Leaving Pucon on an early bus turned out to be an amazing experience in itself, despite the fact that it was way to early to be awake. We rode out of town toward the border through the valleys of beautiful mountains covered in lush green pine tree forrests, crystal blue coloured lakes, low flying clouds and a picture perfect volcano. It was like a scene out of a movie. It took us to our last border crossing that we would make on this trip. It was sad (because it meant our trip was finishing soon), yet very exciting as border crossings... well... they suck. Anyway we got through it rather painlessly and quick which was suprising and a couple hours later we hopped off and had a short layover for a connecting bus going north to Neuquen.

Aboard our new bus, we were 5 hours into a 6 hour ride and we thought to check the address of our hotel so we were ready when we got off the bus... It was at this moment that we realised that we had made the biggest mistake of our 8 month trip. We thought we were off to the city of Neuquen, but turns out that Neuquen was the Province (state). s***!!!! We then sat, angry and frustrated in the Neuquen bus terminal for 3 hours until the next bus that would take us back the same exact same direction we came and the next morning we ended up an hour south of where we changed busses the day before! Finally, 20 hours after leaving Pucon (it should have been 5!) we checked into our hotel in San Martin de Los Andes, Neuquen.

After months of staying in hostels, we again were lucky enough to stay in a nice hotel with an awesome discount gained through my awesome parents. We spent seven days here in San Martin relaxing in the hotel's facilities and cooking for ourselves in our own kitchen (restaurants here are not cheap!). The weather for the week was not the best as it was quite cold, windy and overcast for the majority of our time here. Besides the hotel, our reasons for going here were not for any major sites or activities, but to chill out, exercise a little, eat good food and to enjoy a little luxury. So with that said, I can't go on much more about our time here. The streets were beautiful with pine tree wood buildings that you see in ski resort towns (there are ski fields close, but not in season unfortunately), loads of boutique shops, nice restuarants and loads of chocolate shops (turns out the Lakes District is chocolate and beer central... we're home!). It is a quant little town sitting on a beautiful lake and a great place to just..... rellaaaaaaxxxxxxxx.