During our first week of Remote Year in Montevideo, people started booking hiking trips to Patagonia. I was overwhelmed with the newness of Remote Year, had definitely not packed any hiking gear, and was not ready to commit to spending a week hiking with a group of people I didn’t know yet. Besides, I felt like a visit to Patagonia deserved its own longer trip to Argentina and Chile, not one squeezed into a few days of the month I had to spend in Buenos Aires. My friends who did hike in Patagonia all had an incredible time and their pictures are amazing/jealousy inducing -- I’ll be back to climb that glacier one day!
Luckily, I was able to get a tiny taste of Patagonia when I agreed to the itinerary my friend Roxie proposed for the week or so that she’d spend with me when she came to visit Buenos Aires. The weekend consisted of exploring Buenos Aires and listening to the likes of Alabama Shakes, Mumford & Sons and Florence + The Machine at the Chicago-based Lollapalooza music festival. On Monday morning we set off for a week of non-stop travel.
MONDAY
We arrived at the Llao Llao Hotel in San Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina on Monday afternoon (where we missed President Obama by a few days). As soon as we checked in and got lunch, we set off to explore Nahuel Huapi National Park. Using a map the hotel gave us we decided to hike to Cerro Llao Llao. The hike began very leisurely as we were on flat ground passing through quiet forests filled with apple trees and other lush vegetation. All of a sudden we found ourselves climbing steadily upward as we began to approach the lookout point. As we kept climbing, hopping over rocks and tree roots, I began to doubt whether we’d ever reach the top but my hopes rose with each glimpse we caught of the lake through the trees. Finally, we reached the lookout point and were rewarded with incredible views (my favorite of the entire trip) of the Lago Nahuel Huapi (lago = lake). We had to pull ourselves away after a few short minutes in order to continue our trek and make it back before dark. We intended to follow the map and signs to Villa Tacul but somehow ended up on a deserted beach with a couple of dogs. From there we headed to the next marked path we could find and followed it to the Puente Romano (Roman Bridge) and Lago Escondido (Hidden Lake) before heading back to watch the sunset at the Llao Llao.
TUESDAY
On Tuesday, we got up early to spend the day on four buses and three ferries for a “Lake Crossing” from Bariloche to Puerto Varas, Chile. In Bariloche we boarded a ferry that took us across Lago Nahuel Huapi to Puerto Blest. We then took a short bus ride to Puerto Alegre where we boarded a ferry to cross Lago Frías. This was the shortest ferry ride but my favorite because the lake was the most incredible light green color, apparently from the sediment in the water. From Lago Frías we boarded another bus that carried us through Chile’s Vicente Perez Rosales National Park to Puerto Peulla and our final lake of the day, Lago Todos Los Santos. Once we crossed Lago Todos Los Santos we took a bus into Puerto Varas. From there we made our way to Hotel Casa Molino, in the nearby town of Llanquihue, directly overlooking Lago Llanquihue and the Osorno Volcano.
The Lake Crossing was amazing because not only were we able to see areas of the lake that we wouldn’t have seen had we driven to Puerto Varas, but witnessing the differing colors between all of the lakes was stunning.
WEDNESDAY
Wednesday was supposed to be Penguin Day. We booked a day tour to Isla Grande de Chiloé, the largest island in the Chiloé Archipelago and the second largest island in Chile (Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego is the largest), primarily to visit the Magellanic and Humboldt penguin colonies that make their homes off the island’s shores. After taking a car ferry to Chiloé from the mainland, we drove through rolling farmland, passing more cows than people, to Puñihuil where the tours to the penguin colonies depart. Sadly, we arrived too late in the season and most of the penguins had already migrated further south for the fall and winter (now we know that the best time to visit is December). We did manage to see a few penguins, including a baby, which we joked were planted there by the tour companies. Despite not seeing many penguins, the tour off the coast of Chiloé was beautiful and we did even see a bear! (Don’t worry, I don’t think the stone really looks like a bear either.) If we had more time on Chiloé I would have liked to visit Castro, the capital, but we had a quick lunch in Ancud and walked around Fuerte Real San Antonio, an 18th century fort, before heading back to our hotel.
THURSDAY & FRIDAY
After all of our time spent communing with the great outdoors in the first half of the week, we rounded out our trip with 24 hours in Santiago, Chile before heading back to Buenos Aires on Friday. Santiago was quiet while we were there because during Semana Santa (Holy Week) leading up to Easter everyone heads off to the beach. We managed to keep ourselves occupied with an afternoon at the artisanal market, Centro Artesanal Los Dominicos, and a morning spent wandering around Plaza de las Armas and a few photography exhibits at the Cultural Center beneath Palacio Moneda, which houses Chile’s presidential offices. I definitely could have spent a few more days in Santiago and hope to be back one day.
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All of this was an enormous amount of travel to pack into one week (well, five days really), but Roxie and I are no strangers to crazy travel. (We took our post law school “Bar Trip” together and in one month managed to traverse eleven cities in six countries across two continents.) Last week was a reminder of how fun it is to travel together and now that Remote Year has moved our program from Istanbul to London (where Roxie lives) for the month of June, she’s already planning our summer weekend getaways!