Puyehue

There are a couple of things you can´t throw a stick at without hitting in the Andes, and one of them is volcanoes. I´ll get to the others later.

We decided to rent a car in Bariloche and drive into Chile to the Parque Nacional Puyehue and explore the surrounding area. We left at 11 am, thinking that the 200 kilometers we had to travel would be easy. Then we got to the border crossing. After three hours of waiting in a kilometer-long line of cars:



we finally made it through the crossing. The Latin American way of doing things does not make crossing international borders very easy.

The border crossing is at a pass, and we descended into Chile. I told Melanie that this was ´the place´, meaning that this was the place that I had in my head all of these months of planning and waiting to go on the trip. The park is situated in a river valley (el Rio Gol Gol) that you descend into from the pass. The valley is formed by two steep ridges that are covered with vegetation (Chile is on the wet side of the Andes). In the background you can see volcanoes and other mountain ranges. Spectacular.

After camping for the night, we headed for the park´s namesake, el volcan Puyehue. When you are looking for hiking trails in the Andes, take the difficulty rating with a grain of salt - these people are used to walking up hills. ´Easy´ means that you will be walking straight uphill for four hours. I would hate to see what ´Difficult´ means. So after four hours of walking uphill, you are greeted with this view:



which makes it all worthwhile.

And the volcano:



There are hot springs and geysers at the end of the trail, but we are not equipped for overnight backpacking, so that will have to wait until next time.

The next day, we headed along dirt road (an addendum to the joke about rental cars my brother always tells: what is the fastest car on a dirt road? the one you just rented) to Puerto Octay. This city is located near a:



You guessed it, a volcano (el volcan Osorno). We talked to perhaps the most friendly tourist information stand operator in South America who told us that there are two perfect cone volcanoes in the world - Mt. Fuji and Osorno. Of course, he was partial to the one in his backyard. He was a bit off his rocker, though, as he tried to give me the same map three times.

Puerto Octay was founded by German settlers and still retains the German style architecture and the tradition of making Kuchen (fruit-topped cakes). We enjoyed a nice slice of kuchen while viewing the volcano.

On the way back, we decided that it would be a good idea to head for the border the day before we were to return the car just in case. And of course, it took only twenty minutes to cross this time. Better safe than sorry.