Chilean Lake District - Week 23

16th - 24th February

A big blog this week as we've been packing it in, covering about a 1400kms through the Lake District in a hire car and bussing onto Valparaiso.

We were organised on this occasion and bought our bus tickets from Castro to Frutilla in advance. Got on the bus at Castro and arrived in Puerto Montt on time, so far so good. Then when we changed buses, things started going wrong. The driver moved our bags to the bus to Frutilla and told us it would be leaving in 15 mins so Katie dashed to the toilet and was back 5 mins later to find a slightly concerned looking James who said that the bus (with the bags!) had gone but we should get on another bus an hour later and meet our bags there. Very strange but anyway, we went with the info James 'understood' and went for an empanada (find time every day for an empanada, a tastier version of a Ginsters!). An hour later, there was no bus to Frutilla so we thought we'd check it at the office. Predictably, the people there had no idea what we were on about and insisted that we should have been on the same bus as our bags but tough, we'd missed it and there were minibuses outside that went to Frutilla all the time so we had to pay to get one of those and meet our bags there. True to form Katie went into one, i´m sure the non-english undertanding staff now know english swear words! Unbelievably, the bags really had been dropped off in the right place and the rest of the journey was uneventful to Puerto Octay on Lago Llanquilhue.

We stayed in a beautiful spot just outside town in a hostel in endless open fields with a spectacular view of Volcan Osorno. The place should have been fantastic, a lovely wooden new building with spotlessly clean bathroom and dorm but somehow it wasn't great. Too clinical, too stingy to put the heating on and no sofas! All the other guests were German so for the first time, everyone was speaking a language of which we couldn't understand the first word (don't know what happened to my 4 years of German with Mrs Losse!).

Anway, the next day we wondered the 30 mins into the town to have a mooch round and ended up in a pub garden drinking a couple of large cervezas... On the way back we went blackberry picking along the road back to the hostel, which put out a couple of local lads also picking berries as it seemed that it was their way of making a bit of cash, oh well it's a free market out there!

After having a chat to the various people in the hostel it became obvious that to really see all the Lake District region we would need to hire a car for the week. So that evening a bloody Chevrolet (Vauxhall) Corsa arrived - quality vehicle! Next morning we discovered that we had been bitten badly, so badly it's still causing extreme itching over a week later. We thought it might have been the bed bugs, but thought it was strange as the hostal was clinically clean (Owned by a Swiss/Chilean couple so you can imagine) so we left looking like plague victims.

We drove around the whole circumference of Lago Llanquilhue to Petrohue, next to the beautiful lake of Todos Los Santos, onto Purto Vargas, and stopped for Coffee and delicious Kuchen in Fruitillar Bajo. All the villages around the lake had a very German feel, partly due to the great number of German Tourists in Chile and that the whole area had been settled by Germans in the 1850's, bringing the whole culture with them. Style of houses, churches and food - not such a bad thing as their cakes are really good!

That evening, after stopping in Osorno to book our northbound bus, we stayed in Entre Lagos. The woman that owned the place reminded James of his Auntie Jo, very friendly and smiled the same way. After a long day we were happy it had a telly so we could watch Desperate Housewives and the OC, even though we are travelling you cannot beat a bit of telly!!

The little Corsa didn't quite fall apart on these loose stone roads...

Next day we headed further north, driving around Lagos Panguipulli and Calafquen on ripio roads, no tarmac. The car really came in here as buses rarely travel these roads. The countryside again really felt like England's Lake District, with the exception that sometimes we would come round a corner to see a massive snow capped Volcano!! The ripio roads go through isolated rural farming communities in deep valleys with small lakes and very few people. We stopped off at Panguipulli for a little sit on the beach. As it's full swing Chilean holiday season there was lots of holidaymakers in swimming in the lake, so Katie joined in (James is not so silly) with the freezing cold bathing. That afternoon we carried on around the lakes through Conaripe (picnic on the beach) to Lican-Ray for a couple of beers and then onto Villarrica to stay at Torres Suiza for a couple of nights.

Enjoying a couple of beers at Lican-Ray, Chileans bombing around on Jet-skis in the background.

Torres Suiza is another Swiss owned/run hostal, all very efficient, but a bad first impression. The owners gave the initial impression that we were causing them a lot of hassle by being there, being very abrupt in a very stereotypical Swiss way. With Katie's skin not recovering from the bites and turning into a full blown allergic reaction the owner showed her true colours and was very kind organising a doctor. It turned out that there is a particular type of mosquito at the lake in Puerto Octay that people can react badly to, so after some really strong anti-histamines the beginning of the end was underway, still with constant scratching!! But hey, at least it's not dengue fever or malaria!

On the first day in Villarrica we went to some local waterfalls and then sat on the beach at Carburga the whole day with Dan & Lucy, an English couple we gave a lift to from the hostal. Amazing weather - high 20's and not a cloud in the sky.


The main activity here though was to climb Volcan Villarrica (yet another volcano but this one has snow on top!) for the not inconsiderable 40,000 pesos, 40 quid each. The weather is highly unpredictable so on Tuesday it looked like this:

and the next day after a 5am start, 45min drive to Pucon to get our mountaineering gear on (ice axe and crampons - cool) and a 50mins bus ride to the start of the climb we arrive to this:


Needless to say the climb was aborted, we were a bit relieved as 80 quid is 2 days budget and a bit steep for a 8 hour walk.

The next day we decided to head on further North as Villarrica/Pucon were a bit too rammed with Chilean toursits to enjoy the scenery fully. So, on we went to Curacautin and found a lovely little hospedaje called Alewin. Very friendly owner and really lovely, cheap double room with en suite. We dumped our bags and headed straight back out to Termas de Tolhuaca which were in beautiful surroundings of pine forest but not nearly hot enough for James's liking! There was some walking to do around the national park but after 3 nights of virtually no sleep due to the constant itching, we were knackered and headed back to the hostel for an early night.

The next day, we left Aliwen and drove to Conguillio National Park for a couple of fantastic treks. We also picked up our first (and, indeed, only) couple of hitchhikers, a nice young Chilean couple on their summer hollies.

This national park is the best place in Chile to see the araucaria (ie: monkey puzzle trees) forest and our first walk was to the oldest tree in the park, an estimated 1800 years old:


The next walk was more of a hike up 1650m through the forests to a fantastic view of Laguna Conguillio and Llaima volcano:

This was the best walk we did in the Lake district, absolutely beautiful! The walk was very peacful with few people around, allowing the mind to wander and daydream. This walk in particular gave the greatest feeling of how fortunate we are to be able to be able to travel through these beautiful places for a year. How fortunate we are to have been born in Europe to loving parents, well educated to allow us to get good jobs, to save money in a country that has a strong economy giving us the oportunity to make a trip like this. You sometimes can sense a feeling with people here that they are a little envious of the way Europeans and Americans are free to travel with our strong economies, in particular with the Argentians with their recent economic crash. There is also the feeling of how long will these environments be like this, with the climate changing rapidly and these developing countries keen to have the things we take for granted as quickly as possible with little thought of the environmental consequences. Walking in unspoilt places such as these stunning national parks really does make us think that we are lucky to be travelling right now and not in 10 or 20 years time. Back to the story then!!

After two big walks, we still had what we thought would be 2 hours driving to do to get to Valdivia where we were staying that night. So off we sped, or should have sped but quickly realised progress was not going to be rapid as we first had to get the Corsa through a 20km road of volcanic scree - a few tense moments when we thought the car was actually going to shake to pieces...

So, 4 hours later at 10pm we arrived in Valdivia where we had no room booked and we found out that there was a big festival starting the next day! Eek, a very tired Katie and James behaved impeccably, didn't fall out once and after trying a few places finally found beds in one of the hostels. Decided we needed a beer and went out to find a group of hippies playing crazy rock music. There were a group of about 10 youths (!) at the front moshing which was all very surreal and highly entertaining!!

Everyone was carrying round bags of fake snow as the festival was starting and Katie got 'got' 3 times!! James was just taking a picture of the first covering when the second hit:

Valdivia is a city on the coast which was walled in the 17th century because yet again us Brits were on the rampage and kept trying to invade the pace, that Francis Drake really was a bit of a naughty boy. Everywhere we've been he's had a bit of a raid and sacked the place!! So the next day we drove up the coast to Niebula to have a look at the fortifications. The canons below could fire 1500m enough to reach all the way across the estuary below.


We then drove a bit further up the coast for a quick coffee and came accross a fishing village with an amazing sea food market. We found them picking out these strange orange things out of rocky thingies that we've never seen before - anyone any ideas?? They look delicious!


After a lovely picnic in the park, we headed back down to Osorno to drop off the car and get on the 14 hour overnight bus directly to Valparaiso.

Books we read: Man Crazy, Joyce Carol Oates - disturbing story but a good read