Cruce de Lagos

We stayed in a nice place in Puerto Varas and had a very nice meal in the Merlin restaurant. I had cream of beer soup - which was very salty, otherwise it was excellent. Early to bed for the first day of a two day crossing from Chile to Argentina on the, apparently, famous Cruce de Lagos.

We were picked up in the morning and taken, along with a bus load of mostly Brazilians, to the boat on the Esmeralda lake.

Pretty Lago Esmeralda

A fairly relaxing trip on a lightly loaded boat, passing some interesting islands and a pretty waterfall, ended in the small town of Peulla. We were there at around about noon.

We had a forced stop at Peulla, as the 1st of May was the start of the winter timetable and so the 'in one day' option wasn't on.

Peulla is a bit of a tourist trap. There are two hotels; one is a hundred years old (and looks it) the other is one year old. We were in the newer one. The town contains lots of 'things to do'. We chose 'canopy'. The food and service were pretty poor. But the room and the location were quite amazing.

"Canopy" turned out to mean dangling from a bit of string at a great height above a stream. T had a practice a little closer to ground

Mountain explorer in waiting Wiseman

However, the sight of the stream a dizzying distance below proved a little too much, so T had a walk up a hill, across a rickety bridge and then back across the bridge and walked down again. I rolled down the wires a bit slower than strictly necessary and then was abseiled down the last tree at the end.

Going down

Interesting - but I'm not sure I'd bother doing it again.

In the morning, we started early for the second half of the trip. A short ride to the border and then a series of boats and buses were to take us to Bariloche in Argentina.

Basically it all turned a bit pear-shaped at this point. There was much waiting, faffing, carrying of bags (in Chile they had had the bright idea to put the bags in boxes and move the boxes around - in Argentina they moved all the bags by hand between three buses and two boats - madmen) and - worst of all - hanging about to wait for a group coming straight from Chile (so the winter/summer timetable thing was a lie).

Getting wet on Lago Frias

We sat on a boat in the pouring rain in the middle of a lake for two hours, then went to get the fast-track group and then sat on the boat in the pouring rain for another hour as we got near to Bariloche. Only when we'd tied up did it occur to our guides that they ought to tell us what to do next (to get another bus). However, they managed to give several sets of contradictory instructions and we just sat on the boat for another 1/2 hour as it got dark. We had no accomodation booked in Bariloche yet.

Eventually, we arrived in Bariloche and checked into the nearest hotel - which was fine. So ended the Cruce de Lagos, Badly organised. It is amazing to think that they do that every day.