(La Ruta de los Siete Lagos) The Drive

After breakfast at a cafe airing a painfully detailed talk-show  breakdown of the security details of Barack's pending visit to Bariloche this week  (stop stealing our vacation ideas OBAMA), we left San Martin to enjoy the Seven Lakes drive. The pictures are self-evident; we had an amazing time visiting lakes Lacar, Hermosa and otherwise seeing lakes Machonico, Villarino, Faulkner, Correntoso and Esejo.

But as is common on vacations, all was not entirely smooth.

First, we took a detour to visit Villa Traful, which all told took about 60km of driving down a sometimes jarring dirt road, especially when you are in a Renault Clio, which is akin to driving a tin can with wheels.  At one point about 15 km into the drive we caught up to a truck that looked like it was about to stall out on a steep hill, until it without warning dumped a pile of dirt right in front of us, entirely blocking the road. Now parked on the hill we thought our journey was over, until a road leveler came around a blind corner and forced us to retreat backwards down the hill. But, within about 2 minutes that driver turned a pile of dirt into a new road that we drove over, continuing on to the villa (which is  stunningly beautiful).

Second, after leaving Villa Traful hours behind our schedule, we finally returned to paved road only to find traffic, of which there ordinarily is none out here, stopped dead and people mingling in the highway. The cause ended up being a protest that blocked all traffic, apparently with the help or tacit support of the federal police. 

Third, after getting to our lake front rental in Bariloche hours late (did I mention that we have full lake access and views from our rental? because we do) we realized that we needed to hustle to get to the market before it's imminent closing. Unfortunately, "the dogs" had other ideas. As soon as we left the gate of our rental, our car was essentially encircled by dogs that were throwing their bodies in front of our car. Rather than run over a dog fifteen minutes after visiting this neghborhood, we ended up parked on the street until the builder of our rental came driving by and showed us how to get out - which is to drive through them, let them chase you to a busy highway and hope (or don't hope) that they aren't run over.

And last, I lost my debit card which created some challenges at dinner, which like most places only takes cash. But now I can cross "leaving dinner at an argentine restaurant to take out a cash advance" off my bucket list.