From the mighty Aconcagua we popped back to Mendoza for the evening (and one very amusingly drunk evening at that!) before moving on to the town of San Rafael. On the journey down we got caught in the weirdest freak storm either of us had ever seen. It came out of nowhere, from driving along in the sunshine to complete darkness, lightening flashes lit up the sky, thunder rumbled directly over head and all of a sudden the bus started getting pounded by hail stones! But these were no ordinary hail stones, they were huge, like golf balls! The bus pulled over and we just sat there gawping as it got battered by them for about 15 minutes. Then suddenly there was a huge bang and the bus shock – we'd been hit by a lightening! Bizarrely as quick as the storm come on it also dispersed with minimal damage to the bus thankfully but it left a trail of carnage behind it as the roadsides were full of crashed cars with missing windscreens and some very bewildered looking people.
We finally arrived in San Rafael and it was a pretty bleak town with not much going on to be honest! So why come here I hear you say!? Well just out of town is a place called Valle Grande and the Canon de Atuel which we'd read about and it sounded worth a visit, so the following day we jumped on a bus and headed out there. The bus wound its way out of town through vineyards and past bodega's (we eyed up places to stop on the way back) before following a river up stream, past lots of rafting companies, until the river suddenly stopped and gave way to a huge dam. We jumped off the bus and trekked up through the hills to the top of the dam where on the other side was a stunning lake set amongst the hills and a canyon running off into the distance. In the middle of the lake was a small island called Submarino (apparently when the water levels are high it gets totally submerged). We spent the day just trekking around the lake and taking in the breathtaking views. The following day we returned to explore some more and ended up chatting to an American couple who were trying to hire a speed boat a few hours. They asked us if we'd like to join them which sounded like a cool way to see the lake and ride up the canyon. Problem was no-one seemed to want to hire out a boat. Oh well looked like we'd just have to make do with a canoe instead which turned out to be great fun! We paddled across the lake and into the canyon, it was stunning and so peaceful as we were the only ones there just quietly paddling around… well except for shona’s delightful rendition of ‘row row row your boat’ of course!