The Borduin family is traveling through Siete Lagos area, Argentina on route 40, the most famous route in Argentina. We are staying on the Argentina side down route 40, going north to south from Junin de Los Andes and San Martin de Los Andes, heading to San Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina. Mike, Vivian Niles and I are traveling in two vehicles with pop-up in pickups. We will be traveling for a year 8/2022 to 8/2023.

This is close to our 5th month of travel. But it is only the first month of travel in the pickups in South America. We have done all of our camper travel in Argentina thus far after shipping vehicles to Buenos Aires (we recommend shipping to Montevideo).

The Siete Lagos area is glacially formed lakes surrounded by mountains which have evidence of volcanic activity. The volcanoes created the mountains first and then the glacier shaped the valleys and cut through and deposited rocks throughout the valleys. It’s simply gorgeous to take this drive. There are many ways to do this as evidenced by the people traveling.

There are people staying in hotels, cabanas, hostels, established and wild camping. There are people traveling by motorcycle, camper van private vehicle, rented vehicles, taxis, hiking, biking, bus. Last night we stayed in a parking lot close to one of the ports that ferries people around the lakes. The parking area had six camper vans overnight; we were the only pop up pick up setups. I spoke with one family from Argentina. They planned to cross the border to Chile this morning early and this is why they camped close to the ferry.

The government infrastructure for tourism is developed in this area with new public restrooms popping up, trail systems, online information and advertisements of road construction and improvements by the Neuquen Provincia government.

We are in a pattern of nightly stops and traveling days as we make our way South, utimatly to Ushuaia, Argentina. While writing this post, we are stopped to cook an egg breakfast. On these days we try to overnight for free in parking areas or wild campspots and use the money we save for a restaurant stop.

After Ushuaia, we will come up the Atlantic Coast towards Puerto Madryn with the goal of seeing Orcas on their feeding grounds there. Currently, our Northern route is undecided because there is political unrest in Peru and Venezula. We are researching a way around that situation that can land us in Cartegena, Colombia preferably around June. Or, we will need to ship our vehicles from Santiago, Chile or Montevideo, Uruguay to Panama if Peru and/or Venezuela continue to be too dangerous for land travel.