Puerto Varas – Trouspinet travels

Wow, what a journey that was! Argentina jumps effortlessly into the list of my top 5 destinations of all time, and for scenery, it would be No. 1. However, this trip required lots of planning, and I also learnt a lot as I was travelling. In this post I list my personal highlights and give some tips for planning (valid as of November 2022).

TROUSPINET’S HIGHLIGHTS

To help you plan your trip, here is my ranking of the places I visited on this trip:

Quebrada de Humahuaca (northwest Argentina)
Perito Moreno Glacier, Patagonia
Foz Iguazu
Mount Fitzroy, Patagonia
Torres del Paine, Chilean Patagonia
The drive from Mendoza to Aconcagua
The drive from Salta to Cachi
Puerto Varas and the Chilean Lake District
Buenos Aires
Mendoza’s vineyards
Bariloche and the Argentine Lake District
Salta

I put Bariloche and Salta bottom because there are places in Europe a bit like them, whilst the other places are unique in the world. But I really enjoyed even my lower-ranked locations on this trip – I simply didn’t have a single bad travelling day.

TROUSPINET’S TOP TIPS

Be Selective – Distances are huge, as is the choice of places to visit.

Unless you have the time (and endurance) for 12-36 hour bus rides, you will need to fly if you want to see many of the country’s highlights. I went for nearly one month, usually flew between destinations, but still did not have time to see everything I wanted to. After much thought, I regretfully excluded Ushuaia and some of the national parks from my list. You will also have to make some hard choices.

Check which Internal Flights operate

The main flight operators in Argentina are Aerolineas Argentinas, JetSmart and FlyBondi. Argentine airlines have a bad reputation for reliability and punctuality, but I had no major delays in any of my seven internal flights.

Check when flights go direct from one regional destination to another (eg Salta to Mendoza), without having to go back to Buenos Aires and out again. These flights will save you a lot of time and money, but they don’t operate every day. The popular and very convenient Bariloche-El Calafate flight only operates in the peak tourist season – late November to February. If you do have to fly back to Buenos Aires, remember it has two airports – the very convenient Aeroparque Newberry (AEP) located in the city, and Ezeiza (EZE), which is a long way out of town. Book ahead for anything In, To or From Patagonia over November – February. The region is hugely and justifiably popular in the southern summer. I went in November – not the peak season – and even then, I heard that the buses from El Calafate to Bariloche were fully booked for several days.

Accommodation – Check the Exchange Rate when you book

I used Booking.com to book hotels. You get quoted a price in US$. Once you have made a booking, contact the hotel to ask if they apply the official exchange rate if you choose to pay in pesos. Most of my hotels agreed to this; only one asked for the blue rate (so I cancelled and booked somewhere else). If you pay like this, you save 50%! More expensive hotels add 20% VAT to their bills, which can you avoid by paying with a foreign credit (but then you get the official exchange rate, so it is still better to pay with cash).

AirBnB is not recommended, because you pay in advance in your own currency. It may have been bad luck, but the one place I booked with them was of very poor quality and seemed more aimed at local tourists.

Don’t Rely too much on Guidebooks

Things change quickly in Argentina. Our guidebook claimed to have been reprinted in January 2022, but was hopelessly out of date.

Packing

Check average weather conditions and pack accordingly. Patagonia and Tierra Del Fuego are cold even in the southern summer and need very warm clothing and waterproofs. Aerolineas Argentinas (but not the other airlines) has a limit of 15kg for checked baggage, so you may also need to pack light and fully use the allowances of 8kg for carry-on baggage and 3kg for a personal item. The 15kg rule is not strictly enforced – we were usually a couple of kilos over, but the check-in staff ignored this.

Learn some (Argentine) Spanish

In touristy areas like Patagonia and parts of Buenos Aires, you can get by with English. But in most other places, few people other than hotel staff spoke a second language. If you already speak some Castilian Spanish, be aware that there are big differences in the pronunciation of “y” and “ll”, and that the second person singular “tu” is replaced by “vos” – with different verb endings. I didn’t find any good books on Argentine Spanish, but I found this website (for intermediate speakers) to be very good- https://argentalk.com

That’s all for now. I could write a lot more, but I am worried I will bore my readers. If anyone has a question, please leave a reply at the bottom of this page. Happy Travelling!

Next, my itinerary took me across the border to Chile. The 5-hour bus ride went over a mountain pass and then down to the Chilean immigration post.

Passport checks were quick, but Chilean customs controls were slow. They involved making an online declaration and then a search of every baggage item for fruit, meat and dairy products. Workers with rubber gloves opened suspect bags and confiscated apples and bananas from some members of our group, shaking their heads and taking photos of their passports and incorrectly completed customs declarations. The road then descended to a flat, verdant plane with farms and cows. I could have been back home in England if were not for the two snow-capped volcanos – Osorno and Calbuco – in the distance. Puerto Varas turned out to be a very pleasant town – nicer than Bariloche – with cute wooden houses, many constructed by a wave of German immigrants in the 1850s and 60s. The Germans were welcomed by the fledgling independent Chilean state with a free plot of land and cattle. Even today, the German influence is strongly present in many ways – like the name of my hotel, “Dein Haus”. My room was brilliant, with a panoramic view of the lake and the volcanoes in the distance.

The view of Lake Llanquihe and Calbuco Volcano from my room

It was now late, so I unpacked and headed out into town for dinner in a German “Bierstube”. Like Bariloche, there was good excellent locally brewed craft beer in Puerto Varas, but the prices for food and drink were double what I had got used to paying in Argentina – similar to European prices. The next morning, my view of the volcanoes had disappeared behind cloud and mist, and it was raining. I should have realised that with landscapes this green, it must rain a lot, but after two weeks of continuous sun in Argentina I had forgotten that it could rain and stopped checking the weather forecast. I logged on to my computer and was distressed to see that rain and cloud was forecast for the next two days in Puerto Varas, and after that for the two days I would be spending further south in Puerto Natales. I set off all the same to explore the region and was rewarded when, contrary to expectations, the clouds lifted and the sun came out. The views of volcano Osorno became more and more impressive, and I took a side road to climb up to its summit.

On the road climbing the endlessly photogenic Osorno volcano

A short walk from the car park was a place offering amazing views over the Andes and back towards Argentine.

The view from the top of Osorno back towards the Argentine border

Next, I decided to drive a less well-known route, making a big loop to the south through the town of Puelo. The scenery was nice….

…….but the surfaced road turned into a dirt track, and my progress was much slower than I expected. I also had to take a ferry and then drive through the city of Puerto Montt, the regional capital, which turned out to be large, sprawling, ugly and choked with traffic jams. I got home late and tired, and resolved to take it easier the next day (as I had often done before).

On the following day it was cloudy, and in the morning I spent a pleasant couple of hours exploring the wooden houses of Puerto Varas.

Wooden houses in Puerto Varas, dating from the first settlers

My favourite – this church near Puerto Varas looks like it has sunk into the ground

Photographing the town was made more difficult by the ubiquitous and ugly black cables hanging everywhere – this had been a feature of many of the places I had visited so far, and I was puzzled as to why so many were needed. I pondered this question whilst trying the traditional German “Kaffee und Kuchen”.

Downtown Puerto Varas – Why so many cables?

Kaffee und Kuchen – a local tradition borrowed from Germany and popular in Puerto Varas

In the afternoon I made a short drive to the Lago de Todos los Santos, one of the most famous sites in the area, but in the cloudy weather the views, whilst still pretty, were less spectacular than the day before.

On the way to the Lago de Todos los Santos

I headed back to my hotel to rest for a bit and then had dinner. I had a big day of me ahead – the trip down to Puerto Natales in the far south of Chile.

Next Post: Puerto Natales and Torres del Paine

Previous Post: Bariloche

Tag: Puerto Varas

Trouspinet’s Top Tips and Highlights for Argentina

Into Chile – Puerto Varas