After a couple very active days in both the Argentinian and Chilean side of the Andean lake district, both of us needed a couple days of relaxation, so we chose San Martin de Los Andes about 3 hours north of Bariloche to lay low for a couple days We had been there for a couple of hours a week before when we had done the 7 lake drive with Jeff and Ramona and we both fell in love with it. It would be a perfect spot for our 'holiday from our holiday'. Spoilt!

We took a 4 hour bus from Pucon to San Martin and arrived mid afternoon. San Martin is almost a mini Bariloche with it's lakeside setting. It is set at the foot of snow capped mountains and along a most beautiful still lake. The town itself is made up of quaint streets lined with restaurants, ice cream parlours, chocolate shops, clothing and souvenir stores and hundreds of hotels and logged cabin accommodation. We came across a beautiful wood panelled self catering complex around 70m from the lake. We expected it to be way out of our price range but noticed an Israeli flag outside so thought we would give our Hebrew a chance to score us a good deal. And wouldn't you know, it worked!!! The owner, an Israeli 60-something, George was very accommodating and gave us a huge unit with a double bed, kitchenette, clean en suite bathroom, couch, satellite TV and patio. After staying in hostels for the last few weeks, sharing bedrooms, bathrooms and kitchens, it was a great change and a needed one.

We stocked out our little kitchenette with groceries and spent eh next 3 days sleeping in, eating fabulous home cooked meals, walking around town, playing cards and watching moveis. The town has a surprisingly large and well stocked casino which we ventured into on one of the nights. We both entered a round of 4 Bingo games but didn't realise until after we paid that we might struggle slightly seeing as though we DONT SPEAK SPANISH!!! Luckily the numbers were shown on a screen and it actually helped us learn our numbers. But when Jeff got a line of 4 and didn't know whether he had won or not, the lack of Spanish caused him to lose out on a prize....a dream catcher.... that would have come in very useful!

We had a flight scheduled from Bariloche to Buenos Aires on the 16th of October so we headed from our San Martin haven to Bariloche via bus and arrived at the airport about 6 hours early. Luckily, on checking in, the attendant got us onto an earlier flight so we were highly chuffed at our luck. Our mission to find a hostel late on a Saturday night in BA was not quite as smooth. We headed straight to the hostel we had stayed in during our first stay in BA but they were unfortunately fully booked. Standing outside the hostel with all our luggage at 11:00pm, a strange foreign women approached us and with no apparent motive pulled us around from place to place trying to help us find a room. She was quite forceful and we couldn't manage to shake her for a while and eventually had to be quite stern and gave her the slip. We spent close to an hour marching the streets of BA in the middle of the night looking for a place to stay and when we eventually did, we both sank straight into bed.

We were lucky to wake up to beautiful day on our last day in Argentina. So we headed off to the Recoleta area. I ventured into the famous Recoleta cemetery all alone as Jeff is a Cohen. The cemetery is completely different to any one I have ever seen. I imagined a large open green space with tombstones and trees which just happened to be the place that Eva Peron was buried and that is what made it such a popular tourist destination. However, it couldn't have been further from the picture I had in my mind. The cemetery looked like a small village in that it is made up of long grid-like streets along which, huge family mausoleums have been constructed that house the coffins and ashes of relatives from nearly a decade back to the present. Each mausoleum is bigger and more extravagant than the next, some with huge pillars and mosaiced domes. Walking along the 'streets', you can look into the glass-doored constructions to see the coffins and urns - quite eerie.

We walked around the market that is set up in the large park area outside the cemetery on the weekends. We stumbled onto the 'Flower Buenos Aires' which is a 18 ton sculpture of a 5-petalled flower, that during the day is open and at night, using hydraulics closes its petals to resemble a flower bud. A little way away is a lawned hill where we lay for the afternoon and soaked in the sun surrounded by the BA locals drinking their mate. We enjoyed the sunset at a an outdoor café watching some local tango dancers and cappuccinos. A great way to spend our last evening in Argentina.... or so we thought then...

Our around the world ticket included a flight to Santa Cruz, Bolivia via Santiago. So, off we headed to the international airport in BA at 6:30pm leaving ourselves plenty of time to make our 10:00pm flight to Santiago. We head straight to the check-in only to be told that not only had our flight CHANGED AIRPORTS but had also changed times to 9:00pm so there was no way we were going to make it on our scheduled flight. We tried to get on to the waiting list for a flight leaving from the airport we were at but typically, two other flights to Santiago had been cancelled that day so the flight was completely booked. Needless to say we were in a bit of a state seeing as though as far as we knew, our connection to Santa Cruz was at 6:00am the next day and the next flight into Santiago was at 2:30pm...8.5hours later!!! But - we had no choice but to take the later flight... our only consolation was that as well as out flight out of BA being changed, our flight to Santa Cruz had also been delayed by 15hours and it meant that even though we missed our first flight we hadn't lost any time. It just meant an enormously long time in the BA airport - 18hours to be exact. So sitting at McDonalds, walking around aimlessly, reading, playing cards and sleeping on solid marble slabs was the real way we spent our last evening in Argentina.