The Lake District of South America

---

We were back to a familiar place that we both loved. A place with, as the title says, shed loads of mountains, lakes and right in the heart of it all a huge 3000m volcano. Pucon was the towns name, and familiar well because it has a landscape similar to New Zealand and a town not dissimilar to an Alpine one.

The overnight bus ride flew by and the jet lag was almost gone. What were 4am sleep times had now become 12pm, and our bodies were finally accustomed to the other side of the Pacific Ocean. What we were not prepared for was to be locked of of the hostel for 2 hours in the cold conditions of the Chilean Lake District. We found the place by 6.30am and it wasn't until 8.30am that we got in, so we sat, walked and argued doing anything to keep ourselves warm and occupied. We also managed to unite a pack of stray dogs in the 2 hour period. Initially, 1 black border collie followed us from the bus station to the hostel, once we got to the hostel, 1 dog had become 3 and by the time we got into the hostel we had a loyal pack of 8 dogs following us everywhere. And loyal they were, giving the bin man a scare and other dog packs a sending off.

By the time we had checked into the hostel and got settled in only 1 dog remained by the step, and it was the one we never liked. We shunned it away when we finally left the hostel again, giving it no attention and a firm 'no'.

So we were eventually dog less and able to walk around without feeling sorry for anyone who walked in our direction. After a long (for us) breakfast we were after something to do. We booked the next bus to Osorno for a few days time and then asked around, in our ever advancing Spanish, what there was to do in the area. No surprise the main attraction was to climb the Villarrica Volcano, however costing a small fortune and after climbing Mt Doom we gave it a miss. They have an amazing national park, Heurquehue, so that was the next days adventure sorted but today's was still unknown.

After an hour or so we went back to the hostel, I fancied a ride but Laura wasn't thrilled by the idea, but after arriving all our issues (small i know) were sorted. Another English girl, staying at the hostel wanted to go horse riding and Laura had been dying to go ever since leaving the UK, good news for me too as I could get a bike and have the afternoon on my own! We parted ways, Laura got her horse and I got my bike.

They weren't informed that the John Wayne guide didn't speak a word of English and neither of them spoke any Spanish, it was going to be a peaceful ride. They set off on their 3 hour ride, promised to be cross country and very scenic. The account that I got was that the whole thing lasted 2 hours, walking solely on gravel to an impressive waterfall and then back again. In order to get some sort of a thrill they hung behind John Wayne and trotted to catch up with him, the height of their excitement. She was gutted to say the least and the idea of galloping on a horse in a field down to a riverside was shattered. Come on Pucon.

The bike ride wasn't much more successful either, after waiting around an hour a the hostel for them to sort out a bike no one turned up. I left in search for another bike rental place, got a bike and at a good price too! Much cheaper than what the hostel offered for a half day. They packed me off with all I needed for all emergencies, in the off chance they would happen, a repair kit and pump for a flat tire and a helmet for extreme crashes. The last time I had a puncture was when I was 16. I'm overdue one. The ride was straight forward enough, along a 26km dirt track to a waterfall and then 26km back again. The ride there flew by, I had a lot of energy to burn off and got there within an hour. I parked up the bike at an old mans house and then walked to the falls. They were the best waterfalls I've seen to date, 3 or 4 of them all falling into one big pool, a mini Iguacu. The water looked extremely appealing but there was definitely too many people around to sneak a dip. The bike was still there which I had wondered about after leaving it with the old chap, thinking he might take advantage of the language barrier and have a growing stash of bikes in a lock up somewhere. However, I was in the saddle again and on the road back. The pace was a bit slower than before, but there was a big decent coming up which I knew too well about from climbing it an hour ago. I set off down it and stuck to the raised concrete paths designed for a set of car tires. For a split second I lost concentration, slipped off the pathway and hurtled into some extremely rough hardcore. Somehow I stayed on but by the time I'd thanked God for keeping me alive I heard a grinding.....major flat tire. The pack I'd been given was about to be used, I changed the inner tube, put the tire back on and pump in hand tried to inflate it. It was the wrong kind of pump, designed for a needle hose and not the normal one. I was buggered and was left with 2 hours to get the bike back and only one option, to run. It was 12km back to Pucon so at a 6km/h pace I'd make it. I passed loads of cyclists on the way, none with a pump or advice I could understand. It was only when I made it to the main road 5km from town I managed to thumb a lift and used the Spanish I had to get back to Pucon.

We both had a shocker of a day but we won't forget it and its one more thing I will check next time we get a bike; make sure the pump fits. After a poor day we opted for an easy night, watching a film.

A good sleep had, we were both up early and had lunch made by 8am. We rushed to the bus stop for the ride into the Heurquehue National Park an hour away from the town centre. We heard an accent that we recognised at the end of the journey, an Irish accent accurately resembling Father Ted. It turned out it was a guy we had met briefly in New Zealand, only talking for 30 minutes or so whilst in the Coromandel. We spent the rest of the day with him and Matius, a friend he made in Santiago, walking around the beautiful area, filled with mountains, lakes and Monkey Puzzler trees?!?! It turned out we are on the same course as he is, just over a different time period. We'd set out as two and came back as a 6, meeting another couple of Chileans along the way. We met up with Matius for Steak that night and then the rest of the guys for drinks later. The steak was incredible, cooked at the side of a fire on a grill and to perfection. It was a Bife de Chorizo, nothing to do with the sausage, and cost under £10 weighing over twice that of one at home. We met David, an English couple and another couple, from the hostel then drank Pisco Sours into the morning.

It was time to leave the makeshift hostel, that ran as smoothly as Sylvester Stallone and felt like I was back in the uni house with the boys. It came with the musty smell, cigarette butts on the floor and piles of washing up. One thing it did have that our uni house didn't.....bed bugs! We were out of there though feeling a little lighter in the pocket, but not too light and onto the bus to Osorno, to change bus to Bariloche, Argentina.

A mere 4 hour journey away was Osorno. Nothing more than a town and a bus station, where we needed to be in order to get the next bus. We couldn't book the bus though, because its run by an Argentinian company that don't accept foreign cards. So we tried to book the bus there and then for one leaving in an hour. They were full and therefore forced to spend the night in Osorno at a family run B&B. Osorno was nothing special, but it gave us the chance to buy some thermals for the South and to get in touch with home.

Only a day later than planned we were on our way to Bariloche, at the centre of the Patagonian Lake District. It's a postcard perfect town, sat right by a big lake with mountains on either side. The town itself, similar to Pucon, made up of log fronted buildings and German pubs. We arrived late in the evening without a place to stay, luckily for us a hostel owner was their and gave us a free ride back to their reasonably priced place, just on the edge of town.

We had read about a big bike circuit that takes you out around one of the lakes and through some jaw dropping scenery. Who could say no to that, not even Laura! Biked up with the correct size pumps and inner tubes we set off on the 65km slog for the day. The first 20km was all road running besides the main lake and from then on it turns into a gravel track looping round to merge back into the road 10km away from Bariloche. We had a leisurely pace about us, in no rush to get around it and stopped of at many a 'Mirador' (lookout) along the way. The first lookout was the most impressive, only 18km into the ride but required a ski lift to get to the top (we could have walked but thought the ride would be enough for one day). A 5 minute lift to the top gives views off all the surrounding lakes and mountains. It was the jaw dropper we hoped for and the perfect excuse for an Alfajores and a Coffee. Back in the saddle and we continued on the remaining 40km of the journey. We had no punctures to deal with, no running to do just pure sauntering around. The lakes were crystal clear with a turquoise blue trim and well in contention for one of the most amazing places we had been. Would do it again any day, just not if you want a hard ride.

The rest of the day we had a look around the town, seeing what the abundance of chocolatiers had to offer us. Now we both know our chocolate pretty well and this was nothing special, Whittickers takes it hands down and even Cadburys blows it out of the water. Not only do they have a mass of chocolate vendors but outdoor shops tend to every street corner offering all kinds of mountaineering equipment, at a much steeper price than the UK. We left empty handed and without maxing a credit card, and headed back to the hostel to make some food. It was then we created our own version of a curry, one that will be coming home with us.

We gave our legs a lie in and decided on a gentle gaunt up to a waterfall in a local national park. Initially we were going for a full on walk but once we'd reached the waterfall and a lookout we were buggered. It didn't look like it would have been the best walk ever so gave it a miss instead finding a tree and reliving a childhood climbing it. Once we got back to the hostel it was a quick change and out of the door for a cheap as chips but highly recommended steak....again. We were out by 6 and ready to eat some steak however, unbeknown to us nowhere opens up until 8 so we had to kill some time and go for a beer.....or 2! We'd killed the time and got to the Parilla (Steakhouse) to find a queue outside, surely the sin of a good place. Anyway, we got our table and ordered a reliable Bife de Chorizo again with a salad and a bottle of wine, paying the same for the wine as we did for the salad, £6, and a good bottle at that. The steaks that we got had been described as Football sized so we were ready for the challenge. We got them and between us we couldn't have been far off having half a leg on the table, slight exaggeration, Laura's cooked spot on and mine a little too pink "back to the grill". A half hour later we both finished the steak and the wine and rolled back to the hostel with a genuine bump. It wasn't hard to get to sleep.

The next morning we both felt rough for some reason, but I hadn't been sick in the whole trip. Now was my time. It must have been the steak and not the beer/wine combo!!! That's what I blamed anyway. Rough headed we got ourselves, a little too rushed, to the bus station for the next leg to El Bolson, a smaller town 120km south.

This little town was going to be our last stop before going all the way down to the bottom of Argentina/Chile. And what a stop over it was going to be, nestled in between two mountain ranges and less touristic than Bariloche. We found our temporary home, set out like a ski lodge inside and found out what there was to do in this small town. It turned out that 1 week wasn't enough time to explore all the things on offer here, let alone the 1 1/2 days we had before the mega bus ride down south. We prioritised them, going for an easy afternoon walk up to a look out and then off for a day trek the following day.

We had barely arrived before scooting out again. Our legs were still aching a fair bit from the bike ride, so a 4km stroll sounded about right. It was nothing more than a little walk up a hill to the view point, showing off El Bolson in all its glory sat well placed in the valley bottom. The viewpoint is shadowed by a looming mountain behind it which takes a 13km taxi ride just to get to a walkable part of it. The view of the town would have still been the same anyway. It was a chilled evening back at the hostel, not many people around and not much to do other than watch a bit of TV and a bit of transport research, a very fun past time of ours. One thing that we have noticed here that its easy to be pretty isolated by not understanding a word of what people are saying, especially when in a hostel. Our Spanish gets us by but not well enough to converse.

With that said, one of the guys in our room, an Argentinian chap called Hector asked (in spanish) to come with us the following morning. He couldn't speak much English and we couldn't speak much Spanish to this was going to be a tester of a day. We woke up, got our sarnies made and into the taxi that was to take us to the foot of the national park. We'd been told that this was the best one day walk that we could do in the area, lets hope they are right. We hadn't experienced 2*C since we left home we could feel every bit of it, even with our coats and jumpers on. There was even a frost on the ground, but we best get used tomit becaus its only going to he colder the further down Argentina we go.

The path ran parallel a river, the same colour as those in New Zealand, and clear enough to see the fish feeding a the bottom. It weaved along the valley bottom right up into the distant mountains. We could hear it the whole time but very rarely caught glimpse of it, not until the final few kilometres. There it was looking so inviting for a swim, but when you got down to it and dipped a hand you realise that's as far in as you are getting. It was beyond brain freeze cold. We crossed ragged rope ridges that looked collapsable at any minute and eventually scrambled our way to the Refugio or lodge in the middle of nowhere. It was now we wished we had brought a sleeping bag and had an extra day, it was incredible inside. Imagine a 50 year old chalet in the heart of the alps furnished only with wood and sheep skin seats, letting light in through sectioned windows and even horses running around outside. We sat down and had a cuppa, Alfajores and a sandwich and very basically had a Spanish conversation. From there it was back the way we had come, over the same dodgy bridges and to where the taxi dropped us off. All the way testing our Spanish out, learning a few new words here and there.

10km later and we were back to where we started, this time however the lodge that was closed when we started was now open and serving beer. The perfect way to finish off a day, and with the sun on our necks making it all the better. We taxied back to the hostel and had a good clean down and then went out for tea with Hector and another guy from our room. All in all a pretty good way to top off the day. Tomorrow however we have to experience the bus ride down to El Calafate, only 26 hours away! To be honest though, the both of us can't wait for a day of doing nothing but watching films, sleeping and writing these bloody blogs!!!

---