Hi all,
 
First of all, after many (bad) comments about Arthur's moustache, he finally decides to cut it and suddainly looses 10 years...

No moustache version...18 years old Bac version...
 
But let's continue with our story!
 
After the legs are recoverend from the Lanin ascent and, especially, descent, we are ready to continue our adventure.
From San Martin we have 4 options to continue:
Option 1: Continue in Argentina on Road 40 in the wind and the Pampa,
Option 2: Take the pass Mamuil Malal above the Lanin Volcan to join Pucon in Chile,
Option 3: Take the pass Carirrine to join Conaripe in Chile,
Option 4: Take the pass Hua Hum and than a boat to join as well Conaripe.
 
As we know that Ilaria and the decision process have a really bad relationship the perspective is not of the rosest... But hopefully Arthur's objective arguments help to make a choice.
Option 1 would bring us into the windy pampa like in Tierra del fuego but with also hiegher temperature... so option 1 deleted!
Option 2 would bring us on the same, already seen, road and point from which we ascent the lanin volcan so option 2 deleted!
The final competition is between option 3 and 4.
Both seems to be really nice. Arthur feels more for option 3, designated the best by local people. Ilaria, which is in lazy mood, is more for option 4 because of the boat crossing the lake and there for less km.
Hopefully destiny helps us: the boat is broken... we go for option 3!!!
 
From San Martin, 140km of dirt road wait for us.
The road start in zone in between pampa and cordillera on a hilly and very pleasant lanscape.

On the hills close by San Martin de los Andes
 
On a really god quality ripio, the road snakes in between the green cerros.

A really bucolic road
 
But more north it becomes dryer and dryer. In fact we are getting really close to Junin de los Andes which is in reality in the middle of the Pampa!

Are we going in the pampa or into the cordillera?
 
Hopefully we turn left (west) and enter in the Cordillera and just behind the corner...
a wonderful view of the Lanin Volcan wait for us!

In front of us the south face of the Lanin.
 
The landscape changes quickly and the dry hills changes in green mountains and lakes...

And I think to myself....

...what a woooondeeeerfuuuul wooooorld!

Option 3 seems to be the right choice for our...

...happy riders!
 
Lanin National Park was created, among other reasons, to protect a very special tree: the araucaria auracana!

This tree has been declared national monument and it's absolutely forbidden to cut it! It is as well a sacred tree for the Mapuche people which are the only one who has the right to eat the rich brown seeds. This tree is also the house of many birds like the cute green parrotts cachana. Finally this tree is a prehistoric tree existinc since the ages of the dinosaures!!!
Definitely it deserve to be protected !

Riding into an Araucaria forest

Just a last detail about araucaria: they grow veeeeery slow therefore all the trees you see behind Arthur has at least some hundreds years and the eldest reach the thousands years!
 
We also can observe really nice specimen of birds on our road:

Hawk

And...we don't know...but it's nice and definitely not shy!
 
For this day we stop close by the Laguna verde where a very cosy campsite waits for us

Home sweet home.
 
From here we really enter in the cordillera. The trees become bigger and bigger and the pass smaller and smaller.
Here no cars take the risk to ride.

In the middle of giants.
 
After few km, a lava river cross our road!

7.5 km long lava river coming from a 300 years ago eruption of the volcano in the background...

Atmospheric agent had destroyed the flow into millions of stones and this stones years after years will transform, thanks to lichenes and plants, in new soil...but for the moment the landscape is quite surreal...

Walking on the lave.
 
And the vegetation grow slowly on this extreme environment. In thousands of years the forest will recover this lava river as it happen to all the other around us... Basically all the region woods grew above lava!

The forest slowly grow up
 
After this interesting geological pause we continue toward our day goal: cross the pass Carinnine and enter in Chile. Sometimes the slope is so steep that we need to walk and push the bike.

Ila pushing the bike on a steep section, mayday, mayday!!!

Hopefully this kind of section is rare and the most of the time we can easily ride on the bike
 
Now the road is defininitively a small path. Here the clouds gets stucked to the Andes slopes therfore it's a pretty rainy region and the landscape become greener and greener.

Almost at the top of the international pass... Would you say so?!?

Now the summit is really close... 

Here we are!!! Welcome in Cile!!!
 
After the border formalities where police agents "stole" us all our fresh food, we take a rest picking a large provision of wild berries. Here the road sides are constantly full of this fruits which will become part of our daily meal.

Picking up the black berries and stinging fingers.
 
Here the local volcano is the Villarica which has a particularity: it always smokes from the top...
Some geologists suppose that all the volcans of the region "breath" from the Villarica. So if this volcan doesn't smoke it's a bad sign!

The smoking Villarica volcan emblem of the region.
 
In this day we had one of the best quiet and wild ride of the trip...but also one of the worst and busy on!
On the chile side we are not in a park and a lot of tourists come here to enjoy the termal baths. And when there is trafic on dirt road there is dust in the air...A LOT of dust in the air!

Arthur where are you???
 
After a quiet inconfortable down and up hill in the traffic, we finally join Conaripe describe has a quiet and not touristic area in our guide book...but...surprise!

Conaripe beach! the meeting point of half of Chile!

...maybe the people of the Routard guide book should update times to times their documentation...
 
Here we met in one time more people than all around the trip until now.
But hopefully the evening light on the lake is wonderfull and we enjoy our beer looking at the sunset.

Chilean version of Leman Lake....
 
We pitch the tent in a popular campsite where we basically couldn't sleep at all during the whole night because of the new "popularity" of Conaripe... We start to regret the quiteness of the Pampa!

Welcome chez les Bidochons...
 
From here again two options to continue the ride and join Pucon:
Option 1: Busy asphalt road
Option 2: Quiet dirt road
 
No hesitation, option 2 is definitively our choice. We will cross the Villarica national park.
 
On the road we can observe an example af degradation and transformation of a lave flow (remember what we say just few lines before?).

How the lave flow tranform in soil with the time.
 
On our road we plan to visit the Geometricas termal bath. According to the Routard guide this is THE place to visit in the zone (3 backpacks in the description). The pools leads in a deep canyon and all the amenagement has been designed by a famous chilean architect. Also if in fact the entrance is 3 deep km far from the road we decide to visit the termae and take a rest in this place.
Here we are!

At the entrance of the canyon... 

  Footbridges  leads all along the canyon in an exuberant green vegetation.... 

Legs appreciate the relaxation of 35 to 41ºC water.... 

Passing from a pool to another 

We are one of the only few foreigners.
 
After this relaxing afternoon we continue our road and enter in the Villarica national park.
At the entrance a pannel indicates:
Bad road, transit only for pedestrians. Where are we going???

At the entrance of the Villarica national park.
 
Here we discover a very pleasant path where we must use our mountain biking skills...

At the beginning flat with few roots...

...then steep and more roots.... 

...river crossing section....
 
It's hard but the atmosphere is fantastic in the middle of millenary trees....

Ride in the shadow.... 
 
And araucarias!

Giants araucarias...
 
At the top of the park, we "take a rest" doing a smal 2 hours trekking in the forest till where the trees leave the space to the nude ground of the slope of Villarica volcano.

The strange araucaria bark. 

Above the forest 

The unique silhouette of araucarias.
 
From here it's down hill until Pucon and other surprises wait for us:

Ready for the half pipe?

I go but I'm afraid...

The last obstacle of this funny ride

Visiting the Lum official waterfall China (not the country...but LumaChina)

The 75m waterfall and the 1.60m hobbit...

To arrive just in time for Arthur's Birthday in Pucon town!

I have no more breath to blow out the candels.
 
After this wonderful section between San Martin de los Andes and Pucon the travel is now changing. Many roads, a lot of trafic, a lot of tourists....Whats more we are the 15th of february who conrespond to the 15th of august in europe...the worst period to take holydays.
A friend who did a bike tour in this region told us before we leaved:
"One day the Patagonie finishes...we never recover from the disappointment..."
We feel now something similar.
From here many cyclist take the bus and change totally region.
Others takes the Panamericana Highway to join quickly Santiago.
There are very few informations about cycling in this region...
We have the option to visit small others beautiful national parks on the north close to the cordillera.
We don't want to take any bus in our travel therfore we will continue by bike, but to accept the end of the Patragonie we need to change totally atmosphere and landscape.
Final decison: the Pacific ocean coast, but only after a wonderful breakfast!!!

Buon appetito and good luck!