Category: Lakes district

After breakfast we headed to the lake with the intention of renting kayaks. It was a beautiful day and the volcano looked very cool.

We were told to go to another beach where we found a sailboat to rent—yippeee! We reserved the boat for that afternoon and walked back to the hotel to get ready to sail. We bought some empanadas to take on the boat for lunch and changed into our bathing suits.

Back to the sailboat . . . We took boat out and unfortunately there was NO wind. We tried re-rigging the boat but we still were just bobbing. I tried paddling to what looked like a wind line, still just bobbing.

Here’s how far we got from the beach.

Here are the kayakers who were laughing at us because we weren’t moving.

Finally as we were trying to head back in the wind picked up. We ended up really sailing for about an hour. We had a lot of fun. Here is a picture of Captain Rick.

That evening we went out for a beer and a juice. We had dinner at the room and packed up because we needed to leave early to go to Temuco to catch our flight to Santiago.

We had breakfast at the hotel and headed out. Huilo Huilo had a number of self guided hikes but we decided we’d rather get on our way to Pucón, a 2.5 hour drive. We decided to check out the hot springs in Liquine. Liquine was a very small town, so small that at one point a pig wandered across the road. We stopped at the information office but the woman there didn’t speak English and my Spanish is really bad. Eventually we found a hot spring site. It was very basic, with most of the visitors camping there. I got a tour from a guy working there. For 6,000 pesos, $10, you could use all of their facilities which included a couple of tubs feed by hot springs, a sauna, a mud hot spring, and private bath tubes. It didn’t look that clean so we didn’t do it but it was an interesting spot.

Then we continued on to Pucón. We found the hotel without any problem. After checking in, we went for a late lunch at a Peruvian restaurant and then walked through town. We were trying to find a sailboat to rent but were told that we could only go out with a skipper, oh well! We walked to the lake. There we saw a boat just like our, we joked that we had had it shipped just to S. America.

Here is a picture of the sunset over the lake.

That evening we had our typical picnic on our deck at the hotel.

We left Puerto Varas this morning and headed to Huilo Huilo, a 4 hr drive, with a planned stop in Frutillar.

Frutillar was established in the late 1800’s by German immigrants and the town still has a German feel. We wandered around the lake front which contained lots of little shops and a world-renowned theater. The volcano loomed on the other side of the lake. Here are pictures of the volcano.

Many of the shops sold yarn, but I showed great self-restraint and resisted. We bought some handmade wooden birds for the wall in the office. Here are pictures of the town.

Frutillar is famous for its theater beside the water.

Then we headed back to the car and planned to drive to our next destination. However when we got back to the car, we discovered that the battery was dead because we left the lights on (Chile requires drivers to drive with the lights on during the day). We called Hertz and they were supposed to send someone.

Rick waited with a car and I went to the German village museum. It was a recreation of the original German settlers village.

When I got back no one had called or arrived to jump start us. I walked into the town to try to find someone to help but no luck. We tried to call Hertz again and were holding for a representative. Rick hung up before speaking to someone because the phone battery was dying and we did not have a way to recharge it. We both thought we might be stuck in Frutillar for the night. Eventually, I waved down a police van driving by. They didn’t speak English but I had used my translator to figure out how to say “My car battery has died. Can you help us?” They understood. They didn’t have jumper cables so they went off to find some. They came back about 30 minutes later. Unfortunately the battery on their van was on the wrong side so they waved over a truck. Finally the car started! We tried to give the police officers 20,000 pesos, about $20, but they wouldn’t accept it so we ended up giving it to the truck driver.

Back on our way, we drove directly to Huilo Huilo. The drive was very pretty, along huge lakes. Here is a  picture from the drive.

Eventually we arrived at our hotel in Huilo Huilo. Huilo Huilo is a conservation project, begun in 2000, which encompasses 1000 sq km of private land that has been developed for low-impact ecotourism and falls within a much larger Unesco biosphere reserve. The hotel was crazy. It was a huge rambling complex. Here’s a picture of the map they gave us.

Here’s a promotional video, many of the places shown were closed, https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wPo9DK95Tf8.

Our room was in a building that looked like a mushroom. After getting settled in our room we wandered around, getting lost constantly. It was a weird place because it seemed really empty and a big portion was closed. They had game rooms, playrooms for younger kids, movie rooms, an indoor pool, an outdoor pool, a kids pool, etc. We came to conclusion that someone had invested too much money and the resort was in trouble because they could fill it. Once we looked a little closer, our whole place, including our room, looked a little tired.

We had a dinner buffet which was good but expensive and went to bed.

At breakfast we met a nice couple from France. We both asked the person at the front desk for suggestions on what to do but both came way empty handed.

Puerto Varas is on lake Llanquihue, which is huge, and by a volcano, named Osorno, which overlooks the lake.

We decided to drive around the lake. We drove to an area called Petrohue and passed the Petrohue falls which were quite low and did not have much water flowing. We watched a couple of guys try to fish but they didn’t have much luck. Here are pictures of the “waterfalls”.

Further along that road was another lake that had touristy, water sport activities and a hotel. We stopped for a coffee.  After coffee we continued on our way and stopped at an grill, all you can eat place for lunch. After lunch we went behind the restaurant and sat by the lake. We met another French couple who were living in Chile. They told us that Chilean society had rich and poor and not much in the middle. We talked to them for awhile.

As we continued our journey around the lake, we saw a sign for Los cascades, waterfalls, so we followed the sign.  We ended up on a narrow, dirt road for quite awhile which eventually resulted in a parking lot. Then we had about a 1 km walk through the woods to the waterfalls. I think we were the only non Chilean people there. Here is a picture of the waterfalls.

After the waterfalls, we got back in the car and drove some more. We thought about stopping in Frutillar, a cute town with German origins, but decided to save that for tomorrow. On our way back into Puerto Varas we stopped at the grocery store for dinner stuff.

Before dinner in our room we walked down to the lake so Rick could get a beer. After dinner in our room, I was in lobby, working on the blog, and the French couple came back. We shared stories about our day.  They had gone to Petrohue and hiked for about 3 hours. They are doing the opposite trip, starting in Santiago and ending in Buenos Aires so they told us where to go in Santiago and encouraged us to change our trip to include Valparaiso. So we are going o try to make that change.