San Martin de los Andes, Argentina

It was Tim’s first day in San Martin de Los Andes so we figured we would just stay in town today and explore the city. It’s a small town with only a couple of main streets but it was cozy. The town feels like a resort town that was probably a hot spot in the 90s but little has been done to update it since then.  We were also between summer and winter seasons, so that probably didn't help either. We had a slow start to the day but ended up walking around town at lunch time. The stores were typical tourist shops for a little ski town..  Tim and I went to one of the sporting good tours and one of the guys who worked there was following us around. It felt weird but after we left the store we realized that the store was actually closed and they were waiting for the last people to leave to store (us).  Oops.  After we left the store, we all met up and decided to head back to the resort to change into our hiking gear. There was a mirador that wasn’t too far from the resort and provided a cool view of the lake and San Martin. It was tougher than we thought (Jenny attempted a run but it got pretty steep so it quickly became a hike) at once we got to the top of the trail, we had to pay 10ARS to get to the mirador (lame.  I wish they would have told us that at the beginning of the hike.  Good thing we had money on us). The view was pretty good and we wandered around the top of a bit. On the way down we decided to take a different path and got a little lost, but but we eventually connected back to the trail down. Once we got back we figured it was a good time to try some of the Argentinian wine from Mendoza before going to dinner. Since this was our first real night with Tim, we decided to get some real Argentinian parilla. We picked Don Florencio and it did not disappoint. Tim and I got the ribeyes and Jenny got the sirloin topped with a Malbec red wine sauce. Both were super tasty. We got some grilled veggies and some potatoes to go along with our steaks and all were quiet good. After dinner, we were tired and just went back, relaxed and watched some bad HBO movies before going to bed.

*****
Lodging: Rincon de los Andes
Restaurants: Don Florencio