Monday, January 30, 2012

San Martin de Los Andes, Argentina 14-16 Jan 2012


The journey from Pucon, Argentina to San Martin, Chile took 5 hours. I arrived at this beautiful Lake Lalog Julio my host picked me up, his house is 4km from town situated at the hill side with the view of the valley. A perfect place for retirement! At 50 he has retired from his job, he was working with IBM for the past 20 years as an architect. As we both are from the IT world, we had great conversation about technology. :-) He now retired and enjoy life fishing and playing golf. What a life! I am working towards it. :-)

He had planned for fishing the next day with his boat, we met his friends at the lake around noon, first we stopped at a beach to setup our picnic table. There we were not allowed to set any camp fire with a huge warning sign but Julio said they do it all the time. We had asado, beer, wine and choripan. The water in the lake was cold, Julio has brought his mask, wetsuit and fins for me to snorkel but I chicken out. :-)

After a great lunch, we went fishing with the boat. They called it Fly Fishing, there were many type of colorful bates that looks like insets. It depends on the season, the trout has a specific favour of different insets at different time of the day and year. We attached 2 type of fishing line to the rode, the first 1 meter is the transparent floating line and follow with the dark color sinking line. We have to cast our line near to the shore where the trout used to live. We were 4 of us on the boat, Julio was at the front casting his line, one drive the boat and Puky and I was trawling at the back. Julio was the one that caught most of the trout. He was casting the line like an expert. I caught one at the end, but most part of the fishing was waiting and waiting. I was just enjoying the sun and the landscape around the lake. We released all the trout we caught back to the lake, if we want to keep the fish, only one fish is allowed per licensed. This is a good way to control the population of the trout in the lake. Fishing reminds me of my dad, he is the expert at home. I remembered he taught me how to attach the live frog to the hook and how to cast the line but I failed to catch any fish. 

I was grateful to met Julio who has given me such opportunity to go fishing in Lake Lalog. The experience will be totally different if I were to stay in a hostel. Couchsurfing has made wonders so far, especially for people like Julio who was so gladly to share his passion with others. 

Accommodations
Couchsurfing

Transportations
Bus from San Martin de Los Andes to Bariloche– P68.50

Recreations
NA

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