Our first rainy morning gives lakeside San Martin the air of an English Bank Holiday. Our small historic inn has the usual eclectic mix of old furniture, the door falls off my bedside table, the switch on the end of my bedside lamp at the end of a long hanging wire I've not seen since my brother got a shock from one 50 years ago. He still has a scar from the burn. I use it cautiously.
Another pharmacy visit for lingering wheezy coughs and Martin's back. The dour elderly pharmacist disapproves of my request for a steroid inhaler and recommends an expectorant. Quaint, old-fashioned, ineffective. £15 for the negotiated inhaler (without the required prescription) and 20x400mg ibuprofen. He is the only Argentinian who won't take US dollars. Another lecture, on the evils of the exchange rate racket and not travelling with the correct currency. I explain that it is impossible to get pesos outside Argentina, but he's miserable enough so I don't add it's because they are worthless and nobody wants them including most of his compatriots.

The road to San Martín de los Andes airport is long, narrow, uninhabited, no airport signs, we pass a golf resort (hard to imagine where they hide the golf course in the scrubland and low hills) and finally a tiny sign for the airport down a narrow drive. The smallest we have ever used (save perhaps Leeds/Bradford c1966). Two and a half hours pre-flight it is deserted bar a few security police. Two hrs to departure passengers start to arrive and staff set up the usual check-in paraphernalia, it starts to look like an airport rather than empty barn. We pay £1.50pp departure fee at a small booth, 2 women stamp and staple the paperwork no-one will look at.

An hour later a plane arrives on the runway in the flat scrub between the hills. Someone finally strolls in to take our hire car back. He knows nothing of the drop-off fee and wants no payment. When we get back we will see if the blank credit card slips left in Bariloche were used and for how much. Two young pilots run down the stairway and stretch out on the small apron, long hair and short sleeve shirts flapping in the breeze. A bird-like elderly lady asks nobody in particular if this is the plane for Buenos Aires. Another laughs, 'of course, it's the only one!' Presumably the airport is busier in the ski season and has a government subsidy.