Barriloche is one of those places where you can either run round like a mad house doing every possible activity or it's a fab place to sit and relax. I chose option 2. After a restful sleep in my lakeside cabin, we caught a bus into the metropolis and had yet another wonderful steak meal for lunch - Bife de Chorizo, 4 or so cm thick, yummy. As it was a Sunday, town was pretty quiet so it was back to the bus stop and a drive back to the camp site.

Monday was similar with regards to a sleep in, and then it was off to see how the town buzzed on a week day. I booked myself in for a massage (which had been a long time coming and well deserved!) and then headed off for a quick bite. The massage was the best 13 pounds I'd spent in a while. "Mas fuerte" (harder) was the order of the day as the masseuse tried to work the knots out of my back that had been caused by hours of sitting on the lovely truck.

Afterwards, it was a short skip and a jump to the chocolate shop - Barriloche is renowned for the fine delicacy and I can see why. The chocolate was totally divine and I tried as hard as possible not to scoff it all in one go.

Drive time again. It's off to Chile for the umpteenth time. I have a couple of passport pages covered in Argentinean and Chilean stamps from all the times we've had to cross. Our destination is Pucon.

Once again it's a long drive day, mostly to do with the amount of time we have to spend at the border. Luckily there is only one other truck in front of us, because another two pull in behind us at the Chilean border. We have to lug our big back packs out for inspection again and with a total of four trucks all having to go through the same process, it takes about three hours for us to get through customs. Finally we're back on board and heading for Pucon. The one nice thing about the border is that it was directly under one of the many amazing volcanoes that Chile has.

Pucon is one of those sweet little towns that are based around tourism. It has a small town feel, but still lots to do (if you are fit and able!). While most of the others book in time to climb Villarica (a gigantic volcano that looms over the town), I forced myself into booking another massage. Unfortunately for the others, due to weather conditions, their trip was postponed till the following day, so it was a day of mucking around for most people. This time round my massage was done on the softly softly approach and really relaxing.

Later on, there was a paintball challenge against Elle (the other Drago truck). They were three people down, so Jill, Ben and I jumped ship and joined Elle. It was a fairly fun evening in between guns jamming and being shot in the rear, possibly by friendly fire. I managed to shoot a few people, although some took a bit more convincing that I had actually shot them, eventually they caved. The Amber crew shouted Cheats, but Elle managed to win the evening with a bit of cunning and we went home victorious.

That evening after the paintballing, we were given a bit of a show by Villarica. You could clearly see lava being splurted out of the mouth of the volcano. To be so close to something that was so powerful and unpredictable was amazing. The town itself had an alarm system for the volcano. It was sounded at 12pm each day and there was a colour coded light system, similar to the Defcon Alarm that the Americans have.

Day two of Pucon saw the others reach the heady heights of the lava gushing volcano, whilst those cripples amongst us became ladies what lunched. I did manage to go for a walk down to the lake, which was fairly misty, but at least it saw me outside of the house for a bit.

Once the others returned, we all had to chip in and clean the truck before it began it's new leg in Santiago. We were on inside the truck duty, which meant attempting to get in ground sand from the seats and cleaning the windows. It wasn't quite "you could eat off it" clean, but it was in a respectable state by the end. There was a slight mishap when it was discovered that Di's chocolates and presents for her children and grandson had gone AWOL. All was not lost though as one of the other couples had accidently claimed because they had a similar package.

That night we went for a bit of a dip in some local thermal springs. It was a fantastic way to end a relaxing few days.

Tomorrow, we end our tour by driving to Santiago.