Camping, Kuchen and Romantic Goodbyes

21st- 24th November, 2024

Not having a fixed plan for this trip has really worked in our favour. We’re able to make up which route we’ll take on the fly, and talk to people who have been to the places we’re thinking of visiting to help determine if we should or shouldn’t make the effort. One such example was when we were considering which side of the Andes we’d travel up from Bariloche, Argentina. My original idea was to sit on an overnight bus for 18 hours to get to Mendoza, stay for a few days, then take another bus over the Andes to get to Santiago, Chile. I don’t recall why I wanted to go to Mendoza, the only thing I really know about it is that greater Mendoza is the largest wine producer in all of South America, and in hindsight, good wine and a tight budget don’t really go hand in hand. After speaking to several people who were traveling in the opposite direction to us, it was made clear that Mendoza has bugger all to offer other than expensive, sub par wine, which made me wonder if we should skip it entirely. We also spoke to our Airbnb hosts in Puerto Natales about where we would be traveling after our stay, and they were shocked to hear we were going to skip the Chilean lakes district in favour of an 18 hour bus trip to a city that only really exists because Argentines don’t know what actual decent wine tastes like. They showed us several YouTube videos of the lakes district, and despite the god awful musical accompaniment, the landscapes looked incredible. So with that, we threw out my boring plan of a long bus ride to bad wine, and decided that we’d wing it through southern Chile to get to Santiago.

I’ll admit, I had very, very low expectations of Chile. I knew I wanted to go to Santiago, only for my love of being in a big, new city and seeing museums, learning about its history and checking out the food and bar scene, and I also knew we were definitely going to visit the Atacama Desert way up north. But other than those places, and the Torres del Paine O-Trek, that was all I was concerned with seeing in Chile. I can’t BELIEVE the 500km road that winds around the lakes from Puerto Varas up to Pucón isn’t more extensively traveled among backpackers. I guess it’s only really accessible by car, so few backpackers get to experience it, but I am so glad our Puerto Natales Airbnb hosts recommended it to us. As I write this five months into our trip, I can say that those few days were some of my absolute favourites to date.

I was already in high spirits to be leaving Bariloche behind, and therefore hiking country, and really looking forward to crossing the Andes by bus. We passed huge granite peaks and giant valleys dense with vegetation as we climbed up to the tree line, and after crossing the border we descended through a winding valley with waterfalls and fields of flowers. When we arrived at the Puerto Varas bus station, we got off with two other backpackers and were surprised to find that the bus station didn’t actually exist, and the bus driver just pulled over on the side of the highway and told us something in Spanish which I didn’t understand and went on his merry way. The French couple that got off the bus with us said that we had to catch a smaller bus, a colectivo, on the other side of the highway to get into the town of Puerto Varas itself. So we flagged down a tiny van on the highway which had standing room only, and we made the ten or so minute journey into town.

When we exited the colectivo and my field of vision was no longer obstructed by its low ceiling that I was struggling to stand beneath, we were greeted with cute, old German style architecture by an incredibly vast lake. Lago Llanquihue is the second largest lake in Chile, it measures 860km2 and has an estimated depth of over 350 metres! We walked a long way to our hostel that I couldn’t have booked further from town if I tried. It’s become quite obvious that I should just be banned from booking accommodation altogether, but despite the location it was one of the nicer hostels we’ve stayed in on the whole trip. 

We didn’t have anything planned in Puerto Varas, save for searching the town for a decent pair of sunnies as I lost my beloved Oakleys on the bus somehow, and waiting for our friends Rachael and Sam to turn up with their hire car from a town half an hour south. We tried scouring the internet for a car rental company that would let us hire one without using a credit card, but found it impossible. I have no idea how Rachael and Sam did it, but I’m glad they pulled it off! After they got one of their bags stolen at the car rental place, which had a passport and laptop in it, they came to pick us up and we spent our first night together camping on the sandy shore of Lago Llanquihue. I cooked elaborate, over the top burrito bowls for dinner beneath the shelter of a tree as it started to rain, and we ate under the light of our head torches while being joined by three dogs that obviously knew a good meal when they smelled one. We had plenty of laughs before heading to our tents and falling asleep to the sound of water lapping against black volcanic sand.

We drove into Parque Nacional Vicente Pérez Rosa the next day and walked the short loop over and around numerous cascades and rapids, which made for some really great photos. There were a LOT of very ancient, painfully slow walking tourists here which was pretty funny, but it was great to witness the raw power of the water and childishly lose myself, staring out at the rapids and imagining myself acing it in a canoe, navigating the maze of drop offs and brutal twists and turns like an absolute athlete. I’ve never even been white water rafting!

We ate lunch on the shore of Lago Todos los Santos and watched the small, old tour boats chug along before driving up to a ski resort at Volcan Osorno. We took a small walk around one of the craters as the clouds passed around us on the mountainside, and we had an amazing view of the valley below us and distant mountains. We even saw a beautiful Andean Fox! A real life animal in Patagonia! Unbelievable.

We jumped back in the car and made our way to a sleepy little town called Puyehue. Three out of the four of us thought the name of the town was absolutely hilarious, because it could apparently be interpreted as being pronounced ‘Pooey-Hughie’, and even though I pointed out that it was actually ‘Poo-yay-way’, this didn’t detract from the obvious comedy gold. There were a lot of private camping spots along Lake Puyehue but just about every single one of them were locked up for the season. We eventually found one bloke who was willing to let us pitch our tents down the back of his property, next to undercover tables and chairs, looking out over the lake. A really nice Russian couple in a big van also pulled up and we got to know them a bit, and hear about their travels through South America while trying to deter the gross stray cats from rubbing all over us. We walked up the road to get stuff for dinner and a few tasty beverages, and we cooked burgers for dinner and indulged in quite an enjoyable volume of beer and wine. It was heaps of fun to get on the sauce with some friends, and it had been way too long since the last time I sunk some tinnies with mates. We had a great night and some of us awoke feeling a little worse for wear in the morning.

In the morning we walked around Puyehue a bit, and found that it appeared to be unusually busy. We found a few small market stalls and I smacked my head on one of the marquees, which the shop owners found very funny and told me I was “Muy grande!” This is becoming quite an occurrence. Everywhere we go I have to try to remember to be very mindful about donking my head on low doorways, street signs and power cables, but it’s quite funny and adds to the challenge of getting around without losing brain cells. All the commotion in town wasn’t due to some sort of fun gathering, but rather the local elections were on, so I think we all felt a bit awkward being in the crowd outside the voting building, but if anyone wasn’t immediately aware that we weren’t voting residents of Puyehue, they would have soon realised as our friend, Rachael, began to climb all the really tall slippery dips in the area and slide down them with a very enthusiastic “Weeeee!”.

One pleasant surprise about southern Chile was the prevalence of German deserts and cakes everywhere, notably ‘Kuchen’, which is pronounced ‘koo-hen’, not ‘ku-chen’, and comes in a large variety of flavours. We decided to stop in at a small town called Futrono to get some Kuchen and coffee for afternoon tea, and found a nice café looking thing down by the water. Upon entering, our mate Sam asked the waiter “Tienes Kuchen?” (Do you have Kuchen?), and he said of course and then sat us down and handed around menus. The menu was quite expensive and featured not a single Kuchen. Sam questioned the waiter again, who seemed rather perplexed, and when I asked for Kuchen without the hard ‘ch’ that Sam was unwittingly using, the waiter replied “Oh no, we don’t have Kuchen, but we do have a kitchen.” Sam is a Kiwi, and I think with his accent the water thought Sam was asking if the restaurant had a Kitchen. It was hilarious and made for an ongoing joke for the rest of the trip, but after our laughter subsided we got up from our tables and left the restaurant to make our way up the road to some actual Kuchen which was quite delicious.

That afternoon, after a few wrong turns, we finally pulled up to a campsite at the top of a hill overlooking Lago Panguipulli, and couldn’t believe the stunning view we had all to ourselves. A pristine lake in the foreground surrounded by rolling hills of farmland and topped off with a volcano looming in the background made for one of the more special campsites we’d ever stayed in, and we were the only people there. The owner’s son, 5 year old Daniel and his dog Martín were hilarious at first but became increasingly annoying when they both insisted on tracking muddy gumboots and paws over my groundsheet while I was setting up my tent. Daniel was also found hiding in the boot of our car, which we can only assume was because he thought we were his free ticket to get to the United States. After removing him, we drove into the town of Panguipulli to get supplies for a big cookout over the charcoal barbecue near our tents. We bought all sorts of root veggies and a whopping big piece of beef which I assured everyone we’d finish that night if we all tried our hardest. It took a painfully long time to cook everything but it was worth it in the end, and it was great to have a laugh around the fire.

We saw a very special sunrise in the morning and took our time packing up as we didn’t have far to travel for the day. We had to try and stop a sopping wet Martín from trying to dry himself on us, and then plead him to refrain from relentlessly barking at two adorable labrador puppies at the fence to the neighbouring property. Once in the car, we drove along winding roads through farmland and forest and around yet another enormous lake before stopping for fruit and empanadas at Lago Calafquén. We planned to go to a nearby National Park that’s famous for the Patagonian Cyprus, one of the oldest species of trees known to exist, but luckily realised before we drove out there that it was closed for the day. I didn’t mind, as I was looking forward to arriving at our end destination of Pucón, a town known as the adventure capital of Chile. Sam and Rachael dropped us off at our hostel and left to find accommodation of their own, while Rachael and I settled in and went for a little stroll around town.

Pucón is a very beautiful place. It sits between the stunning Lago Villarrica and the impressive Volcán Villarica, which you can see on a clear day. There are a lot of restaurants, bars, adventure stores and cafés, and there is an old guy that plays trumpet in the centre of town seemingly 24 hours a day which I was a big fan of. It is rather expensive here, so it was nice that the hostel had two kitchens, one of which was in a separate building to the accommodation, which meant that I didn’t have to fight people for use of the stove. We met a LOT of really nice people from all over the world at this hostel, which was voted best hostel in South America. I think we’ve seen ‘Best hostel in South America’ a few times now so I’m not entirely sure if it’s legit, but I can say that we’ve stayed in hostels better than this one that don’t claim the title. Not to say that this one was bad, it was actually really good, but probably because of the vibe created by the people staying there at the time.

We went to one of the cheaper spots in town with Rachael and Sam on our first night in Pucón for some pretty good burgers. I ordered a double, obviously, and was surprised to find that a double here wasn’t just double meat, but rather two entire burgers joined together laterally, which was definitely not a disappointment. We drank a few cans of Cristal, a very cheap, very delicious Chilean lager and reminisced on our camping trip together, as well as our time together on the O-Trek in Patagonia. Rachael and Sam would be taking their hire car back south in the morning to where we started, so it was quite sad to say goodbye to them. We all had a really good time together, and being stuck in a car for hours at a time and sinking beers around a campfire was a great way to really get to know each other. Hopeful, but without knowing if we’d see each other again in South America, we shared a fond, and quite a tragically romantic goodbye in the rain under the streetlights, and went our separate ways.

Those few days camping and road tripping together made for a great change of pace compared to sitting on busses between bigger tourist destinations. We were able to stop off at smaller towns, spend the night wherever we could pitch a tent and not feel locked in to anyone else’s schedules. Buying an old shitbox and driving it around Chile, especially Patagonia, is something frequently done by people with both the foresight and the odd determination to spend more time in one of the most expensive countries on the continent, but I totally get it. It would have to be one of the best ways to truly experience the finer details of a country, second only to getting around on an adventure bike. Having everything you need in your backpack and your own set of wheels really unlocks infinite possibilities, and I did look at trying to buy a van in Chile before we left Australia, only to decide it would be too expensive. It would have been great, no doubt, but I have a strong suspicion that we’d probably get stuck in the south of the continent, venturing between all the more untraveled spots and steering clear of tourist trap towns.

So, it finally feels like we’re really on the move. Pucón lies on the 39th parallel south, which is the same as Wilson’s Promontory, the southernmost point of mainland Australia. After 8 weeks in South America we’ve managed to get to the same latitude as the bottom of Victoria. I’m now beginning to realise just how big this place is and just how incredibly far away we are from Mexico. Onwards and upwards!