Chilly Weekend in Chile 

(and "Recovering" in Villa La Angostura)

  Other Side of the Mountain - Otra Vez 

Tuesday April 15, 2008

We'd been in Argentina since January 18, the day it took two tries to enter the country from Chile, and our 90-day visas were getting dangerously close to their expiration date. As far as we could tell, we had three options on how to deal with this situation. We could either go to Chile sometime soon, visit the local Police or Municipal offices and ask if there was some sort of way to file for an extension, or just ignore the situation and hope the penalty wouldn't be too bad when we eventually tried to leave. We opted for the first approach. Chile isn't that bad of a place to visit, after all - especially here in the Lakes District. The Lakes Districts of both Argentina and Chile are miraculously and conveniently located right across from each other.  

Now we had to decide where and how to visit Chile and for how long. We've been staying here in San Martín de Los Andes since the 27th of March. From this place, the shortest route to Chile is a quick 45 kilometer jaunt along the north shore of Lago Lácar to a border crossing known as Paso Hau Hum. Perhaps we could even take a rafting trip that starts in Argentina at the head of the Hua Hum river and crosses the border into Chile during the ride - we've been told you have to take your passports with you when you do this excursion. That would be option 4, but it's getting a little late in the season to hacer rafting. Low river flow and cold air temperatures don't make for the greatest rafting trip.  

Slightly further away, a full 120 kilometers south along the Ruta de Siete Lagos and then another 40K west of the Argentine resort town of Villa La Angostura, we could cross the border via a major pass on a paved road and enter into one of Chile's most scenic and popular national parks. Our previous incident with the cranky Argentine customs guy at Rio Turbio has made me a little nervous about trying to re-enter Argentina in our truck, especially at a smaller border station where a single agent might be more inclined or tempted to play power games or solicit pay-offs. Paso Samore, the one near Villa La Angostura, is a major transportation route, so we hoped that this would mean the customs departments would be staffed by multiple, professional behaving agents. And we wanted to see Parque Nacional Puyehue, too. 

Considering all of these factors, we watched the weather forecast closely and eventually decided to make a long weekend out of the project of refreshing our visas - spending two nights in the national park in Chile and then two more in Villa La Angostura just back across the border in Argentina. After this little trip, we planned to return to San Martín, primarily because we've rented a house here for a couple of months and have unpacked a lot of our mobile household and classroom into it. I promise to talk more about that in the next journal entry.

Fast-forwarding to the end of the trip - the border crossings passed without incident (both directions) and our new legal deadline for leaving Argentina is July 12, 2008. Adhering to this new deadline should be no problem since we have plane tickets to fly to the USA from Santiago on July 6. 

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Before leaving San Martín for Chile last Friday, the weather here had been windy and cloudy with intermittent rain for more than a week. It even snowed at higher elevations the night before we left. The weather report said that Friday would be nice and it was right, so we had a very scenic and enjoyable drive.

The hills around Lago Lácar  had a fresh dusting of snow Friday morning,

as did the ski hill Cerro Chapelco. The kids want to ski here before we leave for home, but it's extremely unlikely they'll open for skiing before then.

The snow gave a new look to the same sites we saw two weeks ago when we drove up from Villa La Angostura. The trees have also changed color just a bit. Villa La Angostura is another small tourist town with a ski resort. It's located at the other end of Lago Naheul Huapi opposite from Bariloche. It's a convenient place to have lunch if you happen to be driving from Bariloche to San Martín, or from San Martín to Chile. We'll be stopping here for more than just lunch in a couple of days, and I hope we'll take more pictures. OK, I'm sure we'll take more pictures.

Here's Lago Espejo (Mirror Lake), just a few kilometers west of Villa La Angostura on the road to Chile. 

There was some sort of collector car rally going on this weekend, and a long line of vintage autos was already parked at the Argentine border station when we arrived. Fortunately, the line at customs and immigration moved quickly and we were back on the road driving towards the Chilean border station in about 15 minutes. At the overland border crossings between Chile and Argentina we've used (6 in all by my count), the border crossing stations of each country have been separated by anywhere between 1 and approximately 50 kilometers. Here at Paso Samore the two border stations were pretty far apart - I didn't keep track of the exact kilometerage, but it took at least 15 minutes to drive from one to the other.

Sometimes old cars have old car problems. Hopefully these guys didn't have to push all the way over the pass.

We arrive in Chile!

And right away, we were reminded of one of the things we remember fondly about Chile - the spectacular dense Valdavian rain-forest and all those waterfalls. When we arrived at our lodge, Hosteria Termas de Puyehue, we were reminded of another - non smoking public facilities!

Termas de Puyehue is one of the most popular resorts in Chile, and it is heavily visited by Chileans themselves as well as foreigners. This time of year, low season, the price for all-inclusive lodging (which included activities, all meals, and unlimited beer, wine, and alcoholic drinks) was attractive enough to attract a large number of guests, including about 40-50 people on a guided fly-fishing expedition. We'd been watching the value of the US dollar plummet vs. the peso, and feared that this visit would be very expensive , but Termas de Puyehue was still honoring their "price for foreigners" for the season - quoted in dollars and established about 8 months ago. Good for us! Bad for them.

For some strange reason, I could understand the speech of the employees at the reception counter better than I had been able to understand Chilenos in the past. Maybe we really are learning Spanish. Or perhaps the receptionists are just more professional and trained to speak clearly to their international clients. Most likely the latter, because...

On Saturday afternoon, Lynn and I attended a wine tasting of Chilean wine put on as one of the hotel activities. The sommelier, a young Chilena, spoke in short rapid bursts, lopping off large parts of most of the words (and whole sentences as far as I could tell). This was the Chilean Spanish we had become so used to hearing and not understanding during most of our travels through Chile. 

When we asked her to speak a little slower, she sighed and said she would try, but she just couldn't pull it off. Her next sentence commenced nice and slow for a word or two, but before long she just couldn't restrain the mounting pressure caused by all those words being delivered to her mouth from her brain so much faster than the former was willing to let them escape. After another three or four barely restrained words, her mouth couldn't help but completely surrender. Then the oral dam burst, the words tumbled out, and it was all over for us. We were back to staring at her with blank stares of complete bewilderment. Actually, I did understand more words than I would have six months ago and was somewhat happy to notice this fact  - but in general I was still mostly confused. I think if I didn't already know she was talking about wine I would have been completely lost.

Fortunately, there was another man in attendance who could translate for us. He was a native Chileno who now lives in Sweden. He was back visiting his native country along with his Swedish wife and some Swedish friends. He spoke not only Swedish and excellent English, but he was also capable of speaking clear, moderately-paced, and well-enunciated Spanish. This is an admirable accomplishment in it's own right, but we especially appreciate hearing Spanish that we can understand - it helps us feel like we're learning something after all.

The view of nearby Lago Puyehue from the fourth floor of Termas de Puyehue.

It rained hard during the night Friday, and most of Saturday was drizzling off and on, but we had no trouble enjoying ourselves in the game room, lounge, library, and indoor pool of the termas.

Sunday was better weather, an unusually mild and sunny day for mid-autumn in a place that receives about 5 meters of annual rainfall. We had plans to drive back to Argentina later in the day, so we had to check out of our room (family apartment) by eleven. After that, we were allowed to stay to eat one last lunch (menos the free pisco sours and vino by choice) and use all the facilities until 5pm.

The weather was perfect for a stroll

to another waterfall!

Hiking downstream from the falls, we encountered the hydro-electric power plant for the hotel. This little station has been generating all the electricity for the hotel since 1939. The hotel building itself was built just a few years earlier.

Amazing - the power building is un-guarded and open to whoever might just wander in through the door. I hope no potential terrorists are reading this.

Back at the hotel, we had time for one last soak before driving back to Argentina.

The clear skies on Sunday gave us some spectacular views of Volcán Puyehue,

and the hard rain of Friday night and most of Saturday had obviously been snow over the pass.

Things looked a little different this time through.

Compare the border pictures (two on the left) with the same view picture taken two days earlier. As hoped and expected, the border crossing back into Argentina proceeded smoothly, quickly, and without the slightest hint of a problem. This border station was staffed by the types of bored and friendly of Argentine immigration and customs officials I had previously grown to appreciate and expect (before Rio Turbio). They barely looked at our paperwork and sent us along our way as fast as they could manage. Mission accomplished!

Back near Villa La Angostura, Lago Espejo looks a little more wintry with snow on the surrounding hills. The trees even have a little more color.

Now what does Villa La Angostura look like? Well, the main part of town is actually quite tiny - just a few blocks of shops and restaurants.  There are cabañas and resorts stretching along the main road and lakefront for almost kilometers on either side of "downtown."   

And some of the best views are inside the bakeries. Careful, don't bump that cake or you'll have to buy it!

Our hotel for Sunday and Monday nights was one of those lakefront places about 7 kilometers east of town, perched on the bank of a quiet little cove of Lago Nahuel Huapi. The weather had been dry for a few days here at Villa La Angostura, but the hotel receptionist said it had been freezing at night for at least a week and would probably freeze again each night we were here.

Keeping with her promise, it was cold when we woke up Monday and clearly it had frozen again during the night. But it was sunny and warmed up nicely by mid-day. In the afternoon we went on a horseback ride up to the top of a nearby ridge. Although the day had warmed up somewhat, we ended up riding through patches of snow as we climbed above 1000 meters. Most of the ride was on a trail passing through dense wooded forest, but finally we reached an open steeply-sloping meadow on the side of the ridge overlooking all the nearby lakes and facing the mountains to the west.

The stables. 

Starting the ride.

Passing by the obligatory waterfalls,

and arriving at the "mirador."

Spectacular views they were. I enjoyed chatting with Andres the horse guide about what Argentineans think about Chileans and the us North Americans as well. One thing he said made everyone in our family feel a little better. "Don't feel bad if you can't understand Chileans - we Argentineans can't understand them either!"   

After the ride, everyone got to rest and eat.  Tom and Anna hung out at the hotel and let Lynn and Rolf enjoy a dinner date in a nice restaurant. I won't go into details but I will say that we didn't order bags of oats. It was a nice ending to a wonderful long weekend.  Well, we still had to drive back to San Martín the next day via Ruta de Siete Lagos, and that we did. It was a simple two-and-a-half hour drive. We're getting pretty familiar with that particular stretch of road now - camino lindo en mal estado - and we'll take a little mud over billowing clouds of dust any day.

-Rolf