On our way out of Mendoza, my current travel buddy, Yngve from Norway, and I decided we would try to add some excitement to our journey by hitchhiking out of town and just go "anywhere" south. However, after learning that a bus ticket is only $5 bucks to travel several hours south of here right now without standing in the scorching sun, we decided that arriving in San Rafael without knowing a single thing about the place would have be excitement enough.
A few hours later, we were pleasantly surprised to find a rather nice, large, and busy city with its highlight being Canyon Atuel, two rivers, and several lakes for swimming . We embarked on a rather dull tour of the canyon, which included an opportunity to go "white water" rafting.  It was more like flat water floating as it was only class II rapids.
The hostel here, however, was full of cool people, mostly vacationers from Buenos Aires. This is their vacation season and it's obvious by how many people we meet from the city. We don't even even ask where someone is from any more... we just say "are you from Buenos Aires?" and it's usually the right guess.   San Rafael is nice but we need move on. Next stop... San Martin de los Andes.