December 2019 itinerary link
We knew we were walking into an adventure when we got off the cruise ship. We just didn’t know what kind. Bill, who had just finished his trip to Antarctica, showed up at the airline check in counter right around the designated time at Santiago Airport. YS, who had arrived from LAX the night before, was sitting in a coffee shop while waiting for us, thus, it was harder to find her. But all 4 of us got the boarding passes & we were ready to conquer Patagonia. We were actually heading to the southern part of the Chilean Lake Region located just north of Patagonia.
We picked up our rental car at the airport. I thought we were lucky to have 3 people who could drive a stick shift car among us. Well, Bill’s driver’s license had just expired while he was in South America somewhere, and YS did not bring hers. So Pat had to be the one and only driver. Driving from the airport, through downtown, along the coast to reach the ferry terminal an hour or so south of town was great with nice ocean and mountain scenery. YS spotted a wonderfully homey restaurant that sold empanadas next to the terminal, and we enjoyed toasty, juicy, delicious empanadas on the ferry. The water was relatively calm and the ride was nice. So far so good.
30 minutes later, we landed on the other side and drove on. “Wait. We are supposed to turn left and follow the coastline to the west, but GPS says we are going south.” We(Pat) turned the car around, and, we all looked for the turn that we had missed. The only choice seemed to be a gravel road that branched out of the main road we were on. ‘Maybe they are redoing this road,’ we thought. GPS was happy so we kept going. No signs, no structure of any kind, no people. About half an hour later, there was a construction crew doing something on the road, and there was a sign pointing to an alternate route. Great, we should be out of this soon. Nope. The gravel road continued.
Pat was unhappy about dragging the car though this kind of road, and he was driving very slowly. Well, he had to. “Are we sure we are heading to the right direction?” We could see there were some towns along this road on the google map. Then we lost the cell signal. After about an hour or more of this uncertainty and anxiety, we came to an area with a few houses with a hand written sign saying, “a store.” We were relived and tried to find this store. A man came out of one of the houses, and we brought out all the Spanish we knew to ask about the store. Nope. No such place. No internet. No cell signal. He did seem to say there would be a bigger town in about 15-20 km & we would be able to find cell signal there. A glimmer of hope? Pat refused to believe it.
All of a sudden, asphalt replaced the gravels and our car was so happy. We were happy that houses started appearing. Cell signal was back, and we called our host. He was shocked to learn that we were almost there because we had been out of touch since arriving at the airport in Puerto Montt 5 hours ago & he had no idea what we had been up to. This was his second house, and he did not live in the area. A nice neighbor of his came to rescue us and led us to the house on unpaved roads. No wonder there was no address for this house: it was in a riverside commune type of complex that was hiding behind a mini forest and away from people.
The house was huge. There were 3 wings on the ground floor with at least two rooms and a bathroom in each wing. Then there were more rooms and bathrooms upstairs. We kept getting lost in the house.
The ground manager, Yvonny, was the sweetest person you would ever meet, and he was so eager to tell us more about this area. He did not speak a word of English, and YS pulled out her high school Spanish while Pat did his best with his two semesters worth of community college Spanish. Google Translate helped, too. He said there were several different restaurants in town. We thanked him & said see you tomorrow. When we got into the car to go into town, he appeared on a motor bike and gestured us to follow. As we were coming back onto the paved major road that we were on earlier, we waved him to go ahead. We can manage from here, we tried to tell him. He didn’t seem convinced, but we drove away without him.
None of the restaurants were open. Posted business hours indicated they were supposed to be open for dinner, but they were not. Google Map seemed to show some more restaurants further down on the same major road. So we drove on. Finally we found one restaurant attached to a camp ground that was open, and their simple meal was delicious.
The next morning, we were greeted by horses and other animals in our backyard. They were all extremely friendly, and one of them gave me a morning kiss. Yovanny showed up to answer all the questions we might have. I asked where his favorite place was around here. He said an area the other side of Lake Tagua Tagua & we could take the ferry to get there. Is there a place to have lunch? He thought about it and said there’s a hotel that has a nice restaurant when we get off the ferry. Are the roads paved? Only here and there but mostly not. Actually, I don’t know what he said. I am just mentioning the things we thought we understood.
Compared to other parts of this trip described on this page, this part went rather smoothly. The ferry ride was very pleasant, and the lake was beautiful. You forget about time and just float soaking in the the views and the breeze. Except… When we arrived on the other side 50 minutes or so later(as I said, you forget about time) we were eager to find that hotel to have lunch. There was nothing there. After checking out all the possibilities, we decide to drive on the only road there was and enjoy the favorite part of Yovanny’s and eat whatever we could find.
Driving on a dirt road meant clouds of dust all around you. And the view was nice but not all that different from others around the area. A half an hour later, we finally saw a mini mart of a sort, got some cookies and water, and turned around. (We still don’t know where the hotel was or where exactly the favorite place of Yovanny’s was.)
Let’s just go to the restaurant we ate at last night, we all agreed. Sorry. We ran out of food. A restaurant running out of things to cook middle of the day – we never knew that was even possible & how spoiled we were!
We went into the little town of Puelo and picked up some chicken(frozen), pasta, veggies etc. Came home and cooked up a feast – by this time, any kind of meal felt like a feast!
Yovanny came by and said he would have a boat ready for an outing on the river. Pat and Bill decided to stay home, so YS and I went. What a special treat that was! It’s really hard to describe in words. There was nobody else on the river.
We were supposed to spend 3 nights there, but our flight out the following morning would be fairly early, and we did not look forward to driving the gravel road at 5 in the morning for a couple of hours. So we said good bye to Puelo the next morning. Before we left, though, Yovanny showed up and said he brought his floating house down for us to see. We thought he had said that’s where he lived & that he would show it to us, but we were not sure how.
So, things never went as planned in this adventure of ours in Puerto Montt, Chile – or was it Puelo? I gave a rather elaborate description of this episode because this is the kind of adventure one never knows when it might happen again. We spent almost 3 more weeks in South America after this, but, it was pretty tame the rest of the way.
I’d love to come back here and spend at least a week. A place where people are genuinely nice, animals are happy, restaurants open and close whenever they want, and you gaze at the mountains and rivers and the moon and the sun – and you lose track of time.
next: Puerto Varas
Small Wide World 
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