Pucon to St martin de los Andes

Pete was up early this morning taking photographs of the sunrise over the lake.
Afterwards he finally managed to get the Netbook to connect to wifi, so was able to upload the blog.
The cars were glistening with frost early morning, but it melted away before we left.  The bird life is interesting and noisy at times, the swifts were swooping around last evening and again this morning.

Went down for breakfast at 08:30; a varied buffet complete with a warm apple pie and some petits cadeaux which would have delighted Amandine and Charlie!



We stopped en route as the Villerica volcano was cloudless and emitting some puffs of steam.  The outside temperature was 11 degrees when this photo was taken at about 10:30.
When we arrived at Curarrehue, the last town in Chile, it had dropped to 8 degrees.  The Mapuche museum was full of a school party so we had a quick look and then warmed up with the cheapest cup of coffee in Chile - around 60p - and had a wander around the village.

The bus shelters and small kiosks were all made out of lava rock.



We carried on through fantastic scenery in unbroken sunshine on unmade roads, which were all subject to roadworks  We took a photo of the Quetrupillan volcano in the national park and the Lanin volcano at the Chilean customs post.


The road was so bad that we nearly damaged the undercarriage driving out of the viewpoint and we had to keep our distance because of the dust that was thrown up by the impatient drivers who overtook us.  We duly went through Immigration and Customs at the Chilean border control and completed the forms for the Argentine border, which was 1.9 km away, not 19 km as stated in our guide.  The scenery on the Argentine side of the border was much flatter with rolling hills reminiscent of English countryside with cattle horses and sheep, one of which decided to walk in front of the car.
We crossed  a rickety wooden plank bridge across the river Malleo (our guide suggested there was a village, but we just found roadworks).
We arrived at St Martin de los Andes with no idea of the location of our hotel, so we stopped for a hot chocolate and delicious gateau to ask the way!
Arrived at the hotel and whilst Pete was parking the car, the Aliwen incoming agents phoned to check that we had arrived safely and received our vouchers.  temperature here on arrival at about 16:30 was 15 degrees. The trip had taken about 7 hours of leisurely driving and frequent photo stops.
We had expected to change our watches, but Argentine time and Chilean summertime are the same!