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Published: November 23rd 2009
13 November (day 20) continued - El Bolson
We liked our first glimpse of the lake district - large mountains dropping down into beautiful clear lakes. On arrival in El Bolson we followed the trusty Lonely Planet's two best sounding accommodation options only to find that they were both shut. Our third choice was fully booked. On our loops around the town (even the smallest towns have grid systems with mainly one way roads so we have got accustomed to driving round in circles), we had spotted the shabby looking Amancay Hotel so decided to investigate. It had a room, albeit with a slight smokey smell and a few bare wires coming out of the wall.
The Lonely Planet didn't do that much better on its restaurant write-ups. We chose Las Brasas, allegedly the best place in town although it wasn't all that great. The highlight was spotting the couple next to us drinking lager with fanta in it - we will have to try that combination at some stage.
We skipped pudding, instead settling for ½ kg of ice-cream from a very busy ice-cream stand (5 different flavours this time) which we devoured in our room while
watching the end of the film The Kingdom with the signal coming and going.
14 November (day 21) - El Bolson to Bariloche
We gave ourselves a lie in as we wanted to visit the market which didn't start until 10am. We rocked up at 10.30am to find that they were still setting things up, but a 10 minute wander was all we needed to get the gist. We restocked our supplies in the supermarket - we have a food box that lives on the back seat and must always be full of snacks or James gets upset.
The 120km journey to Bariloche was blissfully uneventful. We checked into Hostal Ciervo Rojo, caught up on internet while watching The Simpsons in Spanish, then headed out for a stroll around the town. From what we had read, we had imagined a typical little ski resort with lots of wooden fronted chocolate shops (it being the chocolate capital of Argentina). We definitely found the chocolate shops but it was bigger and more commercial than we had imagined.
We reserved some bikes for the following day, bought James a new long sleeved top and belt to replace his lost
ones, then settled down in one of the chocolate shop cafes. After a very good chocolate fondu, we headed back towards our hostel to investigate getting washing done. In pigeon Spanish and sign language we established that we would have to hurry as they were shut on Sundays (tomorrow) but could do it for us tonight if we got it to them in 5 minutes. When we got back to the hostel we realised that James had left his newly purchased top and belt in the cafe - at this rate he will return to England with nothing in his rucksack. We dropped off the washing, reclaimed the top and belt and headed off for a run along the lake. It was very windy and there was no real path so it wasn't a particularly pleasant experience.
Dinner was at a Mexican restaurant called Dias del Zapala where we made the mistake of ordering cocktails. They were the strongest cocktails imaginable, basically pure vodka with a splash of something pink. We couldn't drink them. Food-wise it was nice to be having something with a bit of spice and the fajitas and enchiladas were great.
15 November (day 22)
- Llao Llao bike ride and 7 lakes drive to San Martin
We had a fun morning cycling round the Circuito Chico a 34km route through Llao Llao national park just along the lake from Bariloche. James is not a fan of cycling at the best of times, it hurts his back, and this was no exception. He also had the added pain from his knee from where he had smashed it into the car a couple of days before. The route was pretty hilly but had some great views along the way. We took our bikes along a dirt track to a lovely secluded beach then climbed to the top of Cerro Llao Llao for excellent panoramic views. On the way back along the dirt track, James' handle bars came loose so we had an unscheduled lunch stop by the side of the road while we waited for someone to come to mend them. They turned up with a new bike, slightly extreme but very efficient. The next point of interest was a Swiss village, followed by a very steep uphill to a great lookout. James' back was in agony so he decided to run up the hill
with his bike, it was depressing that he was nearly as fast as me.
James was relieved to return the bikes and get back in the driving seat. We had a quick stop in Bariloche to have ice-cream and stock up on chocolates, then started our 200km drive to San Martin. The first half was on paved roads along the north shore of Nahuel Huapi lake to Villa La Angostura. The final 110km was along a route called the seven lakes drive. Billed as a must-see if you are in the area, we were expecting good things. I think we may have been spoilt in the Los Alerces park though as although the views were pretty they weren't any different. As well as the usual sight of animals on the road, we also spotted a bus stopped by the road with all of the passengers out with bags collecting gravel - slightly odd. En route our windscreen got hit by a flying stone but luckily the crack is right by an existing one so we are going to claim it wasn't us. It was on this journey that we reached our allowed distance of 3,200km (200km each day of
rental). With a trip into Chile planned for the next few days, we will be forking out quite a bit on extra distance.
We had booked the top end Hosteria La Masia and on arrival felt like we had entered a Swiss chalet. The only difference we can tell however between a mid-range and top end hosteria is that the décor is slightly more updated. We have agreed we will stick to mid-range from now on (although we have just booked 4 nights in the 5 star Park Hyatt hotel in Mendoza as a mid-trip treat). Dinner at La Casona was unexpectedly delicious. Fantastic pate selection to start (fois gras, mushroom, venison and trout), then lamb and wild mushroom risotto and deer for main. Having been in search of deer but not spotted any so far our new philosophy is 'if you can't see it, eat it instead'!
16 November (day 23) - San Martin to Puerto Varas (Chile)
We had spotted lots of people running along the main road by the lake as we had arrived yesterday so we thought it was rude not to join them. It was the first run where we have been
able to plod along without having to cross hundreds of roads, fall down potholes or be followed by dogs. A slight language issue meant we nearly didn't get breakfast. In future we might say yes to coffee so they don't think we don't want anything.
Rather than drive another 150km on gravel roads around the lake district, we retraced our steps from yesterday to get to Chile the quick way, a wise decision given it rained for most of the morning. I spent the journey reading the food and drink section of the Chile guidebook, an enlightening experience which left us keen to try some of the local specialities such as llama jerky and some kind of barnacle with tentacles.
We yet again had a car stuffed full of banned border-crossing food so made our sandwiches before the crossing. Incapable of having a stress-free crossing, today's problem was the car document which had our tax as having run out on 24/10/09. After much tutting the man checked his system and found that it was just the document that hadn't been updated so let us through. The Chilean customs did a full check of the car, but got distracted
by our snack box and missed the bags of apples, carrots and bananas hidden in James' rucksack.
Our mid-afternoon stop was in a place called Aguas Calientes to climb to a look out over some of the Chilean lake district and go to some hot springs. We did the climb first, but as it was still pretty bad weather the view wasn't great. On our way down we passed about 150 Chilean children all with tags round their neck clearly on a school trip to the hot springs - James is hoping this will put me off wanting children for a bit longer! We had a quick look at the hot springs, which turned out to be two big concrete pools with lots of women wearing blue caps. We decided to give it a miss.
We had planned to spend the night in Puerto Montt but while I was looking for a hotel to write on the customs form I read that it was better to stay in the nearby Puerto Varas, so at least the border crossing had been good for something. We wanted to go to the tourist office that evening so we could plan our
next few days and James had to put his foot down to get us there before 6pm, luckily the journey was on our first dual carriageway of the trip. We made it with 2 minutes to spare, which was enough time for the very helpful man to answer all of our questions and even book us a table for dinner at the seafood restaurant we had read about just along the lake.
We found a room at The Guest House, with a name like that you would think the owner spoke English but no, not a word. On instruction we parked our car round the back and then got ready for dinner. When we came to get in our car we found it had been blocked in and the people who owned the car in the way had gone out. We had to get a taxi to the restaurant. We were brave with our order, going for local specialities. James ordered crab carpaccio to start which turned out to be a hot cheesy very rich dish. Our main courses arrived in fairly normal sized dishes but mine was as rich and cheesy as James' starter and James had the
most different varieties of seafood we have eaten in one go. It was the cheapest and best seafood meal we have had, coming to only £32 including a nice bottle of Chilean wine. In order to burn off some of the calories we decided to walk home. We had clearly not been concentrating in the taxi as it was more like 5km than the 2km we had remembered.
17 November (day 24) - Chiloe
Breakfast at the Guest House was served on one big table so we got chatting to our fellow guests Sarah and Tim from Tring, small world. It turned out they had blocked us in and hadn't understood when the woman had asked them to leave the key with her. They were heading to do the W and had come from Santiago so we shared information on hostels etc then set off for Chiloe. The ferry crossing from the mainland is only 30 minutes and it is a slickly run operation where you hardly slow down before driving straight onto a ferry and off the other side.
The countryside in Chiloe is very green and hilly and reminded us a bit of England. As
it is Spring here everything is very colourful and there was flowering gorse in all directions. The reminder of England was made all the more real by the rain which kept arriving every 20 minutes then disappearing to be replaced by bright blue sky. We headed to the Chiloe National Park about half way down the island on the Pacific Coast. We paid our £1 entry fee and were given the worst map ever with a couple of red lines but no obvious trails marked. We decided the use the Lonely Planet's brief descriptions which suggested driving 6km to the beach and walking along the coast in the hills above the beach. It wasn't long before we realised why the park ranger had pointed to only 2 of the 6 trails on the map as the road was flooded. Not to be deterred we parked just before the flood and went on foot. A few jumps over puddles and walks through streams and nalca (like huge rhubarb plants) later and we made it to what vaguely resembled a track. We reached the top of the cliff where there was a great view back along the beach. We set off along
what we thought was the path but soon realised it wasn't. As it was clear that the path wasn't yet open for the year so there were no footprints to follow, I chose to use fresh cowpats as the best indicator of where the path went! This wasn't a good idea. We made 8 different attempts to find a path, each one involving me crouching to half my height to get under branches - you can imagine what that meant for James and he wasn't very happy. Eventually we admitted defeat and headed back the way we came.
Path number 2 was a simple walk across sand dunes to the beach, or so we thought. We got half way to the beach and encountered a stream. The route ahead looked like a big swamp so we took off our socks and shoes and waded for about 500m until we hit the beach. It was worth the effort, we were unsurprisingly the only ones there. It was sunny but blowing a gale so we set off heading south. It was only when we turned round to come back that the full extent of the wind hit us and we felt
pretty windswept by the time we got back.
We drove to Castro, the capital of Chiloe where we had decided to spend the night. We took a picture of some of the palafitos (houses on stilts) that Chiloe is famous for and went in search of our hostel. We chose the Central Hostal which turned out to be pretty grim. I think we were the only gringos staying. Every other room door was open and there were Chileans sitting on their beds watching TV. We headed straight out for dinner, first trying to find a restaurant that had either moved or shut down and then choosing a seafood place called Don Octavio right on the seafront. We weren't quite so adventurous this time settling for hake and salmon, mainly because I was still suffering from the richness of yesterday's meal.
The journey back to our hostel involved being chased by a stray dog which I got scared of and stopping for a rally to finish in a game of tennis which was taking place on the pavement! Our swish lodgings had both wifi and cable TV, so we made use of both, watching the end of Bourne Ultimatum.
18 November (day 25) - Chiloe
Despite the dank smell in our room, we slept really well and with no external window had no idea when it was morning. Our bathroom was really dark and particularly tastefully decorated. We were going to skip breakfast and buy our own but it was laid up and looked quite appetising so we changed our minds. Our first stop of the day was another island called Isla Quinchao. The ferry crossing was only about 10 minutes then we drove the length of the island with great views either way of neighbouring islands and possibly the mainland (we weren't really sure). One thing Chiloe has a lot of is churches (150 on an island with only 160,000 people). I had only subjected James to one church the day before, but today was different. At one stage he asked if we were on some kind of pilgrimage. We visited lots of different villages throughout the day and in each I insisted on taking a photo of the church - in my defence they were interesting and all quite different.
Our first mishap for the day (there always seems to be more than one)
was when we tried to reach the East coast of the main island. We drove along a lovely newly paved road, only to find that after 15km the road came to an abrupt end as they hadn't finished building it, either that or it had collapsed. We headed back to the main road and decided to head straight to our lunch location on the North of the island. Chiloe's most traditional dish is called Curanto. This dish is made by heating up stones in a hole in the ground then piling shellfish, pork and chicken followed by nalca leaves and damp cloths on top, then covering in dirt and grass and leaving to cook for 2 hours. We were keen to sample this culinary delight.
Luck wasn't on our side (again) and the restaurant that we were assured cooked this dish at every meal, didn't have it on this particular day. My Spanish dictionary isn't great when it comes to obscure types of fish so we struggled with the menu. About 5 minutes after ordering, we remembered that locos (what James had ordered) is abalone - a quite disgusting large lump that resembles a big scallop but doesn't taste
like one. James' Spanish was put to the test as he managed to negotiate changing his order.
I was fed up with things going wrong so we decided to visit one more place on the island then call it a day. We chose well with a 20km drive along a dirt track to Chepu where there is a huge sunken forest, created when a massive earthquake in 1960 sunk the ground to 2m below sea level, the salt water killing all of the trees. It was a surreal sight.
On the ferry back, James phoned to book rafting for the next day. We checked back into the Guest House and headed out for a light dinner, given we had already stuffed ourselves at lunch. We found a pizza place and ordered a pizza each. What we didn't read was the big heading at the top which said (admittedly in Spanish) 'all of our pizzas are family sized'. The table next to us were sharing one between four and laughed when our two enormous pizzas arrived. Much to their astonishment we managed to finish them.
19 November (day 26) - Rafting and back to Bariloche
This time
our breakfast companions were two oldish couples from Essex who were on a short holiday in Chile and Argentina, we couldn't work out what they were doing in Puerto Varas as it isn't a particularly big tourist destination apart from for rafting/kayaking and a stop off for going further South - none of which they were doing.
The rafting was great fun. We were picked up by Raoul and Miguel, our guides, and driven along lake Llanquihue to the Petrohue river. Petrohue means foggy/misty place, an appropriate name. We started very near the base of Volcan Osorno (but couldn't see the top due to mist). The river runs through a valley with steep mountains either side and pretty spectacular views. Miguel gave us our safety briefing and I felt sorry for the other two rafters who didn't speak English as he did the whole thing in English, even making some quite funny jokes about falling in. As James and I were at the front of the raft we got the brunt of the soaking. The river was very high so we moved at quite a pace and on a couple of occasions I lost my footing and thought I
was a goner. We travelled 17km through quite a few rapids (class 3+ for anyone in the know about these things) and made it safely in one piece to the end. It started snowing towards the end, so unsurprisingly we were glad to get out of our wetsuits and into dry clothes while they prepared lunch for us. My feet didn't thaw for at least 2 hours afterwards. We got back to Puerto Varas about 2pm and commented to Raoul about the number of election posters we keep seeing. They are everywhere, we even spotted some cardboard cut outs of one man. Apparently the elections are in December so I am sure we will be seeing more as we go along. Noone seems too interested in who is going to win though, they care more about the local sheriffs and governors.
We got straight in the car to start our 365km journey back to Bariloche. This time our border crossing was uneventful. We left the border in the middle of a car rally though so the rest of the journey whenever we saw people cheering on the side of the road, they thought we were part of the rally
and cheered us on. James was keen to overtake them on blind bends in the rain but I was banning him, we were so near to handing back the car, I couldn't face anything else happening.
To pass the time, I read the Argentina food and drink section this time to see if there was anything we had missed. The gist was meat, icecream and any kind of snacks so we felt we had pretty much covered it. They mentioned snacks called alfajores which we thought we had missed until we realised that was what our favourite milka oreos were.
As a last blow-out on sweet food we had chocolate fondue followed by ice-cream for dinner. We then bought a box of chocolates to take with us to Mendoza. We checked out the Mendoza weather for the next few days - 35 to 39 degrees - we are going to fry.
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Pip Vincent
non-member comment
Off on holiday
Hi - sorry not replied recently - have printed off the blog and will read on plane to Scottsdale tomorrow xxx