Total Miles Traveled: 10,380
San Martin de los Andes borders Lago Lacar in el Parque Nacional Lanin, an enormous national park stretching from Bariloche in the south to a town called Alumine in the north and covering over 1 million acres. Since the locals say take the boat tour, that’s just what we did. It cost about 160 pesos per person ($40USD) and took most of the day – we thought it was well worth our time. Note that the tour guides don’t translate to English, but we understood bits and pieces with our basic Spanish skills.
Lago Lacar is a remarkably calm lake – so calm and clear that the water looks like jello; so zen, that you could stare at it for hours, medidate, and then get a speedboat to wakeboard through it… though, that hasn’t quite caught on here yet. Maybe it’s because the water is super cold (the lake was formed by a glacier after all). And yet, there was a tour agency promoting scuba dives off a small platform at the edge of the lake. Anyway, check out the reflections off the water:
The boat stopped at several destinations, including a 30 minute uphill hike to the Cascadas Chachin. They rated the hike as medium skill – it definitely gets your heart pumping:
And a stop at Hua Hum, near the Chilean border where we met a couple of territorial geese with insatiable appetites that we named “Homer” and “Marge”. These guys “honked” as we stepped off the boat (translated “feed me, moneybags”), would hiss like a snake if the dogs on the beach got near them (translated “get the f*ck away from me”), and then honk again if a human or dog got near the water which was their home (translated “oh hell no”).
And then again, you could get hypnotized by the water:
Before returning back to San Martin:
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