Chile to Argentina

Previous short trips to Latin America had left us with just a few words of Spanish, but travelling for six months in Spanish speaking countries gave us the opportunity to build considerably on the little we remembered. We wanted to take some lessons early in our trip, and decided to spend a week taking Spanish lessons for 3 hours every morning in the small city of Puerto Varas.

Puerto Varas is similar to Pucon in that it is on a large lake with volcanoes nearby. It offers kayaking, rafting, and hiking as well, but is less commercial than Pucon. We'd confirmed the lessons and a hostel room back in August, so this was the first prebooked appointment of our trip. Puerto Varas was a perfect place to spend a week. It has all the services a traveller might need without the tourist trap feel of Pucon. The city and the surrounding countryside are beautiful with lots of activities for active travellers as well as less adventurous ones.

Looking across Lago Llanquihue at Volcan Osorno
from downtown Puerto Varas.

Alex was a very enthusiastic and patient teacher. Our lessons were at his home every morning and he and his wife Malva were wonderful hosts. We enjoyed fresh coffee every morning, and shared Yukon and Chile stories in our breaks - first in English, then painfully slowly in Spanish after a couple of days. While Alex did his best, we're not quite fluent yet, but we do have a small base of knowledge on which to build.

Alex and Malva outside their home in Puerto Varas.

We fit in a couple of afternoon activities during the week in Puerto Varas including a visit to the small town of Frutillar about 40 minutes up the shore of Lago Llanquihue. Southern Chile has a significant German influence in the Lakes District and it is especially noticeable in Frutillar. Inexplicably, there is also a new multimillion dollar theatre jutting out from the shore, a very unusual site in a Chilean town of about 16,000 people.

The performing arts centre in Frutillar.

A hotel in Frutillar. One of many German
influenced buildings in Chile's Lakes District.

We also did an afternoon of canyoning. I must admit I'd never heard of canyoning before this trip, and it's a very different way of navigating down a river. Outfitted in neoprene booties and water shoes, wetsuits, helmets and gloves, we swam, jumped and rappelled our way down a small whitewater canyon. I have spent my fair share of time swimming in whitewater, but always holding onto my paddle and trying to drag my overturned canoe to shore.

We went over waterfalls up to twelve feet high - feet first, headfirst, and headfirst on our backs. We jumped off cliffs into churning whitewater holes, and we finished off by rappelling one hundred feet down a waterfall before making the final twenty five foot jump into the pool below. The small river was glacier fed, and our guide estimated the water temperature to be about seven degrees. There may have been a look of terror on our faces at times, but we were smiling and laughing for 119 minutes of the two hour run.

Unfortunately it wasn't possible to carry our camera with us, but we did pick up a GoPro DVD of our trip. If we can manage to get it all the way home, I'll post a video at some point. In the meantime, this YouTube video highlights the same trip that we did:

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8rzEKr_AqR8

From Puerto Varas we travelled by bus to Bariloche, Argentina. We spent only three weeks in Chile, but would be returning in December and January. We'd had enough time in larger, high energy places, so we decided to just spend just one night in Bariloche and headed two hours south to the smaller agricultural town of El Bolson.

While in El Bolson, we had a absolutely fantastic dinner at a local Parrilla (steakhouse). Steaks are part of the cultural fabric of Argentina. They are typically huge, tender, and incredibly tasty. We got a recommendation from one of the owners of our hostel and headed into town for dinner at La Gorda where we had the best steaks we've ever had.  Argentinians use different words and phrases when they talk about steak, but with our limited Spanish we managed to order the ribeyes we wanted and figured out that I wanted "jugoso" (medium rare), and Cyd wanted "a punto" (medium). The eggs and bacon on top were a surprise!

Cyd didn't quite manage to finish all of her steak.
I did.

Coming across a reference to "one of the best hostels in Argentina" in the Lonely Planet  guide, we managed to get a room at La Casona de Odile for four nights on one day's notice. For once a hostel looked better in real life than it did on the website.

La Casona de Odile (www.odile.com.ar) is five kms north of El Bolson and built on five riverside acres covered in gardens, streams, and towering trees, with mountain views all around. They offer homemade bread and organic jams with breakfast, and have a small restaurant on the property that makes wonderful meals every night using local organic produce. They even operate a small micobrewery on the premises and they sell great Argentinian wine at very reasonable prices. A live in yoga instructor offers classes every morning in an outdoor space.

The beautiful grounds at La Casona de Odile.

Yoga among the lupins.

The cozy sitting room at the hostel.

The hands-on owners and other staff were genuinely concerned that everyone was comfortable and happy. They provided us with hiking logistics, helped us arrange transportation, and booked a room for us at the next stop where nobody spoke English or answered emails. They gave us directions to the trout farm and the organic dairy farm just down the road. It's the kind of place that makes you feel like staying indefinitely. Yoga in the mornings, hiking in the afternoon, and great beer, wine and food in the evenings...ahhh.

But we had a long list of destinations to visit and the second, and to this point, last confirmed appointment of our trip coming up. So we sadly said our goodbyes, invited our new friend and Argentinian dog musher Javi to Whitehorse for the Yukon Quest, and jumped on the bus to Patagonia.