Argentina

November 6-29, 2009

November 20: Ruta de los Siete Lagos: San Martín de los Andes

San Martín de los Andes was stunning. From the moment we arrived it seemed that the clouds parted and the sun and blue skies shone on the town. As one of the most popular tourist destinations in Argentina, we decided to stop and have lunch here. We parked the car and to the kids' great surprise and delight, we started spotting a whole bunch of classic cars with numbers on them... it seemed the "chitty chitty bang bang" race was passing right through town! Armed with our guidebook and its dining suggestion we headed to Ku restaurant. We were the only guests and managed to get a seat facing the road where we could watch the race cars go by while we waited for our food. The food was delicious... Rubby had the fish (since fishing seems to be very popular here). The kids shared some of our food and also had some empanadas.

We never did see chitty again, but with our bellies full of yummy food we decided to walk down the main strip a bit and check out some of the touristy stores, especially the artisanal chocolate store! We also walked by a Havanna store, famous for its alfajores. Rubby noticed that they served sumarinos so we *had* to try one. A "submarine" is a glass of hot milk with a long piece of chocolate on the side. You submerse the chocolate (aka the submarine) into the hot milk where it melts and creates a chocolate milk drink. Quite simple really. We read about it on a travel blog and wanted to try it. But when the chocolate didn't really mix with the milk we started to doubt whether we were doing it right, and the waiter staring at us didn't really help our confidence any. But it tasted delicious along with the alfajores so in the end it was all good. (We did actually check with Christine when we got back to Buenos Aires and yes, we did do it right!)

San Martín de los Andes nestled in among the mountains right at the end of Lago Lacar.