Southward Ho! Adventures in Chile & ARG
Apr 29th, 2011, 01:32 PM
#22
Original Poster
<b>Chilean Lake Country</b>
The next morning we had the last of our minimalist breakfasts at the Palafito Hostel, loaded up the car and hit the road. We returned through the beautiful rolling countryside towards Ancud and then made the right towards Chacao. As we neared Chacao, we kept our eyes open for a smoked salmon place we had spotted three days earlier when we had arrived on Chiloe island. After several false starts and slowdowns that irritated drivers behind us, we found it: Die Räucherkate Productos Ahumados. (This was our first exposure to the profound German influence in this part of Chile.) We turned off the road and drove up to a flower bedecked cottage and a nearby smokehouse/shop. Nobody was in the smokehouse, but soon enough one of the owners came out and showed us into the shop. We tried some of the smoked salmon – it was great, every bit as good as that in the United States Pacific Northwest. We bought a fair-sized slab that was to last us a couple days. This place is highly recommended. I was also impressed by the brevity of their address: Ruta 5 Sur Km 1082 – not to be confused with Ruta 5 Norte Km 1082 if you’re in the market for smoked salmon. We were a mere 650 miles south of Santiago.
We drove right up to the ferry and promptly boarded. Soon we were on our way back to Pargua. We made good time on Ruta 5 (toll), skirted Puerto Montt and exited at Frutillar Alto. This section of Ruta 5, at least as far north as Osorno, is comparable to a US interstate. Frutillar Alto is the new section of Frutillar, with American-style supermarkets and new houses reminiscent of miniature United States tract homes. We found our way to the old section – Frutillar Bajo – by the simple expedient of heading towards Lago Llanquihue, visible from Frutillar Alto. We arrived in Frutillar Bajo and drove along the lake front beach crowded with end-of-summer tourists. The town was shaped like Chile: long and narrow. It consisted of a lake front road with another parallel road a block in. The houses were older; many had a German architectural influence, albeit with a Chilean color scheme. Due in part to the shape of the town, we found our hotel (Hotel Elun) without difficulty; it was about two kilometers out of town on a hill overlooking the lake front.
We immediately liked Hotel Elun – friendly staff, a beautiful and spacious light-filled lobby with multiple (and comfortable) couches and low tables that flowed into an equally pleasant exterior sitting area. Our room – number 17 – was a delight, large and private, had a king size bed and was at the very end of the hotel’s one wing. It – as well as most of the hotel – had a view across Lago Llanquihue to the spectacular Volcán Osorno. The bar section – I didn’t notice this until breakfast the next day – had a three-foot long turtle carapace hung on the wall like a warrior’s shield in a medieval castle. Nonetheless, the bar/lobby/sitting area was beautiful, expansive and comfortable – as well as the only area in the hotel with dependable wifi. We bought a bottle of Chilean white wine – La Hoya Reserva sauvignon blanc – relaxed and enjoyed the wonderful view. Volcán Osorno’s perfect cone looked like a slightly dietetic version of Mount Fuji. Later, we walked into town for a simple dinner – a crab appetizer and a milenasa-like dish of sautéed ham, cheese and mushrooms. We stopped at the lake front kuchen bakery (I’ve forgotten the name) and bought a piece of cake, which we shared in the room for dessert.
The next day, we drove around Lago Llanquique. We started by going northeast towards Puerto Octay, driving past well-tended farms on a nice lakeside ripio road. We saw several empty campsites as we went; the summer season had ended. Between Frutillar and Puerto Octay, in particular, there was a very strong German feeling. In Puerto Octay – a pleasant little town - we picked up snacks…bread, grapes and a kind of multi-layered pastry surrounding a chicharrón interior (great!).
We rejoined paved road shortly after leaving Puerto Octay and then left the lakeside road at La Cascada for a waterfall hike, driving a lurching mile of bad ripio to a parking lot. Admission was 1000 pesos, a little over U$D 2.00 apiece. It was a great hike upstream on a muddy trail. We crossed over the stream three times on rickety log bridges and ended a mile or two later at 100 foot waterfalls. Spectacular. On an amusing note, on our way there and back, we repeatedly ran into Chileans hiking the slippery trail in flip-flops, loafers, and heels.
After the marvelous hike, we returned to our circumnavigation of Lago Llanquihue. Our few guides on the area indicated that the road between La Cascada and Ensanada was unpaved. However, we found most of it paved and road crews at work on the remaining unpaved sections. Conversely, the road between Ensanada and Puerto Varas, which our guidebooks indicated was paved, seemed to be in a parallel process of being unpaved. There were a good half dozen traffic stoppages where workers with “pare” and “siga” signs stopped traffic for fifteen minutes at a stretch. It took us longer to get from Ensanada to Puerto Varas than it did from Fruttilar to Ensanada, waterfall hike included. It was a miserable end to a previously perfect day, marinating in diesel fumes in the hot afternoon sun.
We gassed up at Puerto Varas, then joined Ruta 5 north and exited at Llanquihue town. (There isn’t a lakefront drive between Puerto Varas and Llanquihue.) The road between Llanquiehue and Frutillar was paved and pleasant, more rolling hills and pleasant farms, along with occasional isolated luxury resorts.
After a nap, we went to the Club Aleman in Frutillar for dinner:
• An appetizer of choritos en salsa verde (cold mussels accompanied with a sauce of onions and parsley).
• Grilled salmon with rice. (Salmon here, as everywhere in Chile, very fresh and delicious.)
• Grilled steak with fries. Although not “al punto” (rare) as requested, it was quite tasty.
We hit the German cake place again for dessert.
We dedicated most of the next day to Frutillar. We walked all the way across town to the Edmundo Winkler botanical park. There I saw my first araucaria (“monkey puzzle”) tree. It was shaped like a conifer, but its branches are covered with small thick pointed succulent-type leaves. It quickly became apparent that our walking shoes were inappropriate – this was a hike, not a walk. We left the park early, returned to town and walked along the beachfront. I stopped for an espresso – probably my first since Valparaiso – in the immense waterfront concert hall, Teatro del Lago. It’s tempting to compare the hulking wooden building to Noah’s ark or a clipper shipper, but the exterior, made of native woods, was actually architecturally stunning. Unfortunately, the concert hall itself was closed and we never saw the interior.
Had a quick lunch (empanadas and a sandwich). At this point we felt we’d pretty much exhausted Frutillar’s limited and Teutonic possibilities, so we hopped in the car and drove down Ruta 5 to Puerto Varas. Puerto Varas started at the lakeside, but, five or six blocks in, rose abruptly. It had a farmacia (unlike Frutillar), the best artesania we saw in Chile and a spectacular red and white church constructed of galvanized steel. The town was scenic and beautiful. We stopped and had fantastic pisco sours at a bar called Papa Brava. This had started as a bathroom expedition but had turned alcoholic. We checked out both “Vicki Johnson” businesses – one a chocolate and artesania shop, the other a historic house converted to a backpacker haven. (We were staying there on March 2, the night before our planned Andean lake crossing.) Dinner – one of the better ones we had in Chile – was at the Ayacara Hotel:
• Grilled beef with duchess/dauphine potatoes.
• Shrimp with pesto and rice.
For dessert, we returned to the German cake place on the beachfront and shared an apple strudel.
We left for Villarrico fairly early the next day. Now that summer was over, Hotel Elun was practically empty. For two nights running their restaurant had been open – but empty. And they downsized the breakfast buffet - no more of the tasty little sausages that I’d taken to calling the “breakfast hot dogs.”
We took Ruta 5 North to the Los Lagos exit. In the flat farmland between the Los Lagos exit and Panguipulli, we passed a newly-opened primary school painted in blue, yellow and red. In Chile, do they designate primary schools by using primary colors? Somehow, we thought this hilarious. A little later, on the way to Lican Ray, we made a wrong turn, lost the paved roadway and ended up on a pleasant (but out of the way) drive on well-maintained lakeside ripio that dead-ended at a hydro-electric station. Lost again. We stopped for directions and got ourselves successfully rerouted to Lican Ray. There was a great bakery – “Panaderia San Luis” – outside of Lican Ray. We stocked up on bread, bread with chicharrones and empanadas. We drove on – and down – to Villarrica, another lakeside town. Through sheer good fortune, we found our lodgings - the Hosteria de la Colima – easily. This time we had a smokin’ view of Volcán Villarrica and Lago Villarrica. I mean “smokin’” in the literal sense - Volcán Villarrica was an active, although currently dormant, volcano with a continuous gray/white plume of smoke. Hosteria de la Colima’s grounds were beautiful, particularly the gardens in the far back. The owners also run a plant nursery (“vivero”). The owners – Glen and Beverly – were very pleasant and extremely helpful. Our first room, as it turned out, was right under the hotel laundry and we heard continuous thumping from above. We moved to one of the cabins at the rear of the property, a nice private room with a king size bed and large deck. We’d gotten lazy. We spent the day in the hotel, reading, checking email, and ate dinner in:
• Green salad - a real salad - which we scarfed down.
• Trout with a hazelnut crust
• Roast lamb and potatoes
Pretty tasty, all of it. But the best thing was that we didn’t have to go out.
The next morning we had an actual American breakfast, including bacon. (As a basic philosophical point, we believe that everything goes better with bacon.) After conferring with owners – they were very knowledgeable about the area having lived in Chile for something like twenty years – we decided on a morning hike at the peninsula Lican Ray on Lago Calafquen followed by the hot springs at Termas Geometricas in the shadow on Volcán Villarrica. The hike was pleasant, the lake was beautiful. I didn’t appreciate that much the peninsula was a Mapuche Indian reserve (Zi Wil We) until we arrived at an impromptu concession area after our hike. We dodged some murky Mapuche chicha by claiming it was too early – “demasiado temprano” – for imbibing. Then I rocked that “acabo de comer” (“I just ate”) thing to avoid an offer of dodgy food. For once, I was feeling pleased with my Spanish.
The termas were fantastic. There were over a dozen pools of varying sizes and temperatures connected by red wooden walkways up a lushly overgrown narrow canyon. The heat of the individual pools was controlled by the addition of hot (from springs) or cool (from stream) water. We changed clothes in a red wooden cabin with plants on the roof and lazed in a pool. We met a nice couple from San Francisco, retired teachers, who were now spending their lives traveling the world.
Despite having brought and eaten an avocado and bread earlier in the day – the Chiloe smoked salmon was by now a memory – we ended up at the Geometricas snack bar, eating the Chilean equivalent of grilled cheese sandwiches. It was a very relaxing afternoon – we stayed until well after four. We left the Termas and, a little before Coñaripe on the road back and down to Villarrica, a woman’s frantic waving caused us to pull over. An emergency? No. She was selling what she called a “tortilla,” a very fresh, warm, round, crusty, slightly flat bread that shared only a geometric similarity with Mexican and Spanish foodstuffs of the same name. Only 700 pesos, about U$D1.50. I think we finished it off within three miles. Roadfood – meaning food people were selling by the side of the road - has been our downfall this trip! We returned via Lican Ray, stopping at a smoked salmon place between Lican Ray and Villarrica.
We spent that evening catching up on notes and internet, washing clothes and hanging them in the bathroom to dry. We ate in again:
• Garden salad
• Quinoa salad
• Tomato/lentil soup
• Pork chop w/ spicy tomato puree
Maybe because we hadn’t any real salads – or a lot of green vegetables - before hitting Hosteria de la Colima, but we preferred the salads to the entrees.
We went to bed a bit late. About midnight, we awoke to hear someone fumbling at our cabin door. As the door opened, I sat up in bed and – for want of any other handy item – threw a pillow at the immense intruder who seemed to fill the entire doorway. With a series of “disculpe me”s he closed the door and left. We then heard him fumbling with the door of the cabin next to ours. We later learned that my pillow toss had thwarted the entry of the night security guard accompanied by late-arriving travelers. I’m still living this one down with my laughing companion.
Another American breakfast. Bacon, blessed bacon, and eggs. Also, I learned that one could order the house hot sauce – typically served with bread at dinner – with one’s breakfast eggs. What more could one ask for?
The major advantage of Hosteria de la Colima relative to Hotel Elun is that the Colima owners have extensive information on the surrounding area. So, after breakfast, we conferred at length with Beverly: Where to hike? She pulled out a photocopied map sketch that took us on a nice uphill hike. However, one of us was had gotten bad knees from the uphill/downhill hikes. Something flat perhaps? Another suggestion, another map. We ended up with three maps, one of which was to an acceptably flat hiking trail. Somehow we mixed up the maps. The one with trail we sought ended up on the back seat. We had another that we were using but once we entered the park the landmarks did not match up. We kept on driving on ripio until we almost hit the Argentine border. We turned around at the Chilean customs office and retraced our route. The lake had a different name. The ranger station was on the wrong side of the road. Do you think they moved it? Where was the museum on the map? There? It looks run down. I’ll check. No, it’s an abandoned house. It wasn’t until later, sitting by the side of a stream drinking cokes and eating grilled cheese/ham and cheese sandwiches , that the light clicked on. I dug the other map out of the car. We were using the wrong map. By now, it was too late to go to the other park. We headed back to the Villarrica barely speaking to one another. On the plus side, we did get to see a whole lot of araucaria trees on the road to Argentina.
We had dinner in for the third night running. We were hooked on the salads.
Arose early, ate early and left for our drive south on Ruta 5 – here a toll road and a superhighway – for Puerto Varas. (We paid 6,200 Chilean pesos – over U$D 13 - in tolls.) We arrived at 1:00 sharp – Volcán Osorno greeted us like an old friend. We checked in at the Vicki Johnson Guest House, which we’d scouted out four or five days earlier. It was a 1920s Craftsman style house that had been converted into a backpacker hostel. The common area was filled with art, old photographs, crafts, antique furniture, abandoned paperbacks and an aura of backpacker camaraderie. Fortunately – as we were arising very early the next day and didn’t want to awaken the entire guest house by banging our luggage down one or more flights of stairs – our room was right off the common area. Unfortunately, it was a room that let in a lot of light and backpacker camaraderie noise. And it had a bathroom that straddled the border between miniscule and microscopic. Worst of all, the bed was small and uncomfortable. We dropped off our luggage and then drove downtown to confirm our next day’s Andean lake crossing reservation at Turis Tours. We then returned our rental car at the rental company located at a spectacular lake front hotel, Hotel Cumbres Patagonia. Predictably, the rental company was closed from lunch (2:00 to 4:00). We left the car and took a lake front stroll into Puerto Varas.
We stopped at several artesania shops and I bought my daughter a pair of lapis lazuli earings. Although Puerto Varas had the best crafts I’d seen in Chile, I was struck again by the generally poor quality of Chilean crafts relative to other South American countries. I suspect that this is because of the relatively high – almost first world – standard of living in Chile. I suspect this is because there are more opportunities for income in employment than in creating crafts.
As the artesania shps began to shut down for their lunch hour, we went in search of a restaurant. Our first choice – based on a somewhat dated guidebook – was no longer in business. We headed back towards the waterfront, bypassing a plausible looking Italian restaurant because we wanted to sit outside. We finally settled for a Chilean restaurant a couple of blocks from the waterfront. We sat outside and ordered a salad and a pizza. Even by the lackluster standards of Chilean cookery, what we received was ghastly. The salad comprised mounds of pale tomatoes, tough corn kernels, limp carrot slices, canned beets and iceberg lettuce. The pizza was a little better – a pale disc of dough topped with the same pale tomatoes, melted cheese product diced olives, mushrooms and “chorizo” slices that bore a suspicious resemblance to sliced hot dogs. It was, at least, edible with the addition of olive oil. The salad wasn’t. We pushed around the salad components into re-configured mounds of vegetable debris that we hoped would give the appearance of partial consumption. (The accompanying beer was quite good.) We’d paid the price of breaking the prime directive of Chilean restaurants: Research beforehand. Otherwise the potential for bad food and wasted money – Chile can be an expensive country – was just too high.
After our late afternoon lunch, we went back to the rental office and returned our car. No issues. We headed back to our Guest House by way of the cathedral. This was the church that was built of galvanized steel and painted off-white with red trim. It was on the hill overlooking Puerto Varas and was visible throughout the town. The interior was striking - a deep blue ceiling, a radiant dove suspended high over the altar and subdued stained glass. After our architectural epiphany, we checked out the nearby Papa Brava – it was time for a pisco sour. Alas, Papa Brava was closed post-lunch. We returned to our room and caught up on email and notes. After very careful research, we made on-line reservations at Restaurante Ibis for an early (8:00) dinner. Then we went out again and took the Puerto Varas “ruta” of fine houses constructed in the early years of the last century. In addition to the Vicki Johnson Guest House – which was on the route – they were a number of others. All displayed the high level of craftsmanship and the detailed woodworking of that era.
Ibis turned out to be a long walk out of town, the better part of two miles. We found ourselves arriving late to a very popular restaurant. Oddly, the main dining room – non-smoking – was set in the rear of the restaurant, away from the lake view. We opted instead for the empty smoking area and ended up with the best seats in the house – a great view of Lago Llanquihue with Volcán Osorno’s perfect cone in the distance. Our dinner was fantastic, exceeding even La Concepción in Valparaiso. This was to be our best meal in Chile. We started with locos al ajillo. (Locos are abalone, which is not endangered in Chile the way it is in California.) The garlic sauce was so good I found myself first mopping it up with bread and then trying to eat the remainder with a spoon until my sense of propriety – as embodied in my spouse – kicked in. Our main courses were trucha salsa maestro and crepes Poseidon. The “salsa maestro” was a pepper-based sauce that resembled a milder version of the spanish salsa brava. Fantastic. The crepe Poseidon had a variety of shellfish in light sea urchin crème sause. Also excellent. We accompanied the meal with a bottle of sauvignon blanc - a great wine and a good match with the food. Dessert – which I usually skip – wasn’t memorable. By sheer coincidence, we had experienced both the best and the worst of Chilean food in one day.
On our long walk back to Vicki Johnson’s we noticed that Papa Brava had reopened. We passed on late night pisco sours to turn in for the next day’s early departure for the bus-boat-bus-boat-bus-boat trip across the Andes to Argentina.
The next morning we had the last of our minimalist breakfasts at the Palafito Hostel, loaded up the car and hit the road. We returned through the beautiful rolling countryside towards Ancud and then made the right towards Chacao. As we neared Chacao, we kept our eyes open for a smoked salmon place we had spotted three days earlier when we had arrived on Chiloe island. After several false starts and slowdowns that irritated drivers behind us, we found it: Die Räucherkate Productos Ahumados. (This was our first exposure to the profound German influence in this part of Chile.) We turned off the road and drove up to a flower bedecked cottage and a nearby smokehouse/shop. Nobody was in the smokehouse, but soon enough one of the owners came out and showed us into the shop. We tried some of the smoked salmon – it was great, every bit as good as that in the United States Pacific Northwest. We bought a fair-sized slab that was to last us a couple days. This place is highly recommended. I was also impressed by the brevity of their address: Ruta 5 Sur Km 1082 – not to be confused with Ruta 5 Norte Km 1082 if you’re in the market for smoked salmon. We were a mere 650 miles south of Santiago.
We drove right up to the ferry and promptly boarded. Soon we were on our way back to Pargua. We made good time on Ruta 5 (toll), skirted Puerto Montt and exited at Frutillar Alto. This section of Ruta 5, at least as far north as Osorno, is comparable to a US interstate. Frutillar Alto is the new section of Frutillar, with American-style supermarkets and new houses reminiscent of miniature United States tract homes. We found our way to the old section – Frutillar Bajo – by the simple expedient of heading towards Lago Llanquihue, visible from Frutillar Alto. We arrived in Frutillar Bajo and drove along the lake front beach crowded with end-of-summer tourists. The town was shaped like Chile: long and narrow. It consisted of a lake front road with another parallel road a block in. The houses were older; many had a German architectural influence, albeit with a Chilean color scheme. Due in part to the shape of the town, we found our hotel (Hotel Elun) without difficulty; it was about two kilometers out of town on a hill overlooking the lake front.
We immediately liked Hotel Elun – friendly staff, a beautiful and spacious light-filled lobby with multiple (and comfortable) couches and low tables that flowed into an equally pleasant exterior sitting area. Our room – number 17 – was a delight, large and private, had a king size bed and was at the very end of the hotel’s one wing. It – as well as most of the hotel – had a view across Lago Llanquihue to the spectacular Volcán Osorno. The bar section – I didn’t notice this until breakfast the next day – had a three-foot long turtle carapace hung on the wall like a warrior’s shield in a medieval castle. Nonetheless, the bar/lobby/sitting area was beautiful, expansive and comfortable – as well as the only area in the hotel with dependable wifi. We bought a bottle of Chilean white wine – La Hoya Reserva sauvignon blanc – relaxed and enjoyed the wonderful view. Volcán Osorno’s perfect cone looked like a slightly dietetic version of Mount Fuji. Later, we walked into town for a simple dinner – a crab appetizer and a milenasa-like dish of sautéed ham, cheese and mushrooms. We stopped at the lake front kuchen bakery (I’ve forgotten the name) and bought a piece of cake, which we shared in the room for dessert.
The next day, we drove around Lago Llanquique. We started by going northeast towards Puerto Octay, driving past well-tended farms on a nice lakeside ripio road. We saw several empty campsites as we went; the summer season had ended. Between Frutillar and Puerto Octay, in particular, there was a very strong German feeling. In Puerto Octay – a pleasant little town - we picked up snacks…bread, grapes and a kind of multi-layered pastry surrounding a chicharrón interior (great!).
We rejoined paved road shortly after leaving Puerto Octay and then left the lakeside road at La Cascada for a waterfall hike, driving a lurching mile of bad ripio to a parking lot. Admission was 1000 pesos, a little over U$D 2.00 apiece. It was a great hike upstream on a muddy trail. We crossed over the stream three times on rickety log bridges and ended a mile or two later at 100 foot waterfalls. Spectacular. On an amusing note, on our way there and back, we repeatedly ran into Chileans hiking the slippery trail in flip-flops, loafers, and heels.
After the marvelous hike, we returned to our circumnavigation of Lago Llanquihue. Our few guides on the area indicated that the road between La Cascada and Ensanada was unpaved. However, we found most of it paved and road crews at work on the remaining unpaved sections. Conversely, the road between Ensanada and Puerto Varas, which our guidebooks indicated was paved, seemed to be in a parallel process of being unpaved. There were a good half dozen traffic stoppages where workers with “pare” and “siga” signs stopped traffic for fifteen minutes at a stretch. It took us longer to get from Ensanada to Puerto Varas than it did from Fruttilar to Ensanada, waterfall hike included. It was a miserable end to a previously perfect day, marinating in diesel fumes in the hot afternoon sun.
We gassed up at Puerto Varas, then joined Ruta 5 north and exited at Llanquihue town. (There isn’t a lakefront drive between Puerto Varas and Llanquihue.) The road between Llanquiehue and Frutillar was paved and pleasant, more rolling hills and pleasant farms, along with occasional isolated luxury resorts.
After a nap, we went to the Club Aleman in Frutillar for dinner:
• An appetizer of choritos en salsa verde (cold mussels accompanied with a sauce of onions and parsley).
• Grilled salmon with rice. (Salmon here, as everywhere in Chile, very fresh and delicious.)
• Grilled steak with fries. Although not “al punto” (rare) as requested, it was quite tasty.
We hit the German cake place again for dessert.
We dedicated most of the next day to Frutillar. We walked all the way across town to the Edmundo Winkler botanical park. There I saw my first araucaria (“monkey puzzle”) tree. It was shaped like a conifer, but its branches are covered with small thick pointed succulent-type leaves. It quickly became apparent that our walking shoes were inappropriate – this was a hike, not a walk. We left the park early, returned to town and walked along the beachfront. I stopped for an espresso – probably my first since Valparaiso – in the immense waterfront concert hall, Teatro del Lago. It’s tempting to compare the hulking wooden building to Noah’s ark or a clipper shipper, but the exterior, made of native woods, was actually architecturally stunning. Unfortunately, the concert hall itself was closed and we never saw the interior.
Had a quick lunch (empanadas and a sandwich). At this point we felt we’d pretty much exhausted Frutillar’s limited and Teutonic possibilities, so we hopped in the car and drove down Ruta 5 to Puerto Varas. Puerto Varas started at the lakeside, but, five or six blocks in, rose abruptly. It had a farmacia (unlike Frutillar), the best artesania we saw in Chile and a spectacular red and white church constructed of galvanized steel. The town was scenic and beautiful. We stopped and had fantastic pisco sours at a bar called Papa Brava. This had started as a bathroom expedition but had turned alcoholic. We checked out both “Vicki Johnson” businesses – one a chocolate and artesania shop, the other a historic house converted to a backpacker haven. (We were staying there on March 2, the night before our planned Andean lake crossing.) Dinner – one of the better ones we had in Chile – was at the Ayacara Hotel:
• Grilled beef with duchess/dauphine potatoes.
• Shrimp with pesto and rice.
For dessert, we returned to the German cake place on the beachfront and shared an apple strudel.
We left for Villarrico fairly early the next day. Now that summer was over, Hotel Elun was practically empty. For two nights running their restaurant had been open – but empty. And they downsized the breakfast buffet - no more of the tasty little sausages that I’d taken to calling the “breakfast hot dogs.”
We took Ruta 5 North to the Los Lagos exit. In the flat farmland between the Los Lagos exit and Panguipulli, we passed a newly-opened primary school painted in blue, yellow and red. In Chile, do they designate primary schools by using primary colors? Somehow, we thought this hilarious. A little later, on the way to Lican Ray, we made a wrong turn, lost the paved roadway and ended up on a pleasant (but out of the way) drive on well-maintained lakeside ripio that dead-ended at a hydro-electric station. Lost again. We stopped for directions and got ourselves successfully rerouted to Lican Ray. There was a great bakery – “Panaderia San Luis” – outside of Lican Ray. We stocked up on bread, bread with chicharrones and empanadas. We drove on – and down – to Villarrica, another lakeside town. Through sheer good fortune, we found our lodgings - the Hosteria de la Colima – easily. This time we had a smokin’ view of Volcán Villarrica and Lago Villarrica. I mean “smokin’” in the literal sense - Volcán Villarrica was an active, although currently dormant, volcano with a continuous gray/white plume of smoke. Hosteria de la Colima’s grounds were beautiful, particularly the gardens in the far back. The owners also run a plant nursery (“vivero”). The owners – Glen and Beverly – were very pleasant and extremely helpful. Our first room, as it turned out, was right under the hotel laundry and we heard continuous thumping from above. We moved to one of the cabins at the rear of the property, a nice private room with a king size bed and large deck. We’d gotten lazy. We spent the day in the hotel, reading, checking email, and ate dinner in:
• Green salad - a real salad - which we scarfed down.
• Trout with a hazelnut crust
• Roast lamb and potatoes
Pretty tasty, all of it. But the best thing was that we didn’t have to go out.
The next morning we had an actual American breakfast, including bacon. (As a basic philosophical point, we believe that everything goes better with bacon.) After conferring with owners – they were very knowledgeable about the area having lived in Chile for something like twenty years – we decided on a morning hike at the peninsula Lican Ray on Lago Calafquen followed by the hot springs at Termas Geometricas in the shadow on Volcán Villarrica. The hike was pleasant, the lake was beautiful. I didn’t appreciate that much the peninsula was a Mapuche Indian reserve (Zi Wil We) until we arrived at an impromptu concession area after our hike. We dodged some murky Mapuche chicha by claiming it was too early – “demasiado temprano” – for imbibing. Then I rocked that “acabo de comer” (“I just ate”) thing to avoid an offer of dodgy food. For once, I was feeling pleased with my Spanish.
The termas were fantastic. There were over a dozen pools of varying sizes and temperatures connected by red wooden walkways up a lushly overgrown narrow canyon. The heat of the individual pools was controlled by the addition of hot (from springs) or cool (from stream) water. We changed clothes in a red wooden cabin with plants on the roof and lazed in a pool. We met a nice couple from San Francisco, retired teachers, who were now spending their lives traveling the world.
Despite having brought and eaten an avocado and bread earlier in the day – the Chiloe smoked salmon was by now a memory – we ended up at the Geometricas snack bar, eating the Chilean equivalent of grilled cheese sandwiches. It was a very relaxing afternoon – we stayed until well after four. We left the Termas and, a little before Coñaripe on the road back and down to Villarrica, a woman’s frantic waving caused us to pull over. An emergency? No. She was selling what she called a “tortilla,” a very fresh, warm, round, crusty, slightly flat bread that shared only a geometric similarity with Mexican and Spanish foodstuffs of the same name. Only 700 pesos, about U$D1.50. I think we finished it off within three miles. Roadfood – meaning food people were selling by the side of the road - has been our downfall this trip! We returned via Lican Ray, stopping at a smoked salmon place between Lican Ray and Villarrica.
We spent that evening catching up on notes and internet, washing clothes and hanging them in the bathroom to dry. We ate in again:
• Garden salad
• Quinoa salad
• Tomato/lentil soup
• Pork chop w/ spicy tomato puree
Maybe because we hadn’t any real salads – or a lot of green vegetables - before hitting Hosteria de la Colima, but we preferred the salads to the entrees.
We went to bed a bit late. About midnight, we awoke to hear someone fumbling at our cabin door. As the door opened, I sat up in bed and – for want of any other handy item – threw a pillow at the immense intruder who seemed to fill the entire doorway. With a series of “disculpe me”s he closed the door and left. We then heard him fumbling with the door of the cabin next to ours. We later learned that my pillow toss had thwarted the entry of the night security guard accompanied by late-arriving travelers. I’m still living this one down with my laughing companion.
Another American breakfast. Bacon, blessed bacon, and eggs. Also, I learned that one could order the house hot sauce – typically served with bread at dinner – with one’s breakfast eggs. What more could one ask for?
The major advantage of Hosteria de la Colima relative to Hotel Elun is that the Colima owners have extensive information on the surrounding area. So, after breakfast, we conferred at length with Beverly: Where to hike? She pulled out a photocopied map sketch that took us on a nice uphill hike. However, one of us was had gotten bad knees from the uphill/downhill hikes. Something flat perhaps? Another suggestion, another map. We ended up with three maps, one of which was to an acceptably flat hiking trail. Somehow we mixed up the maps. The one with trail we sought ended up on the back seat. We had another that we were using but once we entered the park the landmarks did not match up. We kept on driving on ripio until we almost hit the Argentine border. We turned around at the Chilean customs office and retraced our route. The lake had a different name. The ranger station was on the wrong side of the road. Do you think they moved it? Where was the museum on the map? There? It looks run down. I’ll check. No, it’s an abandoned house. It wasn’t until later, sitting by the side of a stream drinking cokes and eating grilled cheese/ham and cheese sandwiches , that the light clicked on. I dug the other map out of the car. We were using the wrong map. By now, it was too late to go to the other park. We headed back to the Villarrica barely speaking to one another. On the plus side, we did get to see a whole lot of araucaria trees on the road to Argentina.
We had dinner in for the third night running. We were hooked on the salads.
Arose early, ate early and left for our drive south on Ruta 5 – here a toll road and a superhighway – for Puerto Varas. (We paid 6,200 Chilean pesos – over U$D 13 - in tolls.) We arrived at 1:00 sharp – Volcán Osorno greeted us like an old friend. We checked in at the Vicki Johnson Guest House, which we’d scouted out four or five days earlier. It was a 1920s Craftsman style house that had been converted into a backpacker hostel. The common area was filled with art, old photographs, crafts, antique furniture, abandoned paperbacks and an aura of backpacker camaraderie. Fortunately – as we were arising very early the next day and didn’t want to awaken the entire guest house by banging our luggage down one or more flights of stairs – our room was right off the common area. Unfortunately, it was a room that let in a lot of light and backpacker camaraderie noise. And it had a bathroom that straddled the border between miniscule and microscopic. Worst of all, the bed was small and uncomfortable. We dropped off our luggage and then drove downtown to confirm our next day’s Andean lake crossing reservation at Turis Tours. We then returned our rental car at the rental company located at a spectacular lake front hotel, Hotel Cumbres Patagonia. Predictably, the rental company was closed from lunch (2:00 to 4:00). We left the car and took a lake front stroll into Puerto Varas.
We stopped at several artesania shops and I bought my daughter a pair of lapis lazuli earings. Although Puerto Varas had the best crafts I’d seen in Chile, I was struck again by the generally poor quality of Chilean crafts relative to other South American countries. I suspect that this is because of the relatively high – almost first world – standard of living in Chile. I suspect this is because there are more opportunities for income in employment than in creating crafts.
As the artesania shps began to shut down for their lunch hour, we went in search of a restaurant. Our first choice – based on a somewhat dated guidebook – was no longer in business. We headed back towards the waterfront, bypassing a plausible looking Italian restaurant because we wanted to sit outside. We finally settled for a Chilean restaurant a couple of blocks from the waterfront. We sat outside and ordered a salad and a pizza. Even by the lackluster standards of Chilean cookery, what we received was ghastly. The salad comprised mounds of pale tomatoes, tough corn kernels, limp carrot slices, canned beets and iceberg lettuce. The pizza was a little better – a pale disc of dough topped with the same pale tomatoes, melted cheese product diced olives, mushrooms and “chorizo” slices that bore a suspicious resemblance to sliced hot dogs. It was, at least, edible with the addition of olive oil. The salad wasn’t. We pushed around the salad components into re-configured mounds of vegetable debris that we hoped would give the appearance of partial consumption. (The accompanying beer was quite good.) We’d paid the price of breaking the prime directive of Chilean restaurants: Research beforehand. Otherwise the potential for bad food and wasted money – Chile can be an expensive country – was just too high.
After our late afternoon lunch, we went back to the rental office and returned our car. No issues. We headed back to our Guest House by way of the cathedral. This was the church that was built of galvanized steel and painted off-white with red trim. It was on the hill overlooking Puerto Varas and was visible throughout the town. The interior was striking - a deep blue ceiling, a radiant dove suspended high over the altar and subdued stained glass. After our architectural epiphany, we checked out the nearby Papa Brava – it was time for a pisco sour. Alas, Papa Brava was closed post-lunch. We returned to our room and caught up on email and notes. After very careful research, we made on-line reservations at Restaurante Ibis for an early (8:00) dinner. Then we went out again and took the Puerto Varas “ruta” of fine houses constructed in the early years of the last century. In addition to the Vicki Johnson Guest House – which was on the route – they were a number of others. All displayed the high level of craftsmanship and the detailed woodworking of that era.
Ibis turned out to be a long walk out of town, the better part of two miles. We found ourselves arriving late to a very popular restaurant. Oddly, the main dining room – non-smoking – was set in the rear of the restaurant, away from the lake view. We opted instead for the empty smoking area and ended up with the best seats in the house – a great view of Lago Llanquihue with Volcán Osorno’s perfect cone in the distance. Our dinner was fantastic, exceeding even La Concepción in Valparaiso. This was to be our best meal in Chile. We started with locos al ajillo. (Locos are abalone, which is not endangered in Chile the way it is in California.) The garlic sauce was so good I found myself first mopping it up with bread and then trying to eat the remainder with a spoon until my sense of propriety – as embodied in my spouse – kicked in. Our main courses were trucha salsa maestro and crepes Poseidon. The “salsa maestro” was a pepper-based sauce that resembled a milder version of the spanish salsa brava. Fantastic. The crepe Poseidon had a variety of shellfish in light sea urchin crème sause. Also excellent. We accompanied the meal with a bottle of sauvignon blanc - a great wine and a good match with the food. Dessert – which I usually skip – wasn’t memorable. By sheer coincidence, we had experienced both the best and the worst of Chilean food in one day.
On our long walk back to Vicki Johnson’s we noticed that Papa Brava had reopened. We passed on late night pisco sours to turn in for the next day’s early departure for the bus-boat-bus-boat-bus-boat trip across the Andes to Argentina.
Apr 29th, 2011, 03:10 PM
#23
Just great ! Will you be my travel planner ? I will be teasing you about that pillow from now on too
Really, your adventures are so interesting to read, and your report so great to save for future reference.
Gracias to you both,
~Marnie
Really, your adventures are so interesting to read, and your report so great to save for future reference.
Gracias to you both,
~Marnie
Apr 30th, 2011, 03:45 AM
#25
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Gosh, everybody has better vacations than we do. Driving all over the place, beautiful lakes at the end of the world, smoked salmon, cool little bakeries, getting lost and getting found, white water rafting (actually, that was ncounty in peru, but still). Next trip I'm going to do better. Watch your backs, Yes and Ncounty.
Apr 30th, 2011, 07:17 AM
#26
santamonica, you might want to check out some of the TRs for the NOA of Argentina, too (including the one by Yestravel which we used as a guide to our excellent trip there).
This is another extraordinary region to explore from the gorgeous scenery to the fascinating cultural aspects and sites,to the charming towns (and good white wines - torontes).
Best to you and to DW #1
~Marnie
This is another extraordinary region to explore from the gorgeous scenery to the fascinating cultural aspects and sites,to the charming towns (and good white wines - torontes).
Best to you and to DW #1
~Marnie
Apr 30th, 2011, 08:51 AM
#28
Original Poster
Marnie -- u're not exactly a slouch when it comes to trip planning.
av -- I'm speechless, a big WOW coming from u!
sm - well, u're correct, no white water rafting, but coming up eventually glacier trekking. Your trip sounds pretty good 2 me -- I mean playing volleyball with the girl from ipanema, pretty cool. Have no fear we will eventually get to Arg...as a matter of fact next up ARG lake country.
av -- I'm speechless, a big WOW coming from u!
sm - well, u're correct, no white water rafting, but coming up eventually glacier trekking. Your trip sounds pretty good 2 me -- I mean playing volleyball with the girl from ipanema, pretty cool. Have no fear we will eventually get to Arg...as a matter of fact next up ARG lake country.
May 4th, 2011, 06:38 PM
#30
Original Poster
<b>Andes Crossing: Bus-Boat-Bus-Boat-Bus-Boat-Bus-Boat</b>
On March 3, in Puerto Varas, we awoke to a beautiful late-summer dawn, hurriedly ate an early breakfast of bread and Nescafe, made our picnic lunch sandwiches (smoked salmon and mashed avocado), did our final packing and departed Vicki Johnson’s. Although the bus arrival point was half a mile away, getting there was a cinch. We went to the end of the block, turned right on Del Salvador and let our suitcases pull us as they rolled down the hill towards the lakeside Casino. For once, gravity was our friend. We waited for the bus outside Turis Tours, across from the street from the Casino. It arrived on time (7:30), and was a comfortable modern bus half-filled with a mixed Chilean/foreign contingent of passengers who had boarded at Puerto Montt.
Our first stop was at the Parque Vincent Perez Rosales between Ensanada and Petrohué. What a beautiful setting! Cool and damp and green. There was a river here that seemed to be half rapid and half falls, “rolling and tumbling” through the dark gray volcanic rock. We walked around the area for half an hour and then it was back onto the bus and on to Petrohué where we boarded our boat. Petrohué is located on Lago Todos los Santos, which is intermediate between Lago Llanquihue and the Argentine lake country. We boarded the boat and our luggage went away by truck. We were to cross Lago Todos los Santos by boat and would not be re-united with our belongings until the end of the journey in Argentina. (This is the same crossing - except in the opposite direction and absent a fog machine - shown in the hagiographic Che Guevera biopic “Motorcycle Diaries.”)
Lago Todos los Santos has an eerie aquamarine – some people say turquoise – color, that is the result of minerals washed down from the surrounding mountains. We slowly made our way across the lake. The perfect cone of Volcán Osorno was visible astern and slowly receded as we made our way. To our left, the somewhat less photogenic Volcán Puntiagudo also appeared and then receded, sometimes concealed by intervening banks, hills and islets. Then the enormous Mount Tronador began to loom on the horizon. Formerly, an active volcano, it was now, like me, retired. Repeated eruptions had shattered the cone into what now resembled very bad dentition. As we neared Peulla, the tour operator announced the availability of helicopter overflights of Mount Tronador during our three hour (!) layover in Peulla. In a rash moment, perhaps because all flights other than one had been promptly booked, I signed us up. Herd mentality? Fear of missing out on something? I’m not sure.
Peulla is set in a remote part of the park (Parque Nacional Vincente Perez Rosales) and is accessible to the outside world only via boat. Its economy is based solely on the lake crossing, tours and lodging. It has one very modern and quite impressive hotel as well as a second, somewhat ramshackle one that is currently unused and in the process of being restored. Instead of dining in the massive hotel restaurant, we found a shady spot to eat our sandwiches and fruit.
After our lunch, we toured the grounds and then headed down the unpaved road to the grassy area that served as the helipad. Our trusty craft was awaiting us, a very small bright yellow five seater. The pilot and one passenger were to sit up front and there was room for three people behind them. We were scheduled for the half hour flight with a Spanish-speaking couple. It wasn’t until I was strapped in next to the right-hand door – and non-verbally warned not to touch the door handle by an “x” drawn in air and a shake of the head - that the enormity of our undertaking hit me. This was my first helicopter flight. I suddenly found myself consumed by a strong fear of flying! I speculated as to whether the helicopter was painted bright yellow in order to easily find its wreckage. I think it might have been better had there been something to hang onto other than the door handle that I’d been warned about.
After lift-off, my nerves weren’t helped by the pilot’s unnerving habit of heading straight for Tronador’s precipitous cliffs and then either rising above – or banking away from – them at the last second. I steadied my nerves by focusing on taking photographs. I think I took one about every thirty seconds we were aloft. And the views over Tronador were impressive. No fewer than seven glaciers have their origin here; four go into Argentina and the remaining three into Chile. And not all glaciers are the same. Some were pristine white; others tinted with cool blue undertones, yet others gray-black from embedded detritus. It being the end of summer there were numerous glacier-melt waterfalls. I shot a series of spectacular shots of glaciers, rock faces, waterfalls, and a small glacier-melt lake as the pilot danced around the shattered cone of the extinct volcano. We learned that it got its name – “thunderer” – due to the noise created when large chunks of ice crashed off the glaciers. As we were heading down, I had my last view of Volcán Osorno in the distance. The overall helicopter experience was both frightening and exhilarating. The other passengers were grinning ear-to-ear. I smiled weakly. To me, it had seemed an eternity before we landed.
After our flight, we rejoined our group and boarded busses at the hotel for the next stage of our crossing. We lurched our way on ripio through farmland that belonged to people whose farms had been grandfathered-in when the Chilean government had created the park. (I couldn’t help but mentally contrast this with the treatment of farmers in the Shenandoah area of Virginia who were forced to relocate entirely when Skyline Drive was created.) As we left the farmland, our tour guide announced that we were entering an environment know as “Valdivian rain forest.” We boarded a boat at Puerto Frios for a brief journey across Lago Frios to Puerto Alegre. We then reboarded a bus that took us through more Valdivian rain forest until we arrived at Puerto Blest. We were now in Argentina – we had crossed into Argentina on the bus ride, entering Parque Nacional Nahuel Huapi.
The immigration process was comic but prompt. In an odd bureaucratic tic, we were to present ourselves and our passports in the same sequence as the bus manifest. Customs was practically non-existent – four randomly (I assume) selected suitcases from those that had been checked at Petrohué. (Ours was not among them.) I celebrated my arrival in Argentina at the nearby tienda with a great hot chocolate spiked with cognac. We were then reunited with our checked luggage – in a way. We watched as it loaded aboard a boat via the windows. We boarded via normal means and started our final crossing, the long way down one of Nahuel Huapi’s many arms to Puerto Pañuelo. Nahuel Huapi didn’t seem to have the spectacular fluorescent green color of Lago Todos los Santos, but it was too late in the afternoon to tell for sure. It had been a very long day and we were exhausted. It was 8:00 p.m. when we pulled up to the dock in Puerto Pañuelo underneath the magnificent hilltop resort of Llao Llao. In lieu of the final stage of the crossing – a bus to San Carlos de Bariloche – we gathered our luggage and took a cab to our relatively nearby lodgings at Kilometer 20 outside of Bariloche. We were done in –but what a fabulous day!
On March 3, in Puerto Varas, we awoke to a beautiful late-summer dawn, hurriedly ate an early breakfast of bread and Nescafe, made our picnic lunch sandwiches (smoked salmon and mashed avocado), did our final packing and departed Vicki Johnson’s. Although the bus arrival point was half a mile away, getting there was a cinch. We went to the end of the block, turned right on Del Salvador and let our suitcases pull us as they rolled down the hill towards the lakeside Casino. For once, gravity was our friend. We waited for the bus outside Turis Tours, across from the street from the Casino. It arrived on time (7:30), and was a comfortable modern bus half-filled with a mixed Chilean/foreign contingent of passengers who had boarded at Puerto Montt.
Our first stop was at the Parque Vincent Perez Rosales between Ensanada and Petrohué. What a beautiful setting! Cool and damp and green. There was a river here that seemed to be half rapid and half falls, “rolling and tumbling” through the dark gray volcanic rock. We walked around the area for half an hour and then it was back onto the bus and on to Petrohué where we boarded our boat. Petrohué is located on Lago Todos los Santos, which is intermediate between Lago Llanquihue and the Argentine lake country. We boarded the boat and our luggage went away by truck. We were to cross Lago Todos los Santos by boat and would not be re-united with our belongings until the end of the journey in Argentina. (This is the same crossing - except in the opposite direction and absent a fog machine - shown in the hagiographic Che Guevera biopic “Motorcycle Diaries.”)
Lago Todos los Santos has an eerie aquamarine – some people say turquoise – color, that is the result of minerals washed down from the surrounding mountains. We slowly made our way across the lake. The perfect cone of Volcán Osorno was visible astern and slowly receded as we made our way. To our left, the somewhat less photogenic Volcán Puntiagudo also appeared and then receded, sometimes concealed by intervening banks, hills and islets. Then the enormous Mount Tronador began to loom on the horizon. Formerly, an active volcano, it was now, like me, retired. Repeated eruptions had shattered the cone into what now resembled very bad dentition. As we neared Peulla, the tour operator announced the availability of helicopter overflights of Mount Tronador during our three hour (!) layover in Peulla. In a rash moment, perhaps because all flights other than one had been promptly booked, I signed us up. Herd mentality? Fear of missing out on something? I’m not sure.
Peulla is set in a remote part of the park (Parque Nacional Vincente Perez Rosales) and is accessible to the outside world only via boat. Its economy is based solely on the lake crossing, tours and lodging. It has one very modern and quite impressive hotel as well as a second, somewhat ramshackle one that is currently unused and in the process of being restored. Instead of dining in the massive hotel restaurant, we found a shady spot to eat our sandwiches and fruit.
After our lunch, we toured the grounds and then headed down the unpaved road to the grassy area that served as the helipad. Our trusty craft was awaiting us, a very small bright yellow five seater. The pilot and one passenger were to sit up front and there was room for three people behind them. We were scheduled for the half hour flight with a Spanish-speaking couple. It wasn’t until I was strapped in next to the right-hand door – and non-verbally warned not to touch the door handle by an “x” drawn in air and a shake of the head - that the enormity of our undertaking hit me. This was my first helicopter flight. I suddenly found myself consumed by a strong fear of flying! I speculated as to whether the helicopter was painted bright yellow in order to easily find its wreckage. I think it might have been better had there been something to hang onto other than the door handle that I’d been warned about.
After lift-off, my nerves weren’t helped by the pilot’s unnerving habit of heading straight for Tronador’s precipitous cliffs and then either rising above – or banking away from – them at the last second. I steadied my nerves by focusing on taking photographs. I think I took one about every thirty seconds we were aloft. And the views over Tronador were impressive. No fewer than seven glaciers have their origin here; four go into Argentina and the remaining three into Chile. And not all glaciers are the same. Some were pristine white; others tinted with cool blue undertones, yet others gray-black from embedded detritus. It being the end of summer there were numerous glacier-melt waterfalls. I shot a series of spectacular shots of glaciers, rock faces, waterfalls, and a small glacier-melt lake as the pilot danced around the shattered cone of the extinct volcano. We learned that it got its name – “thunderer” – due to the noise created when large chunks of ice crashed off the glaciers. As we were heading down, I had my last view of Volcán Osorno in the distance. The overall helicopter experience was both frightening and exhilarating. The other passengers were grinning ear-to-ear. I smiled weakly. To me, it had seemed an eternity before we landed.
After our flight, we rejoined our group and boarded busses at the hotel for the next stage of our crossing. We lurched our way on ripio through farmland that belonged to people whose farms had been grandfathered-in when the Chilean government had created the park. (I couldn’t help but mentally contrast this with the treatment of farmers in the Shenandoah area of Virginia who were forced to relocate entirely when Skyline Drive was created.) As we left the farmland, our tour guide announced that we were entering an environment know as “Valdivian rain forest.” We boarded a boat at Puerto Frios for a brief journey across Lago Frios to Puerto Alegre. We then reboarded a bus that took us through more Valdivian rain forest until we arrived at Puerto Blest. We were now in Argentina – we had crossed into Argentina on the bus ride, entering Parque Nacional Nahuel Huapi.
The immigration process was comic but prompt. In an odd bureaucratic tic, we were to present ourselves and our passports in the same sequence as the bus manifest. Customs was practically non-existent – four randomly (I assume) selected suitcases from those that had been checked at Petrohué. (Ours was not among them.) I celebrated my arrival in Argentina at the nearby tienda with a great hot chocolate spiked with cognac. We were then reunited with our checked luggage – in a way. We watched as it loaded aboard a boat via the windows. We boarded via normal means and started our final crossing, the long way down one of Nahuel Huapi’s many arms to Puerto Pañuelo. Nahuel Huapi didn’t seem to have the spectacular fluorescent green color of Lago Todos los Santos, but it was too late in the afternoon to tell for sure. It had been a very long day and we were exhausted. It was 8:00 p.m. when we pulled up to the dock in Puerto Pañuelo underneath the magnificent hilltop resort of Llao Llao. In lieu of the final stage of the crossing – a bus to San Carlos de Bariloche – we gathered our luggage and took a cab to our relatively nearby lodgings at Kilometer 20 outside of Bariloche. We were done in –but what a fabulous day!
May 5th, 2011, 05:06 AM
#32
Original Poster
Good Morning AV! We had the cost for the lake crossing bundled with a couple items that we got thru a travel agent so I don't know precisely what we paid. Probably around $200. Here's the web site for Cruces Andino who runs the crossing.
http://www.cruceandino.com/
Helicopter ride was about $200...not cheap for sure, but worth it!
http://www.cruceandino.com/
Helicopter ride was about $200...not cheap for sure, but worth it!
May 5th, 2011, 05:50 AM
#33
That was, without a doubt, one of the most thrilling and fascinating reports I have ever had the pleasure to read on this forum. GRACIAS !
I hope you will put this whole trip together into a TRIP REPORT and re-submit it in one, longer lasting, more easily accessed place. Not only so great to read and experience, albeit from afar, with you, but such valuable information and ideas for future travelers to these places.
Have you posted your photos in a site we could access ?
Again, many thanks.
~Marnie
I hope you will put this whole trip together into a TRIP REPORT and re-submit it in one, longer lasting, more easily accessed place. Not only so great to read and experience, albeit from afar, with you, but such valuable information and ideas for future travelers to these places.
Have you posted your photos in a site we could access ?
Again, many thanks.
~Marnie
May 5th, 2011, 06:19 AM
#34
Original Poster
Hey Marnie! beautiful day, eh? no photos up, maybe at some point we'll do some.
I'm not sure how I would go about resubmitting it as one long TR. Do u mean pull out just the reports minus the comments and resubmit once we get to the end? Next one is Arg Lake Country so I'm going to start a new thread with Bariloche in the title since I know people seek that out. any ideas to make it more accessible?
I'm not sure how I would go about resubmitting it as one long TR. Do u mean pull out just the reports minus the comments and resubmit once we get to the end? Next one is Arg Lake Country so I'm going to start a new thread with Bariloche in the title since I know people seek that out. any ideas to make it more accessible?
May 5th, 2011, 10:05 AM
#35
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You keep bringing back such fond memories. The Lake crossing was one of the highlights of our first trip to AR. The helicopter ride is new and when we stopped in Puello, there was only one hotel. It was a long day, but one of the most memorable (we were picked up in Puerto Montt as 6:30 AM).
We stayed at the Llao Llao, did not realize it was right where we landed. I felt like a fool when I asked someone how to get there and they pointed across the street It was a nice way to end the day though.
We stayed at the Llao Llao, did not realize it was right where we landed. I felt like a fool when I asked someone how to get there and they pointed across the street
It was a nice way to end the day though.
May 5th, 2011, 12:00 PM
#36
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Smoked salmon and mashed avocado! Hot chocolate and cognac! Yum, yum and yum!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
WHAT a great post. We'll have to do it!
When I explored prices for Dec.2008, it would have been about $350/pp round trip: Bariloche-Chile. Didn't know about the helicopter then. Decided on doing it some other time.
My interest is now greater than 10.
Thank you MUCH!
WHAT a great post. We'll have to do it!
When I explored prices for Dec.2008, it would have been about $350/pp round trip: Bariloche-Chile. Didn't know about the helicopter then. Decided on doing it some other time.
My interest is now greater than 10.
Thank you MUCH!
May 5th, 2011, 04:47 PM
#37
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FANTASTIC! I can remember my first helicopter ride, in Maui, the pilot was racing through, these long NARROW slot-type canyons and we suddenly came to a dead end where there was a beautiful waterfall. The pilot then slowly rose up the face of the waterfall until we popped out the top of the canyon! I thought I would die, but wow was it spectacular!
Could one do the lake crossing but stop half way thru to spend the night at the hotel you mentioned?
I don't think it necessary to start a new thread. If someone does a search for Bariloche, this thread will come up.
Could one do the lake crossing but stop half way thru to spend the night at the hotel you mentioned?
I don't think it necessary to start a new thread. If someone does a search for Bariloche, this thread will come up.
May 6th, 2011, 07:09 AM
#38
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Thanks for the great memories - we did the Puerto Varas - Bariloche crossing last November and it was one of the highlights of my first trip to both countries. The scenery was absolutely breathtaking being surrounded by the snow covered mountains and volcanos.
Odie1 - We chose to take 2 days to cross rather than doing it all in one. We booked at the Peulla Hotel, but since it was still closed, we were upgraded (at no charge) to the Natura which was much nicer. I liked having the extra time in Peulla - plenty of excursions to choose from or just walk up to the waterfall, along the lake.
You leave Peulla the next morning and arrive Bariloche around 1 pm.
Odie1 - We chose to take 2 days to cross rather than doing it all in one. We booked at the Peulla Hotel, but since it was still closed, we were upgraded (at no charge) to the Natura which was much nicer. I liked having the extra time in Peulla - plenty of excursions to choose from or just walk up to the waterfall, along the lake.
You leave Peulla the next morning and arrive Bariloche around 1 pm.
