Ruta de los 7 lagos (January 10 to 19)

We followed the river "Futaleufu" upstream coming from Chile to Argentina.

On the Argentinian side the river is used for a huge water reservoir for electricity production by means of a dam, the "Presa General San Martin" or "Embalse Amutui Quimei" in the mapuche language.

For bringing down the water from the lake to the machine house with the turbines and generators a massive tube with a diameter of approx. 3m is connecting two mountain peaks in which tunnels are drilled.

From there we went to the cities of Trevelin and Esquel, mainly for finding places to refill our gas bottles, which was finally successful in Esquel. In this area it starts with skiing resorts besides Ruta 40 and we went to one, "La Hoya", even it was summertime then. La Hoya is covering 14 km of slopes in a height of around 1400-2100 meters above sea level. It was quite interesting to see the chairlifts, which seem to be from the 1990`s and while taking a hike to the first section station, one could see another example of waste deposit a la Argentinian style: parts of the piste bullies are just dropped in the adjacent forest, even creating kind of an industrial outdoor museum.

While staying some time around La Hoya a new technical issue with the car appeared, mainly because of the vibration and hits on the gravel stretches before. Some plastic damping elements for the sliding door went to pieces. Luckily, we brought from earlier times while taking walks at the east coast some "spare parts". In this case it was kind of hydraulic tube, which cuted into pieces served as a substitute.

The following trial to get some real spare parts turned out to be an instructive experience in automotive buisness in Argentina. Most spare parts dealers were considering the self made replacement as totally sufficient, especially because the original parts would be 3 times more expensive than in Europe and it could last days our weeks for them to be delivered. Finally, the self made version is still in place and works fine since some thousands of kilometers. After that we came to the "Ruta de los 7 Lagos", with cities like "El Bolson" and "San Carlos de Bariloche". Amongst travelers and locals these cities are always mentioned to be so nice (que lindo!) and worth visiting. However, to us they were just totally overcrowded places, where backpackers are queuing meters outside the tourist information, you have to take care about your personal belongings, and the chance of getting tricked is very high.

Therefore we left these cities as quick as possible behind us and stayed for 4 nights at a "camping libre" at one of the lakes. As it was summer holidays also the camping sites were quite frequented, but it was a nice insight in the Argentinian way of spending their vacations. Two ingredients are a must: Mate and wood fire, the latter also needed for heating the water for mate. Directly from the campsite we took a really nice hike to "Cerro Falkner" (2268 m). From there we had a fantastic view to the lakes, the mountain panorama, and the volcanos in the distance located at the border between Argentina and Chile.

After these beautiful days at the lakes, again we skipped more cities like "San Martin de los Andes" and "Junin de los Andes" because of overcrowding from tourists. Some kilometers after "Junin de los Andes" we left Ruta 40 and turned to west into direction of volcano Lanin and the Chilean border.