yestravel

Thanks 2 all! Yes, we shall continue the TR (next up will be the ARG lake district) -- just enjoying the beautiful weather here in DC, but more to come.

Yes, there are several options for the crossing. Some people go to Peulla and come back to PV or PM, Chile in the same day. Others stay over as colibri describes and others do as we did and do the entire crossing in one day. It should be noted that it is possible to arrange this all on your own for considerable less $$$, but it didn't seem worth the trouble to us.

yestravel

<b>Argentine Lake Country</b>

Our pre-arranged cab delivered us promptly to our lodgings at Los Juncos at kilometer 20 of the lakefront road that ran west from San Carlos de Bariloche. Los Juncos was immediately likeable, a converted farmhouse filled with an eclectic collection of furniture and art. Music – a languid mix of Brazilian lounge, jazz vocal standards and French pop – whispered in the background. One of the owners, Gabi, warmly greeted us and we half-dragged, half-carried our luggage to our upstairs room. We were starved – we hadn’t eaten since noon – but too exhausted from our long day on the lake crossing to even think about going out for dinner. Instead we decided to eat in – and Gaby was to be our chef. Works for us!

While he cooked, we started with wine, a superb bottle of Pulenta Estate malbec. It was so wonderful just to sit, listen to the music and relax! Our first course was a green salad – a real green salad – and a samosa (actually an empanada in disguise) of spinach, anchovies and black olives. Both were fabulous. Next up was an absolutely superb spinach and ricotta malfatti and a Thai lamb in curry sauce w/ vegetables, which was a bit under-seasoned for Thai food, but savory nonetheless. Dessert was simple and heavenly, figs flambéed in Gran Marnier. We crawled upstairs to our comfortable bed, sated and exhausted.

We slept in and started the day with a late breakfast of whole-wheat medialunas (miniature croissants), fresh bread, orange juice and fruit. And real honest-to-god coffee. After breakfast we set out to explore Bariloche. We were fortunate that the “20” bus ran straight into town and had a stop in front of Los Juncos. The previous evening our cab driver had mentioned that everybody who bought property in the Bariloche area wanted a lake front view; the twelve miles into town proved him right. The lakefront road was continuously fronted with alternating commercial areas, artesania shops, restaurants, hotels and lake front houses. We exited the bus at one of the first stops in Bariloche and began our explorations.

Bariloche didn’t make a positive initial impression, a situation worsened by the unseasonably warm weather. Every other store seemed to sell a mix of overpriced outdoorsy clothing and Patagonia/Bariloche-themed t-shirts. We wandered a bit, entering stores and fingering synthetic fibers and eyeing cotton t-shirts. We visited the central plaza, lined with heavy stone German architecture. In the center was a vandalized statue of General Roca (hero of the Argentine campaign against the Mapuche Indians) astride what seemed to be the world’s most exhausted horse. After an obligatory gift purchase (t-shirts), we had hot chocolate – fabulous! – at the famous Mamushka café and then wandered some more. The cathedral had an impressive neo-Gothic exterior. However, we were too sapped by the heat to check out the interior – a mistake in retrospect as the stone cathedral was likely to be cool inside. We found a tourist office and some maps. By then hungry – and with many stores closed for lunch – we went to the parilla recommended by Los Juncos, El Bolinche de Alberto, for a 2:30 lunch.
El Bolinche de Alberto – there are four branches in Bariloche and the surrounding area - was up a steep side street. It was crowded but we had prime seating where we could watch the cooks at work grilling over a large wood fire. The grill could be raised and lowered to allow the addition of more wood. Watching the grill master work the various sausages and cuts of meat was like attending a carnivore’s ballet; this was an art. Our meal arrived promptly and we slid the breadbasket away.
• A large porción of lomo de chorizo cooked perfectly “al punto” as we had requested. (“Chorizo” in this case refers to a cut of meat, not the sausage we are familiar with in the USA).
• An immense mound of extremely crisp and delicious papas fritas.
• A half bottle of the house malbec.
All in all a fabulous meal that was too big to finish for about U$D30.

After lunch, we began our trudge through the heat back to Los Juncos. We were uncertain of the exact route – as well the location of stops – that the #20 bus took going back to kilometer 20 and on to Llao Llao. (The street we came in on had become one way once the bus entered Bariloche.) So we walked out of town to the two-way coast road we had taken in. It was a bit of a walk in the heat and we couldn’t find any marked spots, which was a tad odd as stops on the way in had been clearly marked. An inquiry at a hotel resolved the issue: The stops back were directly across the street from the marked stops in – they just didn’t bother with marking them since everybody could see where they were. I think this comes under the category of logical but not exactly intuitive.

When we returned to Los Juncos, we met Flavia, Gabi’s sister and co-owner. We liker her immediately and talked at length talked about Los Juncos, Bariloche, the upcoming four day “bridge” day weekend (one of two in March) and our plans. The grounds of Los Juncos were so pleasant they seemed to invite inertia, particularly given the heat. We spent the rest of the afternoon there, wandering the grounds, admiring the nearby arm (Brazo Campanario) of Lago Nahuel Huapi, washing clothing in the sink and updating our emails. (Our room was within reach of the Los Juncos wifi.)

That evening, we took the #20 bus back down the road to Cerverceria Berlina at kilometer 12 for a dinner of one empanada and two salads accompanied by wine and artisanal beer. Berlina was a bit noisy with a rock-and-roll décor and soundtrack. I don’t think I’ve seen that many Rolling Stones posters in one place since 1972. We took a taxi back to Los Juncos.

Our plans for the next day called for at 10:00 a.m. rental car drop-off at Los Juncos followed by a road trip to San Martin de los Andes via Villa la Angostura and the Seven Lake Drive. 10:00 came and went. No car. Both Flavia and Gabi were out. We managed to figure out how to use the house phone to contact the car rental agency in Villa Angostura. There had been a mix-up. In January, we hadn’t responded to an email that had, in passing, mentioned a very minor price change (less than U$D5 a day) in the daily rental rate. The rental agency had taken our non-response as a lack of further interest and had cancelled the reservation without notifying us. Through sheer oversight, we had not done our customary re-confirmation. The result: no car on the Saturday start of a four-day holiday weekend. (Tuesday was Mardi Gras and Carnival was being celebrated for the first time ever in Argentina by Presidential decree; not coincidentally, there’s an upcoming presidential election in autumn.)

After a series of phone calls made by the car rental lady in Villa la Angostura, she finally managed to acquire a car from a Bariloche car rental agency. Although it was initially supposed to be there within an hour, the car did not arrive until after 12:30 – and only then after repeated phone calls tracking its purported progress from the far side of Bariloche. We then had some extended bilingual negotiations with the rental representative, Newton. The car was more expensive than our initial rental (understandable given our 11th hour request) and he wanted to be paid in cash (doable, although I wondered if his employer was aware of this requirement). But Newton also wanted us to return the car to the Bariloche airport Wednesday morning – which was some distance out of town. But we had to catch an early morning bus to Puerto Montt, Chile, from the centrally located Bariloche bus station. On top of everything else, Newton wanted to charge us a surcharge for washing the car – an absurdity in a country where many of the roads are dusty ripios. (The car in question was already coated with khaki patina of dust.) Back and forth we went. We managed to get some concession on the price, but had no luck on the return location or the washing surcharge. We felt that we had been held hostage to events, but signed some papers and took the car.

We were on the road a little after 1:00. The route took us first through Bariloche on the south side of lago Nahuel Huapi, then around the east side of the lake until we took a left on Route 231, the road to Villa la Angostura. As we moved east after leaving Bariloche, the landscape turned from green to brown – a high desert ended right at Bariloche. Route 231 paralleled the north shore of lago Nahuel Huapi and we soon found ourselves again in the coniferous foothills of the Andes. Villa la Angostura is fairly close to Bariloche – the drive was only about an hour and a half even after winding our way through Bariloche’s thick holiday traffic.

Villa la Angostura reminded us of a Colorado ski town…a main street of four or five blocks of stores and restaurants, all recently constructed out of rough timber. It wasn’t unpleasant, but the part we walked around seemed to have an aura of a forced and artificial rusticity. We sought out an older restaurant, La Encantada, on a side street for a late lunch. (We barely made it before closing.) We started by sharing a great empanada “de trucha” (trout). Our mains were lomo de trucha w/ papas and Patagonian lamb, also with potatoes. I liked my lamb – and the accompanying oven-roasted potatoes – a lot. We were less enthusiastic about the trout and its bland potatoes. I had a glass of wine – a Patagonian red – which was excellent. After lunch we strolled through town – perhaps three of the five blocks. The stores were repetitive and the sun was ferocious. We returned to the car and hit the road.

Villa la Angostura is the starting point for the Argentine ‘siete lagos’ (seven lakes) drive as well as the only crossing in Patagonia to Chile via paved road. The siete lagos route is in the process of being paved, but most is still unpaved, perhaps due to the prevalence of government-decreed holidays. Hence, most of it is either under construction or unpaved ripio. We had also gotten a late start due to the stressful car fubar. Perhaps this, in combination with the extensive time spent in Chilean lake country, accounted for our lack of appreciation for the siete lagos drive. We drove past the various lakes and dutifully noted their differing hues. But our underlying feeling was that of viewing something we had seen before – majestic and beautiful, yes, but familiar. Perhaps we’d become jaded.

From our very moment of arrival, however, San Martin de los Andes captivated us. We immediately loved this small charming town and its mixture of gaucho and modern, Argentine and German. We found our lodging (Casa de Eugenia) without difficulty and immediately loved it as well. It had a common area filled with books in various languages and whimsical items (e.g., a collection of old cameras) followed by a series of vividly painted guest rooms. We had an option of rooms and chose the one furthest in the back, which was comfortable although occasionally stuffy – we left the door to the patio outside open when we could. We settled in, and, as we had so often this trip, washed various articles of clothing and set them out to dry. Then we went to the common area for wifi access and checked emails and current events. Later, based on the recommendation of the woman at the desk, we set out on foot across town for dinner at “Bar and Bistro” Torino. We found it with little difficulty after a longish walk through town. The dish I ordered was, I think, one of the best of the trip…lamb-stuffed ravioli with a sauce of caramelized onions studded with berries that the menu described as “fruta de bosque.” (I later determined that these were most likely calafate berries.) The salad we ordered was OK. The wines, glasses of chardonnay and malbec, from the “Fin del Mundo” winery were both good. In fact, the chardonnay was excellent. As we walked back, we stopped for dulce de leche ice cream at a busy corner ice cream store. Then we wandered to the central square where people of various ages danced to recorded folklorico and tango music and artisans offered their wares. We pressed our noses to the glass of a gallery of fine art photography and eyed a kid (cabrito – a baby goat) being grilled Patagonian-style, splayed in front of a wood-burning fire. It would have been hard to imagine the festive air, the late-night crowded streets, the quality crafts, or the music on the other side of the mountains in the comparatively staid – albeit more prosperous – Chile.

The next morning, after a good breakfast of eggs, pastries and fruit, we conferred at length with the owner of Case de Eugenia, Augustín, regarding local driving/hiking possibilities. He recommended the hike to cascada Chachin off lago Nonthué at the western end of lago Lacár. So we braved the thirty kilometers of rough ripio (route 49) on the north side of lago Lacár to do just that. The road became even bumpier as we left route 40 at Hua Hum for the falls. We lurched down a road that seemed scarcely more than a clear spot in the woods. But the drive was worth it – it took us to a remote trailhead in Parque Nacional Lanín. Entry was free, unlike national parks in Chile. The trail wasn’t crowded, despite it being a beautiful Sunday morning. We hiked to the falls on the well-maintained shaded trail. When we arrived at the overlook, the falls were a little distant but beautiful nonetheless. After our return hike, at the trailhead kiosk, I had a lengthy conversation in Spanish with an Argentine family about our trip – where we’d been, where we were going. They were passionate about both San Martin de los Andes and the nearby Junín de los Andes.

When we left the Chachin trailhead, I promptly took a wrong turn on the little road we’d driven in on. We spent half an hour going to ever more remote parts of the park on an increasingly bumpy road before arriving at a barricaded bridge. Ooops. We righted ourselves and eventually found the road back to San Martin de los Andes. Following another suggestion of Augustín’s, we turned off about halfway back to go to Café Quechuguina, a lakeside restaurant. The little road took us through fields of summer flowers to an old barn and an adjacent farmhouse. Outside, there were several tables set up under a huge oak tree. At one of them – at the head of the table of a group of eight – was none other than Augustín. Another table of six sat nearby. We selected one of the smaller tables and carefully adjusted it for the optimum combination of shade and sturdy footing. It felt like a Sunday in the French countryside – the dappled light, the fields of flowers, the old path that went onwards and downwards to lago Lacár. A server explained the abbreviated menu and took our order. The food was delicious: Chicken curry with rice, gnocchi made of polenta, and a bottle of Cafayate torrontes, a familiar white wine from the Salta region in northwestern Argentina.

Following lunch, we befriended the owner/chef, Jeannine. As our luck would have it, we were the last customers on the last day of the summer season. She was shuttering up the restaurant the very next day in preparation for her return to Buenos Aires Wednesday. She owned a frozen food business there. We took her phone number and made tentative plans to contact her in Buenos Aires. We then had a walk down the path to the lake, going through a field of purple thistle-like flowers until we entered a forested area. We reached the lake and we just wandered.

Due to our late afternoon lunch in the country, we skipped dinner, instead opting to meander through San Martin de los Andes and have an ice cream cone whenever we encountered a parlor. It was impossible not to love this delightful town!

The next day, after another superb breakfast, it was time to return to Bariloche. Instead of returning on the siete lagos route, we opted for paved road – northeast on route 234 to Junín de los Andes, then south on paved roads. We didn’t have time to actually stop in Junín de los Andes, but, from what little we saw of it, it had the same appeal as San Martin de los Andes, a mixture of gaucho and German style that was a little reminiscent of the American West. From Junín, we went on route 234 towards route 40. The vast landscape turned to high desert. The Andes receded to the horizon and the sky stretched out into what seemed a speckless infinity of blue. We stopped at a viewpoint under fantastic basaltic cliffs stained white in places by condor droppings. High above in the immense sky we saw the condors effortlessly gliding. Our route 40 drive was one of the most scenic of our trip, lined with increasingly convoluted rock formations as it neared the intersection with route 237.

A little after noon, we followed a roadside “trucha” sign to Hosteria Gruta de las Virgenes, where we stopped for lunch. Hosteria Gruta de las Virgenes overlooked a river and spectacular shattered volcanic hills. The food was inevitably less spectacular than the scenery: So-so trout, the oxymoronically named but oddly tasty milanesa napolitana and Argentina’s finest bottled water. The next twenty or so miles of route 237 were simply awesome: a parade of jagged hills. These ended well outside Bariloche. We nonetheless arrived in Bariloche with a feeling that the paved road via Junín and routes 40 and 237 was more scenic than the siete lagos route.

We returned to the very same room in Los Juncos and filled Flavia in on the car rental story. She was indignant, both in regard to the washing surcharge and the airport drop-off. She conferred with the car rental lady in Villa la Angostura and they tag-teamed Newton into submission by phone. He eventually agreed to waive the washing fee and to allow us to drop the car off at the bus station. At one point during the telephone negotiations, she turned to us, rolled her eyes, made a face, and hissed that Newton was Brazilian – she could tell by his accent. Thank you Flavia!

Having a car – we didn’t have to drop it off until Wednesday morning - gave us more flexibility in regard to exploring the Bariloche area. That afternoon we went to the pricey and cavernous Llao Llao resort for cocktails and were rewarded with a spectacular sunset. We then ate dinner at a branch of Bolinche de Alberto at kilometer 11 of the lakefront road. The meat - we ordered filet instead of the lomo – was still good, but the fries were a bit soggy. Tuesday, we hiked lago Escondido near Llao Llao – there’s a municipal park adjacent to the ridiculously luxurious lodge – and took a drive in the hills overlooking Llao Llao, the lake and the hills on the far shore. We lunched again at Berlina – more salads – and drove to Villa Cerro Catedral, way above Bariloche and the lake. That evening, Los Juncos recommended a pizza place named “la Barra” and accompanied the recommendation with a byzantine set of directions. We managed to find it anyway. Closed Tuesdays. The owner of the pasta shop next door recommended another pizza place called “Don Corleone” up the hill and down the road on Avenida de los Pioneros. Somehow, we managed to find it. Also closed Tuesdays. Tuesday is definitely not pizza night in Bariloche. We drove into Bariloche proper on Avenida de los Pioneros and somehow stumbled across the oddly named Restaurante Kandahar. We remembered it being recommended in guide books and popped in. Great décor, great food, great wine – indeed, so great that I lost my notes in regard to what it was we ate and drank. But it sure was good.

We returned to Los Juncos for our last night. The next morning we found Newton waiting at the bus station parking lot with a lop-sided smile. I tossed him the keys and we were off to await our 7:30 bus to Puerto Montt, our stepping stone to the far south of Chile.

<i>Note: All things considered, we would have preferred to spend more time in Argentine lake country, particularly in San Martin and Junín. It would have been nice if we could have done our itinerary more efficiently – spending two nights apiece on a Bariloche/San Martin/Bariloche circuit gave us a feeling of constantly being on the move. Maybe we would have appreciated Villa la Angostura and the Seven Lakes drive more had we not felt rushed. And we should have allowed enough time to visit (and stay) in El Bolson, a mountain crafts town south of Bariloche. And, of course, we should have done our chocolate and ice cream research in advance - and reconfirmed our rental car reservation.</i>

MarnieWDC

You know, we also recently returned from a wonderful week in the Bariloche region; I only wish I could have written about it as eloquently as Mr. Yestravel.

Our experiences were somewhat less energetic than yours, but our responses to the towns and drives and scenery were very similar. So this was a wonderful refresher of our own trip.

This report will be invaluable to others who will surely want to follow your path(except perhaps for that uh oh!).

Thank you for all the effort you put into this report. I really enjoyed every minute of reading it, and I am sending it on to our friends who joined us on our Bariloche adventure.

~Marnie

morewierd

Thank you again, my dears,for a terrific account of Argentina Lake Country.
If it makes you feel any better....Allan and I took the Seven Lakes Road in Dec.2008 and were completely UNDERwhelmed. However, we REALLY enjoyed the main road back to Bariloche from San Martin. Go figure.
Even though we spent 3 nights on the Llao Llao peninsula...would have enjoyed another 2 for more extensive hiking.
Those lamb raviolis are making my mouth water.....it's time for lunch here in Boulder.
Looking forward to the next chapter.

santamonica

Wow, what a great trip and trip reporting. This internet thing really does make life better!

kodi

What a great trip report! I enjoyed reading it so much, and it brought back so many wonderful memories of my trip the previous year.
I know this report will be a huge help in the future to anyone travelling to this area.
Thank you for taking the time to write it.

odie1

Wow, I have taken copious notes of where to hike, eat and what to order!!!!

Tentatively we are planning this and was wondering if you would agree with the amount of time
Dec 23-27 BA
Dec 27-Jan 5/San Martin/Junin and Bariloche (we are looking to fly fish)
Jan 6-Lake crossing spending the night on Pehuille
Jan 7-Punta Arenas (from Puerto Montt)
Jan 8-14-El Calafate
Jan 15-BA

yestravel

Thanks all! Reading TRs r a great way to relive past trips as much fun as reading them to research a new trip.
funny that 3 of us didn't love the 7 Lakes...

yestravel

Oldie, What do u plan to do in el Calafate? We were there 4 days and could have easily stayed one or even two days less. I think 6 days may be way more time then u need there. (that portion of the TR should be next). r u flying from PA to el Calafate or busing it? I love BA and would add the time there.

odie1

yestravel-We want to go to TdP, El Perito Moreno Glacier and maybe a trip up to see Fitz Roy.

Am anxiously awaiting your next installment.

We are busing it up to El Calafate.

morewierd

Oldie......7 nights in El Calafate is way too long(IMHO). Definitely 2, maybe 3. In Dec.2008, we took the 5 hour bus ride to El Chalten and spent 3 nights there, before heading back to El Calafate. Truly enjoyed El Chalten!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You've got scenery, hiking and a few delightful restaurants. Enjoy!

yestravel

I would try and stay in TdP -- if u go there from el calafate, u will not have much time to actually do anything in TdP. U've got to spend a fair amount of time getting to TdP and returning to el Calafate. TdP is truly spectacular. Much more engaging then el Calafate. (We did the glacier trek on Perito Moreno.) I know it will make for more moving around, but at least a night, even 2 in TdP would be my recommendation. We took the bus from Punta Arenas to Puerto Natales where we picked up a car. We drove from Puerto Natales to TdP for 3 nights. It's only a couple hours trip. We went back to PN, returned the car and took the bus to el Calafate. But I wonder if u could get a bus from TdP to el Calafate so u could stay over night at TdP?

We didn't make it to El Chalten and r sorry we missed it.

Huentetu

The walk up to Chachín waterfall is nice and there never seem to be many people there. I don't know how you didn't pay to get into the park as they definitely charge. There is a little hut with a barrier on that road. Different fees depending on whether you are a foreign tourist, Argentine tourist, local, etc. Long list. Perhaps the people collecting the entrance fee were on holiday too!
I have done the 7 lakes road about 6 times. It is always about to be paved. I thoroughly agree that the route through Junin is more scenic. The lakes road is fine if you stop for lunch or a picnic. There are nice campgrounds on the route which have a day fee and you can sit and relax by the water. It is a nice entrance to San Martin as you get a view of the town from above. Did you meet the double decker red London tourist bus on the road in? That always makes me laugh. If Transport for London had ever known where some of their routemaster buses would end up they would have been amazed.

odie1

yestravel-First off, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to hijack your thread at all. I just thought you might have great info for me, which it turns out I was right! So thanks. I should have been more specific in my plans so here is what we are doing:
Dec 23-26-BA
Dec 26-Jan 4-San Martin/Junin/Bariloche
Jan 4-Puerto Varas
Jan 5- Fly from Puerto Montt to Punta Arenas and bus to Puerto Natales (spend the night).
Jan 6-rent car-TdP
Jan 7-TdP
Jan 8- TdP (back to Puerto Natales to return car, bus to El Calafate)
Jan 9-El Calafate for Perito Moreno Glacier
Jan 10-Bus to El Chalten
Jan 11-El Chalten
Jan 12-El Chalten
Jan 13-Bus back to El Calafte and plane on to BA
Jan 14-BA

I can't wait for the next installment of your Trip report.

yestravel

odie, not a problem -- glad to be of help. Ur plan sounds great...so similar to ours I'm already getting jealous that you'll be doing it! I absolutely fell in love with TdP. PN is a nice little town to just wander about for a day. U really feel like u r at the end of the world. Don't miss the calafate berry pisco sour at Indigo. Delicious!
If u rent your car from Europcar in PN, Marco (or Marcus) is a real sweetheart. We picked our car up a day early and not a problem or additional charge!

Huentetu-we figured we'll be long gone by the time that road gets paved! A little hut with a barrier? hmmm...absolutely don't recall seeing that. there was the hut where they sold drinks and stuff, maybe that was it? Didn't see a double decker bus -- actually saw no buses and very few cars.

odie1

Thanks to you, and Isabel, my trip is coming together nicely. Can't wait for the next installment...

yestravel

<b>Al Fin del Mundo</b>

A correction from the previous post: Our bus left Bariloche at 9:00 a.m., not 7:30. (We got up at 7:30 to catch it – thus the confusion.)

One thing that Argentina and Chile have in common is comfortable buses. We left promptly and, as we had anticipated, headed towards Villa la Angostura and the paved crossing into Chile. We made good time and arrived in Villa de Angostura by 10:30, then took the sinuous paved road (Route 231) towards the Chilean border.

When we arrived at the border, our crossing took a while. Passport processing was reasonably quick, but customs was a different matter. Chile has a ban on the importation of all outside agricultural and food products. And, since much of the Chilean economy relies on agricultural exports, they enforce it rigorously for fear of disease. Every bag on the bus had to be unloaded and then lined up on a concrete apron. Dogs then sniffed the bags and indicated those that smell like they might contain forbidden fruit (or other items). These bags are then inspected by hand. The end result, however, was a series of false positives that included one of our bags. It contained some Mapuche spices that I’d bought in Puerto Varas a week earlier. And the border beagle sniffed them out. The Chilean border guy opened the bag and the first thing he found was a gift bottle of high-end pisco that we’d also bought in Puerto Varas. He grinned, showed it to his co-workers and pantomimed drinking it. He then examined everything else in the bag and then waved us through once he determined that we were guilty only of the re-importation of Chilean food products.

Behind us, a bedraggled backpacker had his entire immense pack – and its manifold attachments – opened and spread out. Among the contents was an equally bedraggled teddy bear, much to the amusement of his hiking companions. Once everybody had made it through Customs we re-boarded the bus and headed west. After an hour or so, we turned onto Route 5 just south of Osorno and were on the fast road to Puerto Montt. In a little while, we were passing exits to familiar places: Frutillar, Llanquihue and Puerto Varas.

We arrived at the Puerto Montt mid-afternoon and immediately sought a taxi to take us to our hotel, the Club Presidente. Our cab driver gave us a funny look, but diligently loaded our baggage into his trunk, left the bus station, drove three or four blocks, turned right – and we were at the hotel. We could have walked it! I felt a little embarrassed for the short ride and tipped generously. The Hotel Club Presidente was a modern mid-rise business-style hotel one block off the waterfront. What a change from the B&Bs, guesthouses and small hotels where we’d been staying! Our room was a large corner suite on an upper floor with a superb view of Puerto Montt and the adjacent pewter sea. We opened up some of the windows for cross-ventilation and then headed for the top-floor restaurant for a lunch of salmon ceviche.

We explored very little of Puerto Montt. From what we saw, it was an unremarkable jumble of old and new buildings with little of interest. Moreover, Puerto Montt had not really been a destination - we were using it as a stepping-stone to Torres del Paine Park and were there only because of the airport. We were catching a morning flight to Punta Arenas in the far south. After some walking around, we returned to our room to nap and repack for the airplane flight. Over the previous two and a half weeks, the contents of our two suitcases had expanded to fill several backpacks and another bag despite only minimal purchases. Time to reconsolidate.

There was supposed to be an area of seafood restaurants two or three miles out of town. However, we were uncertain of their hours or the difficulties involved in getting there and back. Instead, we opted to eat in the hotel for a second time. Dinner was, again, salmon ceviche. We took a cab to the airport the next morning and were soon on our way to the far south.

Our first impression of Punta Arenas, formed as we arrived at the airport and were driven into town, was that we really were at the end of the world: It seemed to be a land of constant wind, stunted trees, weathered wood, faded colors and rust-stained galvanized metal. We were staying at the small and aptly named Hotel Plaza, right off the central square. Another nice room in an older hotel with high ceilings. We dropped off our bags and went for a walk.

The wind was simply incredible! As we made our way across the Plaza de Armas, sometimes it was so intense that we were forced to stand still rather than try to walk into it. For the first time on our trip, we were actually cold…we’d been haunted by warm, sometimes hot, weather from Santiago south. No more. We walked down to the waterfront – the Straight of Magellan. Across the channel we could see Tierra del Fuego on the horizon. We then decided to walk to one of the town’s featured attractions – the cemetery. We made good progress when the wind wasn’t against us.

The cemetery was interesting because of what it revealed about immigration to the area. We passed tombs for the “Pavisich,” “Dragnic,” “Blanchard,” “Pivcevic” “Martinovic” families. The tombs tended to be either neo-classical style or ornate. The graves and tombs were in lanes demarked with twenty-foot tall bell-shaped topiary. And there were many elaborate arrangements of plastic flowers on graves and in front of tombs…long-lasting and wind-resistant, I guess. The wind eventually became unbearable – dust from the lanes kept getting in our eyes. We headed back, hunched against the wind.

Back from the dead, we visited the Palacio Sara Braun. This is a magnificent Gilded Age mansion on the far side of the square constructed back in a prosperous era of sheep ranching. The building had been nationalized by the Allende government back in the early 1970s. (I don’t know the fate of the owners.) It was now a combination of museum and hotel/restaurant. We took a brief walk through the plush French-style rooms and admired the gorgeous woodwork. Then we went to the lounge of the nearby Hotel Cabo de Hornos for good pisco sours. We also spent some time in the computer room there, checking up on current events. Dinner that evening was at Restaurant La Luna. We followed some advice we encountered on the Internet and ordered scallops with hot pepper, king crab salad and chupe (a kind of baked crab dish). The food was undistinguished and the service was negligent; we couldn’t even find anyone to give us a check. We went to another restaurant for dessert. Also so-so – but it least it was so-so accompanied with attentive service.

The next day, we took an early bus to Puerto Natales. The bus route took us past the occasional homestead in a sparse dry landscape dotted with clumps of plants. I saw my first rhea in route – a scuttling flightless thigh-high bird that seemed to be tracking the bus on the other side of the roadside fence. By the time we reached Puerto Natales, I’d seen about half a dozen of these odd creatures.

Puerto Natales is a colorful (literally!) town maybe a hundred miles northwest of Punta Arenas. It faces the Ultima Esperanza (“Last Hope”) Sound (love that name!). We took a cab to the Hotel Francis Drake – and immediately disliked our lodgings. Our room was small with low slanted ceilings and a claustrophobic bathroom. Since we planned on returning to Puerto Natales after going to Torre del Paine, we began our visit there by looking for another hotel for five days later.

We liked the town itself and spent the morning wandering around checking out various hotels and several nice artesania shops. We photographed many vibrantly-colored galvanized metal buildings. We encountered Hotel Indigo overlooking the Sound. We later were to return to its bar for wondrous pisco sours flavored with calafate berries. Almost as important, we discovered Chocoloteria Al Sur del Mundo, a fabulous chocolate shop. And the chocolate shop, as it turned out, was across the street from the Europcar office that was providing our rental car for Torres del Paine. We talked to the guy there (Marcos) and he let us pick up our car a day early - at no extra charge! What a change from Newton! We drove around town and hit a grocery store, a bakery, and a dried fruit vendor. We stocked up on bread, avocados, various varieties of dried fruit as well as chocolate from Chocoloteria Al Sur del Mundo. Then we drove out of town past the world’s only statue of a giant sloth - the extinct milidón mentioned in Chatwin’s “In Patagonia” - to visit Explora and Remota, two boutique hotels slightly out of town facing the Sound. They shared audacious architecture, minimalist furnishings and very high prices.

That evening we ate at Parrilla Don Jorge. This was the first Chilean Parrilla we had encountered and we were hoping for a good meal. We were among the first ones to enter the dining room – great gaucho-style décor - and unwisely sat near the fire. We later had to request to be moved as it became intolerably hot as the restaurant filled and they started some serious grilling. We were fortunate to get a second table. Our dinner – lamb, potatoes, red wine – was good. Not up to Argentine standards, but good nonetheless.

The next morning, after an unexceptional breakfast, we loaded up our car and were off to Torres del Paine on Route 9. We left Route 9 at the first exit for Torres del Paine. We were staying at Hosteria Lago Tyndall, which is immediately outside the park entrance on the south. Our route took us on the western shore of lago Toro. There are at least two other park entrances that come in from the east and skirt the eastern shore of lago Toro and the northern shore of lago Sarmiento. These access other hotels in the park, in particular Hotel Torres del Paine. All roadways within the park – as well as some of those leading to it - are ripio. Thus distances within the park, while not immense, can be very time-consuming due to reduced speeds. Also, we did not see a gas station between Puerto Natales and Torres del Paine Park or within the park itself. Gas is available – more on this later.

From our perspective, Hosteria Lago Tyndall was well situated; it gives reasonable access to all parts of the lake, in particular lago Grey and its glacier in the far west, which is a very long haul from the hotels accessed via the eastern park entrances. Our hotel looked across a river-crossed prairie area to the “Cuernos” – some spectacularly rugged mountains that comprised the un-eroded core basaltic flows that are all that remain of otherwise eroded volcanoes. The Cuernos del Paine rise at something close to a ninety degree angle. Coupled with the windy climate, occasional sun and constantly changing cloud cover, they were extremely photogenic – we photographed them again and again at various times of day over the next three days.

The Hosteria itself was nearly empty – we had arrived March 12, at the end of the season. The manager – who couldn’t have been more pleasant - allowed us to switch our small room for a larger one near the end of the building. (This did put us out of wifi range though – we had to go to the lobby or the dining area to use our iPad.) The hotel as a whole, although not unpleasant, was slightly down at the heels – but nonetheless comfortable and a reasonable value in a very expensive area.

Since we arrived early in the afternoon of a beautiful sunny day – and were uncertain about future weather - we took advantage of the day and drove around the park, taking some great photos and making a few short hikes. The short Salto Chico hike – near Hotel Explora on Lago Pehoé – was particularly spectacular. Beautiful falls, low wind-blown vegetation and a playful fox that I photographed multiple times. (Explora, by the way, has the same owners - and architect - as the hotel of the same name outside Puerto Natales.) Parts of the park in the east – we went all the way to Hotel las Torres – have numerous guanacos, a gracile cousin of the llama. Hotel las Torres is the only place in the park that you can drive to and have an reasonably unobstructed view of the Torres – three spectacularly vertical mountains of similar size and shape from which the park takes its name. We then drove to Hostel Lago Grey in the western part of the park. Great views. Glacier Grey was a thick light blue line on the horizon on the far northern end of the lake. An iceberg – calved off the glacier – had been blown to the southern shoreline and sat stranded there, a miniature blue-tinted ice mountain. At Hostel Lago Grey we had good pisco sours, skipped the expensive restaurant in favor of cheap bar food – grilled cheese sandwiches – and took window-side seats to watch the sun go down behind the mountains.

The next day was a bit overcast, but not too windy or cold. We drove to the eastern end of lago Pehoé and took the first catamaran at 9:30 across the lake, a spectacular trip that took us by Salto Grande, a cascade on the north side of the lake. Our destination, the campground at the far eastern side of the lake (El Refugio y Area de Acampar Paine Grande), is the trailhead for a hike to Campamiento italiano and the Valle de frances (“Frenchman’s Valley). The hike was rugged – a lot of ups and downs – and scenic. We took our time. It took us three hours to hike the eight kilometers to Campamiento italiano. There we sat down, ate our mashed avocado sandwiches and the last of our dried fruit and pondered our situation. The hike had taken us along the base of the Cuernos – striking views and more photos - and under a large glacier. Continuing up Frenchman’s Valley towards Campamiento britanico would eventually give us views of the Torres that are only possible from the hiking trail. However, at our pace, continuing would also cause us to miss our return catamaran back across lago Pehoé. We reluctantly turned around and headed back. The end result was that we cooled our heels for two hours while waiting for the catamaran. We’d had time to do at least part of Frenchman’s Valley. But we did manage to get an empanada and a beer from the Refugio cafeteria. And I took some comfort at a group of hikers sharing a plastic tub to soak their feet. Enough for one day; it had worked out well. We were pretty much the first people on the boat on the way back.

By this point, gasoline had become a concern. We’d last filled the car in Puerto Natales. Since then we’d driven to Torres del Paine and then driven extensively within the park. We had about a quarter tank left and were unsure if it was adequate to get us back to Puerto Natales unless we spent the next day not driving and hanging out in our hotel – something we had no intention of doing. Supposedly, gasoline was available at Posada Serrano on the way back to our hotel. We got there at nightfall – Posada Serrano made Hosteria Lago Tyndall look palatial. We looked around. No pumps. We asked at the Posada. No problem – they had gas. They pumped it from a drum into a five liter plastic jug, then siphoned it in to our car. I bought ten liters – about two and a half gallons – of gasoline. It was the most expensive gasoline I’d ever bought in my life – over $8.00 a gallon by my reckoning. For some reason – perhaps the fact that we’d pretty much exhausted the food supplies we’d brought with us and had been storing on the balcony outside our hotel room – we decided to eat at Posada Serrano. Bad move - we walked down a tilted hallway to a grim dining room and had the absolute worst dinner of our trip. Everything we order was tough, tasteless and bland. We should have braved the immense but empty dining room of Hosteria Lago Tyndall.

Our luck with the weather held. The next day was brilliant sunshine although somewhat windy. We took off to revisit Lago Grey and hike part of the southern shoreline. There’s a boat that leaves near Hostel Lago Grey and travels up lago Grey for close views of the glacier. We didn’t take the tour because we had plans for glacier visit/hike in El Calafate.

During our recurring drives around the east side of lago Pehoé, we’d noticed the Hosteria Peloé. It was on a small island in the lake. One got to it by walking across a pedestrian bridge from the shore. Viewed from the road, the hosteria, the bridge and the island made a beautiful (and photographable) scene. We decided to go there for our last night’s meal. They weren’t serving yet when we arrived, so we wandered the hotel and grounds. Finally we tried again and it was a go. Food was good, the view terrific. I interrupted my meal at one point to go outside to photograph the impact of the sunset on the Cuernos and the moonrise over some hills to the east.

We left late the next morning. Parque Nacional Torres de Paine is simply incredible, perhaps the most physically spectacular place I’ve ever been. I’d go back again tomorrow – although I’d make sure to bring more food and devote more time to hiking.

On our return to Puerto Natales, we stayed at the Hotel Charles Darwin. We had a very large, very nice corner room on the second floor. This small hotel is pleasant, friendly, well situated – and the rooms have high ceilings. It is very close to both the Chocolateria al Sur del Mundo and Europcar. Indeed, I didn’t so much return my car to Europcar as return the keys to Marcos and point to the car parked across the street in front the of the Hotel Darwin. That evening we returned to Indigo for calafate pisco sours and then splurged for dinner at Angelica’s, Puerto Natales’ best seafood restaurant. Superb king crab (centolla) cannelloni – we even liked the cream-based sauce - wonderful wine, good dessert. Angelica’s has an immense centolla shell – over a foot across – on one of the dining room walls.

We left the next day by bus for El Calafate. As the condor flies, El Calafate is perhaps sixty miles from Torres del Paine. However, the ruggedness of the intervening landscape necessitated a return to Puerto Natales and then a three and a half hour bus ride through the sparse Patagonian steppe. At one point we stopped for ten minutes in a gas station while the bus was refueled. The German guy in front of me, a fellow passenger, had his U$D5 bill rejected by the cashier because it was too wrinkled, forcing a lengthy delay as he dug around in his pockets for a small pile of Argentine peso coins. When I paid for my water, the cashier gave me the world’s most torn and soiled five peso note as part of my change. I was tempted to refuse it in return. (I didn’t – the folks behind me had a bus to catch.)

By the time we arrived at El Calafate, we had been traveling for over four weeks. During that time we had always been on the go and had never spent more than three nights in one place. The previous week – with a series of overnight stays in different towns on the way to and from Torres del Paine – had been particularly exhausting. We just wanted to get to one place and kick back. And El Calafate was the perfect place, although we had to split our nights between two hotels. We spent the first night at the charming Casa de Grillos B&B and the next three nights at the beautiful and accommodating Hosteria Sierra Nevada. El Calafate was a pleasant small town, and it and the adjacent lago Argentino had felt like an oasis when we’d arrived after the bus ride through the remote reaches of Patagonia. We slept late, walked around town, and did the last of our gift shopping. And we ate – El Calafate has wonderful restaurants. We went to Casmiro Biguá twice for their salad of smoked trout with blue cheese, grilled meats and “Calafate” malbec. We had the mixed grill at La Tablita; the delicious grilled lamb, in particular, was excellent. We had pasta and wine at Restaurante Cucharon. The weight we had lost on our salmon and avocado diet in Chile was slowly regained in Argentina.

But we had come to El Calafate for a reason: the Perito Moreno glacier in Los Glaciares National Park. We wanted to do the glacier trek. We asked around and found that all tours cost the same and departed at the same time (which was early - very early)! We booked our tour and counted on at least a little extra rest as we were in the last hotel on the road out of town to Perito Moreno. The tour started with a bus ride. Then we decamped to a boat that took us to the glacier. It was awe-inspiring, boating near sheer 90 foot walls of ice and hearing the muffled roar and boom as sections occasionally calved off and fell into the lake. It was unexpectedly warm, well above freezing. (Perito Moreno, due to its unique micro-climate, is one of the few glaciers on the planet not shrinking from climate change. It basically comprised an accumulation of snow that had fallen out over the Andes and pushed its way down to lago Argentino. And there was still enough Pacific-based moisture, westerly winds and high altitude cold to ensure its continued existence.)

After viewing the front of the glacier we landed some distance from it on its south-eastern side. We then hiked over a rocky landscape to arrive at the glacier. Before ascending, we strapped crampons – metallic snowshoes with spikes - on our shoes and listened to a lecture by the guide: we were to go single file and step only where others had stepped before. We clambered across a field of mixed ice and glacial detritus and went up onto the ice, which was dirty near the edges of the glacier. They showed us a crevasse. It looked like a mysterious blue slit large enough to swallow someone; we could hear melt water running somewhere far, far below. The guides made us all pass on one side of the crevasse. As I eyed it the body sized cavity, that “step only where others had stepped before” thing suddenly started to make a lot of sense. To me though, not everyone. A party of three young people wandered off and had to be retrieved by the guides. They also had to cut some foot holds into the glacier so that we could continue our ascent. The view from the top of the glacier was overwhelming…the icy landscape, the lake beyond – fantastic! We clumsily walked around for a while – this was a “trek” in name only – and then the guides announced we were nearing the end. They led us to a wooden table set on the ice with twenty glasses and ice bucket and a bottle of Jim Beam Kentucky bourbon. We were having bourbon on the rocks over glacial ice. What could one say other than “salud”?

We returned to the shore, removed our crampons and returned to the boat landing via a different route – this one took us on a path through a cool moist boggy landscape that was as green as the Olympic Peninsula. We re-boarded our boat and left this enchanted land- and water-scape. The glacier boomed goodbye.

After our return by boat, we-boarded our buses, which then took us to an overlook on land above and directly across the lake from the glacier. At this point, the sheer immensity of Perito Moreno became apparent: This was a huge river of ice that completely filled the valley that it had carved on its way down to the lake. We spent the better part of an hour at the overlook and then re-boarded the bus and headed back to El Calafate. We, and others on the bus, were so exhausted by the excursion that we slept much of the way back.

The next morning we boarded our flight to Buenos Aires. It was then that it started to sink in that our fabulous adventure to the far south was over.

(Note: We booked all of our hotels in the far south of Chile - Puerto Montt, Punta Arenas, Puerto Natales and Torres del Paine - via Alta Tours. Alta Tours’ local representative also promptly rebooked us to the Hotel Charles Darwin when we expressed our dissatisfaction with the Hotel Sir Francis Drake. They were responsible for getting us the suite in Puerto Montt. They also booked our lake crossing and some of our bus trips and the car rental. That said, and although they did a very good job, we could have done all of this ourselves.)

santamonica

A giant sloth! How cool is that?

Huentetu

Very nice report! The place outside Puerto Montt with the fish restaurants is Angelmó. They aren't really restaurants but small roofed seating areas next to their respective open air kitchen. These little places are called "cocinerías" and are usually found around markets in Chile. There is a large craft market there too and, of course, a fish market. You can only eat lunch there. It is a good spot for photographers as the market is colourful, the variety of seafood impressive and the walk by the water pleasant. It is more lively on weekends or in the summer months, worth a visit even if you do not eat there.
http://www.labuenavida.cl/content/vi...rto-Montt.html

I loved the bit about the backpacker with his hidden teddy bear!

owlwoman

Just wanted to let you know I am still really enjoying your report...we stayed in Puerto Natalas also, did just a day trip to the TDP, in retrospect, wish we had spend a couple of nights in the park. Anyway, your report is really bringing back very fond memories. Thanks for taking the time to post!