December 2019 itinerary link
Driving from Puelo to Pertohue Falls was pretty straight forward. At least two thirds of the road along the way was paved, and that made all the difference in traveling time(90 minutes.) We were not quite sure what to expect because Yovanny seemed to say it’s not like typical waterfalls.
Petrohue Falls is in Vicente Pérez Rosales National Park, and you enter through this building, get the tickets(under $3), and walk right in.
OK. Nice! Is this it?
Wow! Quite a view, we thought.
Holy! Didn’t expect THAT, we had to admit.
With a perfect view of Mt. Osorno as the backdrop, the whole area was downright picturesque. Anybody could take a great picture by pointing the camera any direction. The volume of water chuting down was unbelievable. Now we could understand what Yvonny meant by not a ‘typical’ waterfall. This type of falls are called chute-type waterfalls. “Waterfalls in this category are typically where its watercourse is forced into a narrow channel resulting in a violently pressurized ejection of water over its drop,” according to experts.
Want to hear what it sounds like? Click here.
A nice lady in the park office told us we may be able to get a decent lunch at Petrohue Lodge, 8 minutes up the main road we were driving on. There were more stunning views along the way.
The road ended at a tiny village on Todos Los Santos Lake, and we found this parking lot hiding up the little road that went around the village. Not a bad view from a parking lot!
Petrohue Lodge was easy to spot, and the restaurant was casual and comfortable. “Wow, they have menus!” A couple of days of restaurant scarcity conditioned us to appreciate small niceties that we would have taken for granted under other circumstances.
Great food. Not too expensive. Nice people. We were happy.
From there to Puerto Varas(population: 37,500) was an easy one hour drive. We could have stopped at Osorno Volcano, known as the Mt. Fuji of South America, but we thought we had seen enough of it & did not need to drive up there.
The Airbnb house we rented for the night was clearly an architect’s dream house. We were sorry that we only had one night there.
The view of the lake and the mountains from the hilltop house, including Mt. Osorno, was priceless.
Founded by German immigrants in 1853, Puerto Varas is on the shore of Llanquihue Lake, the second largest lake in Chile. We drove around town a bit, then, parked the car near the shore to find a dinner spot.
This place seemed to be popular, thus, we settled on it. They had decent food and a good beer selection.
We sat on our balcony and enjoyed the million dollar view before turning in for the night. It was to be another long day the next day.
The journey: Puelo –> Puerto Varas –> Puerto Natales
Small Wide World 
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