Lake and volcano district – Puerto Varas and Pucon
Puerto Varas, a little failure
It’s with a heavy heart that we leave Argentina to go to the lake district in Chile. An 8 hour long bus ride is waiting for us, with a veeery long stop at the Argentinian-Chilean border. We arrive late in the evening in Puerto Varas, under a heavy rain. Luckily our hostel is very close to the bus terminal.
Puerto Varas is a small town located by the Llanquihue lake, and dominated by two volcanoes, the Osorno and the Cabulco. That we are supposed to be able to see from the town. Unfortunately, because of the bad weather during our 2 days here, we won’t be able to see either of them.
After a long night of sleep, we wake up to the sound of rain falling hard. At breakfast our host tells us it might be like that all day… So we take the chance to do nothing aside from reading, watching Netflix (thankfully the wifi worked just fine) and of course play Uno around a nice bottle of Chilean wine.
The next day we hoped that the weather would change and turn a little nicer for us to be able to hike in the Vincente Perez Rosales National Park. Unfortunately the bad weather seems to be here to stay. Impossible to see the volcanoes and we don’t want to take an hour bus to just hike under the rain for 5 hours. So we decide not to go. During the afternoon, the rain calms down and we see a little sun. So we don’t loose a second and go out to walk around the town. We are able to see one volcano from the top of a hill in town.
But because of the weather we can’t really see the top. And by the time we get to the second hill, the rain starts pouring really heavily. We hurry back to the hostel, but it is too late, we are already soaking wet…
So we didn’t get to visit Puerto Varas much, but the little we saw, did make us think of Bariloche. With its wooden houses with a very German or Swiss style. And the German influence here is very present with a German hospital and a German school.
So Puerto Varas was a little failure, but talking to our host, he said that it rains a lot in this region and having beautiful days is very rare, especially when it’s not summer… Too bad for us, at least we were able to rest, both our knees still hurt from all the hiking… We also took the opportunity to change our flight and leave to New Zealand earlier than expected. We are leaving on October 24th instead of the 30th from Santiago. The reason? First the bad weather forecasted for the entire lake district, we have done a lot of hiking lately and really don’t want to spend 2 more weeks hiking in the rain. But most importantly because we wanted to go spend a few days with Flora, Maider’s friend who lives on an island across from Auckland. That way we can spend some time at her place before starting our road trip.
Pucon, reconciling with the lake district
After 2 days spent in Puerto Varas not doing much, we leave and go up North to Pucon, still in the lake district, some 5 hour bus ride away. We will spend 3 days here, hoping for a little better weather. And of course, the day we leave Puerto Varas, the sun is shining and the day looks beautiful…
Pucon is also a little town, that looks like a ski town in winter and beach town in summer. Located at the foot of the Villarica volcano (most active volcano in Chile) and right by the lake bearing the same name. Here again it feels like we are in the middle of Germany or Switzerland…
In Pucon, we found a hostel, run by only French interns and where most of the clients are French as well. From the hostel there is a beautiful view on the volcano. And as you guessed, we can’t see it when we arrive. We will actually be able to see the volcano only once during our 3 day stay.
Indeed, the weather was really nice all the way until we got to Pucon. And as soon as we dropped our bags off at the hostel and decided to go for a walk around the lake it started raining again… I guess the lake district doesn’t want us here…
We asked about the weather forecast for the next few days at our hostel and at the tourism center. The weather will be overcast but it won’t rain as much as it did in Puerto Varas! We also ask about the conditions of the trails we want to do and as expected a lot of them are closed because of the snow.
The next day we go hike in the Huarquehue park.
At 8:30 am, we climb into the only bus that goes to the park, lucky to have a seat, because the bus quickly gets crowded and people have to stand for the hour long drive. We really wonder how this works in summertime, when there are a lot more tourists.
Initially we wanted to do a hike, that was pretty steep, but offered an amazing 360 view on the surrounding lakes and the Villarica volcano. Unfortunately that trail was closed because of the snow. And everybody had to hike to same trail, the only one that was open. As you can imagine we aren’t crazy about it. For us, hiking means being alone in nature, here we see people everywhere… But we can’t complain too much because at least the weather is really nice !
We start by walking along the lake located at the entrance of the park.
And then we continue into the forest. We hike by two impressive waterfalls.
And after a short while we get to a mirador, that offers a stunning view on the lake and the Villarica volcano.
We are lucky that the weather is beautiful today !
As we continue, the trail gets more and more muddy. Eventually our shoes are just covered in wet mud… no use trying to avoid the mud when we know the entire 10 miles will be done in such conditions. But it does turn the trail a little more difficult than expected. And it seems that Maider’s knees are still feeling the effects of hiking 100 miles in Patagonia.
After a 4 mile climb, we reach the Laguna Chico. A nice little lake surrounded by the forest. Unfortunately we aren’t alone, but the atmosphere is very relaxing.
We then continued to the Laguna Toro, where we stopped for a picnic.
And finished by the Laguna Verde.
It is possible to make a loop and go see a 4th lake but the timing was a little tight. Indeed we wanted to catch the 2 o’clock bus, and to do so we had to hurry a little. There are only two bus options, the one at 2 pm, or the one at 5 pm. The 2 pm bus was a little tight, but the 5 o’clock one would have been way too late. So we just had to walk at a nice pace back down and catch the 2 pm bus.
Despite that the lakes stay beautiful, and the blue sky helps taking even nicer pictures !
As a reward after the efforts of the day, we enjoy a couple local beers with charcuterie! This is definitely the best part about hiking.
The next day we wanted to do another hike, more difficult, that offers a very nice view on the different lakes and volcanoes. But this one is covered in snow and ice, and the people at our hostel definitely recommended we rent crampons if we wanted to make it to the top. We don’t feel like renting any gear here, since everything is pretty expensive, also Maider’s knee still hurts. So we take the opportunity to go spend the afternoon in hot springs. We went to the Pozones hot springs, they have 6 different natural pools with waters around 105°F. The hot springs are located in the middle of the mountains, right next to a river.
A wonderful scenery. That we can enjoy all by ourselves !
The next day we get some rest before taking an overnight bus to Santiago (our last bus in South America), where we will spend a few days before leaving the continent and fly to New Zealand.