.  The road from here was beautifully paved and we made good time eventually arriving back at La Bolsa at 1:30am in the morning.

As Ewan had checked out of his hostal he asked for a room only to discover the computer had him booked into a room since he left for the trek four days earlier and that he had in fact been the reason he missed out on a bed the day before.  We all had a good laugh at this before heading to bed for a well deserved rest.