Day 53 - we're going on a lake hunt...

San Martin de los Andes to camping by a beautiful lake (50km) 1000m of ascent (standard these days!!)

Sunday 23rd October

After a fairly terrible night sleep, we allowed ourselves a slightly lazy morning. I left Ant sleeping and went for a wonder around this beautiful ski town to find a supermarket and stock up. A lovely peaceful stroll at 9am on a Sunday and the town half asleep, but it was beautiful and thankfully had a very large well stocked supermarket - brilliant - we might be camping the next couple of days so good to stock up.

We hit the road around lunchtime and realised just how beautiful the outskirts of this town are. Wonderful lake surrounded by beautiful snow topped mountains. Absolutely stunning.
And good job too, the way our legs were feeling we were going to need to keep our eyes busy to help our mind shut out the burn. Man we were feeling the hours we put in yesterday and our legs were just plain refusing to exist!

Our day started with a 700m climb over 17km and really tested our legs. They were simply empty! But wow, what views were were treated to. There were so many cyclists out on the roads too, unloaded, fast, speedy road-type chaps (not so many chapesses!), but nice to see our kindred spirits out and about.

So our day chugged on, stopping at miradores to look at the views, snacking in glorious vistas, and wondering when our legs would wake up!
Once the hill went away, the head winds kicked in (of course!), but we didn't mind too much, the views were still lakey, mountainy, and stunning. We would also most likely be camping tonight so it was simply a case of whatever we get done today, we don't have to do tomorrow. We were aiming for anything between 50 and 80km to make tomorrow more palatable, but at the rate our legs were spinning even getting to 40 would be an achievement!

We were now cycling the rolling lake district, on tarmac roads (thank you!!),   back up to over 1000m altitude - hello lungs, and feeling like we were cycling more and more into the middle of nowhere.

Once we'd passed our 50km target we decided to let the campsites (or lack thereof) dictate our distance.

An wow. We stumbled across a "free campsite" - an area in the national park set aside for camping, fires and all other activities otherwise banned in this beautiful region. And what a beautiful spot it was!

We didn't care that it didn't have any facilities, nature had provided a beautiful lake (and fairly ice cold - thanks snow melt!) - for us to freshen up in, and there was just about enough wood around to collect and make a fire.
It was quite simply the most glorious camp spot I think I've ever stayed in. Stunning.