Yet again we awaited the suns arrival on the tent before getting up and as the lake mist lifted the views across Lago Espejo Chico were beautiful.Once packed away we soon warmed up with the 3km ascent back onto the main ruta de los siete lagos. It wasn't long before we were back on tarmac and enjoying beautiful views across more lakes if not sometimes fleeting as we sped past on the now smooth road surface.
Within 20km we had joined a much more main road and cycling wasn't quite as enjoyable as we had to contend with fast cars and buses as they made their way to and from the Argentine/ Chilean border. We were heading eastwards, away from the border towards Villa la Angostura. We stopped at a couple of busy viewpoints on our way to the town. The views were across Lago Nahuel Huapi and were beautiful but slightly spoiled by the number of people and cars stopped at them.
At Villa la Angostura we encountered our first queue of traffic for a long time passing through some roadworks on the entrance to the town. The cycle lane wasn't much better as it was full of slow moving, oblivious school kids on their way home for their siesta. A couple of days previously we'd been invited and given a map for a couples house in town where they invited us to stay and use their garden, kitchen and shower. Again a really nice reflection of Argentine hospitality as we'd only met them for a few minutes by one of the other lakes and only had a very broken conversation in Spanish with them. It was however still relatively early in the day and we hadn't covered many miles yet today and weren't that bothered about exploring Villa la Angostura, as it just seemed like a busy touristy town, so we decided to continue onwards.
Leaving the town we had one of our few run ins with Argentine traffic. A coach obviously in a hurry to meet a timetable squeezed pass Gareth as we cycled single file and clouted him on the back of his head with his wing mirror. I was in front and cursed the coach driver as left me untouched but passed far too close. Realising Gareth wasn't right we stopped and although shaken thankfully there was no harm done. We cycled onwards, really not enjoying being back on a busy road after our weeks of solitude and infrequent traffic. Thankfully after a respectable distance travelled for the day we saw signposts to a quiet campsite on the lakeside. We pretty much had the site to ourselves and at the request for hot showers the fire under the water tank was lit and we were able to chill out and forget about busy roads.
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