To get to San Martin de los Andes you need to take what is called "The 7 Lakes Route" billed as the most beautiful drive in the world. Really. But if you are heading for Argentina's most expensive town, then the road has to be more than just a scenic drive! What was surprising was that it looked like how Bariloche was described. Here was Switzerland in Argentina. Maybe this was Bariloche before their town planners lost all sense of perspective?

This place is reputed to the most expensive place in the whole of Argentina. Was it because the elite came here? Or was it because of the prices that the elite came here? Since we are the elite, we couldn't decide. So we decided to spend a few days here and find out. Nice! Bread and water was just what I was feeling like for the next few days!

Even the campsite was more expensive than anywhere else we had been too. Was it likely that the elite jet set would be seen dead in an Automobile Club of Argentina campsite and pay these prices?! I think not, but places have reputations to uphold.....and besides, where anywhere else in the world can you pay for a campsite with a credit card? We have been around a bit, and yet to have this service offered anywhere but here! Go figure?

Perhaps the most authentic Argentinean cultural icon we saw in the whole time we were in San Martin was not the old London Routemaster bus parked on the main street, or the two storey Irish pub on the far corner called Dublin or hearing the Spanish speaking Argentinean Irish band busking on the late night street; but rather the gaucho, his horse and his dog that we very briefly spotted as we left one little town between San Martin and Villa de Angostura and they went off in the opposite direction.

Sitting very erect on his white horse and a sheep skin saddle laden with all his gear and his faithful dog trotting at his horse's feet, he was fierce eyed, black moustached and very proud, in the small of his back was a symbol of his heritage, the facon, upon his head was the black beret and on his legs were the calf high back leather boots with his trousers tucked in.

With the reins lightly held in one hand and the other upon his hip, it seemed, to me at least, that somewhere the Argentinean earth had risen up and moulded this man, his horse and his dog into the image that is sheared into my mind's eye. To call this man, his horse and dog a walking advertisement for Argentina would merely cheapen everything that he was; that they were. Here was the ancient land; all its history, beauty, ruggedness, remoteness, timelessness, passion and vitality made manifest and personified. He, and they, represented something very real, substantial and whose image stirred something very visceral and fundamental deep in the chest somewhere behind the heart. Although it was just a brief glimpse, it was very powerful to behold. Maybe more so in retrospect?

It was here that a certain joke made a lot more sense. How does an Argentinean commit suicide? By jumping off his ego! In the campsite bathroom, the blokes would spend as much time grooming themselves, unashamedly, as the girls(when we first noticed this, Ing and I compared times!) and these South American girls have a reputation to uphold, you know!

In a town like this one, it seemed as if there was a lot of stuff in the window, but not a lot in the room behind (as the Dalai Lama says) and there was a lot of image and not a lot of substance. It seem like the Argies were very self-obsessed, self-absorbed and only interested in how cool they looked. If you were not one of the group, then you didn't really exist and therefore, you were never considered.

But since our time in Argentina was becoming shorter and shorter, we decided that here was a place to enjoy the beach and do a little people watching and get that last bit of sun. Who knew when we might have a chance to get to the beach before Brazil in a few months time? Luckily we did spend a day on a lakeside beach because the next day it just poured with rain!

Thankfully it was our last night in a tent for a good little while, because no matter how much you love camping, it is no fun breaking camp in the rain and mud! Especially when the mud sticks to everything and you just get wetter and wetter and more and more miserable! Especially knowing that you have a 22hr double bus journey ahead of you!

Bring it on!