We've arrived!

We're here! Yesterday Mom, Dad, and I arrived in San Martín de los Andes. We flew into Bariloche, and when I woke up as we were landing, my first thought was that it looked like Eastern Washington -- that high, sagebrush desert after the pine trees run out, like between Wenatchee and The Gorge. Then, as we drove the 2 1/2 hours to San Martín de los Andes, the landscape changed from vast, Montana-like valleys, to forests-meet-lake like when you're passing Lake Crescent on the 101 on the way to the Hoh Rainforest, to the 138 along the Umpqua River, to that jungle episode of Planet Earth, the one with the monkeys and the figs. The camino we took was called Camino Siete Lagos, and sure enough, we passed seven lakes that look like they were carved out by glaciers. Trees ran straight down to the edge of the water, and the lake-edges were surprisingly free of cabins.

San Martín de los Andes looks like a Swiss village. Very green, perched at the edge of a lake, with those plaster-and-wood façades, like the Elizabethan Theater. The view from my window looks kind of like Ashland:



It is warm and sunny here, but windy. I had forgotten what it was like to feel the sun on my skin, and to have the sun set at 9:00pm. We're at about 41 degrees South right now, so we get a good amount of daylight.

Tomorrow we leave for a three-day fishing trip.

By the way, I fit an enormous amount of stuff in my backpack, which weighs 43 pounds. All I can say is that compression sacks are the greatest thing ever invented. Check out the before and after shots: