When we are in the Bariloche area this February, we would like to also see Chile.
Does anyone know how long the drive would be? What route would be the easiest and quickest? Is the drive a safe one?
Any general thoughts on this undertaking? Any specific destination ideas/cities/sites/restaurants?
We would only have time for one or two days.

Thanks so much for your expertise!

Take the oragnized Andino lakes' crossing thorught the two naitonal parks, Bariloche to Puerto Varas, Chile. The trip consists of boats on the chain of lakes with busses between the lakes.
It can be done in one day.

You would have to find a rental company which allows a cross border trip and there will be an added cost and a wait for the right papers to take a car not your own across the border. There are companies which do it.

The route is perfectly safe - Bariloche/Villa la Angostura/Osorno/Puerto Varas - and all paved. It goes through national parks on both sides of the border. The route is well covered by comfortable buses. Seats are about US$20-25 pp. If you are going as far as Puerto Varas it will take you 5-6 hours, but time at the border is difficult to calculate. Having your own vehicle does mean you can stop when you want, but the difference in cost between the car and the bus is considerable.

We couldn't find a rental company that would allow a one way cross border drive. In the end we got a bus from Pucon to San Martin de Los Andes (both great places to visit BTW) and then rented a car to drive from San Martin to Bariloche (Hertz). The drive was through teh Seven Lakes area and the scenery was great, although in October the weather was not! In 2008 the road was not paved for 30% or so of the route and was very rough in in places. A few photos http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog...0120/tpod.html

www.visitchile.cl/crucedelagos2.htm

best way to do it...

insurance issues preclude car rental

but car/driver possible from $50/half day

not as pretty though...

maghavat: when someone becomes a forum member just to say the same thing so many times, we tend to take it with quite a bit of salt or even disregard it altogether.

maghavat has also dragged up 18 posts mentioning car rental in Chile on Tripadvisor to copy/paste the same rant. It isn't that Alamo is a good company, it isn't by all accounts, but there are plenty of reviews on travel forums which, if read before travelling, are fair warning. All this looks like now is the peppering of forums by a competitor.