14 Jan South America: Chile – Lake Region

Y’all, I’m only half way finished with posting about our trip! I don’t know why this trip is taking so many posts when I did our other two week trips in one post! Bless those who are still reading!

After leaving the park, we headed back to Puerto Natales  before catching a bus to Puerto Arenas and flying to Puerto Montt in the lake region. Again, too much detail for most, but here it goes….

Day 1 – Puerto Natales & Travel to Puerto Montt

Like I mentioned in my last post, Puerto Natales is the base on both sides of Hiking at Torres Del Paine. The day before we left for the park we were busy getting groceries and our gear together, so we didn’t get to walk around town, so the morning after returning from the park was spent walking around town. Another extremely freezing and windy day, but the sun was out!

That afternoon we left Puerto Natales, took a bus to Puerto Arenas, and took a flight to Puerto Montt.

Day 2 – Puerto Varas & Osorno Volcano

After arriving at the Puerto Montt airport the night before and driving to Puerto Varas, we stayed at one of my favorite places the whole trip, a private cabin on the lake. This was by far one of my favorite days: warmer weather, minimal hiking, sunny skies, a beautiful volcano, topped off with our own private beach on the gorgeous lake! It was a 45 minute drive to the volcano, where we parked and hiked up it! After driving around the area and visiting some other lakes, we went back to our lodge to enjoy our private backyard! Seriously, the Lord blessed us so much this day!

Day 3 – Puyehue

The next day, we drove from Puerto Varas to Puyehue. Looking back, we wished we would have stayed in Puerto Varas forever. Puyehue greeted us with a lot of rain. We still managed to do some hiking at the Perez Rosares National Park, but as it will do for any vacation, the rain made it very hard to enjoy the outdoors. One of my favorite parts about the lake region was there were waterfalls EVERYWHERE! Also, when we arrived in Puyehue we found these slides! Aren’t they crazy? Sometimes it’s fun to act like a kid again!

Day 4 – Puyehue

The next day consisted of lots of rain. We drove around aimlessly on a LOT of gravel roads. As you can see, the highlight of the day was driving and a cow! I’ll just go ahead and say this wasn’t my favorite day of the trip, although it was one that helped contribute to finishing 6 books on the trip!

Day 5 – Puyehue to Puerto Montt

The next morning we woke up and drove in more rain! We went back to Puerto Montt, passed through the town and went over to Alerce Andino National Park where it rained and rained some more! Not enough to keep us from hiking though! We managed to kill some time after that before we hopped on our overnight bus (yikes) to Santiago!! Yes, one more post left! Phew…

Our tips:

• Check out our other posts on Argentina and Patagonia
• Puerto Varas is a must visit. It was one of our highlights of our trip.
• In addition, the volcano (weather-permitting) is gorgeous!
• Be prepared, if you go towards Puyehue, to drive on a lot of gravel roads. A lot. You have been warned.
• If you get a chance, stay at Bordemundo B&B y Cabañas in Puerto Varas – by far our favorite place of the whole trip.
• Don’t stay in Puyehue. We were not impressed and it doesn’t take much to impress us. We couldn’t even find a place to sit down and have a meal!
• Highly recommend renting a car for the lake region – I am not sure how easy it would be to get around using public transportation.
• Puerto Varas is recommended over Puerto Montt! Although if you like bigger cities, Puerto Montt might be preferred.
• Go to ​Saltos del Petrohue on the way back from visiting the Volcano