Having crossed the border we arrived in San Martin de los Andes. A very Pretty town with many wooden cabin style buildings, you could make the mistake of thinking you were in Switzerland or Austria. Here we did a couple of walks up the hillsides by the lake, nothing strenuous just taking in the scenery of the surrounding mountains and the lake. Also, we did a boatride out to a small place called Quila Quina, where we took a picnic, which we enjoyed at various waterfall and beach stops on the circuit walk around the village. As we wanted to go to the city of Bariloche next we decided to do the famous 7 lakes drive there with a tour company who agreed that we could take our backpacks with us and get out at Bariloche instead of returning to San Martin. The drive was amazing especially with all the Autumn colours on the trees. As it was a tour we had time to get out the minibus and enjoy the scenery of all the lakes, although it would have been nice to stay longer at some of the lakes. Bariloche was a bigger town than San Martin, and although people do rave about it (it is in a nice setting of large lake and surrounding mountains), I think we were a bit mountain and laked out. It was Bariloches 104th anniversary and there were many parades and events on so for the 2 days we were there we stayed in the town and watched these instead of doing the treks and tours. We could have stayed longer I suppose but it was time we moved on out of the lake district and further north (we still need to see Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador and we are now over halfway through our 8 months). We have to admit the lake district in Chile and Argentina (especially Chile) was absolutely stunning, I think the autumn colours enhanced the beauty and we counted ourselves lucky we saw it at this time of year. Leaving the lake district was a bit sad but if you didn't watch yourself you could easily spend a few months here. One thing I need to add is about our brilliant landlady at Bariloche. When we arrived there Donna mentioned that there was a good hostal she had read about so we decided to try there. When we arrived there we thought we had the wrong place as it looked like someones house and there wasn't a sign outside, but we knocked all the same and a little frail old lady came to the door. It turned out that she ran this hostel, which was a house in the back of her very pretty garden that she rented 3 room from. Apparently, she came from Slovakia and had travelled the world in the 50's, she had visited London in 1957. It turned out to be a great place to stay and really cheap. Anyway, our next stop was to be Mendoza (the wine region, hurrah!!!) but it was to be a 19 hr coach journey.