Taking a Mountain Peak at Lake Country

For scenery, the high point of a trip to the lake country of southern Chile and Argentina is probably the boat ride across Chile’s Lago Todos los Santos.

Long, thin waterfalls cascade down densely wooded mountainsides into the lake’s startling emerald waters. Snowcapped peaks rise jagged in the distance, and the massive white cone of the Osorno, a dormant volcano that English naturalist Charles Darwin saw erupting in the 1830s, dominates the spectacular panorama.

Crossing Todos los Santos is one essential segment in an itinerary that can be custom-designed for varied interests and timetables.

But there can be other kinds of high points, too--starting with an overnight train ride south from Santiago in a mahogany-paneled sleeping car, and ending with a stay in Bariloche, a beautiful and bustling resort city on the Argentine side of the border.

Or the trip could start in Argentina and end up on the Chilean side. Either way, the lake country between Puerto Montt and Bariloche can be a magnificent southern leg on a South American tour.

Daily airline flights are available from Santiago to Puerto Montt, with great views of southern Chile from above.

Railroad buffs, however, will want to take the train--even though some Chileans advise against it, warning of a certain shabbiness.

Yes, the carpets are worn and some of the windows are cracked. Nevertheless, the heavy old sleeper cars remain comfortable and admirable in their run-down elegance.

Made in Poland

Brass plaques on the cars say they were made in 1929 and 1930 by Link-Hofmann-Busch in Breslau, the German name for Wroclaw, a city in what is now southwestern Poland.

A compartment for two with an upper and lower bed, plush upholstery, brass wash basin and finely inlaid mahogany paneling costs the equivalent of about $45, or $22.50 per person. Pullman-like berths are available for less.

(Bring your own soap. When I asked for some, the porter apologized and said, “May I loan you mine?”)

The train left on time at 7:30 p.m. from Santiago’s Central Station, a cavernous steel structure imported piece by piece from France in 1885. While video movies were screened in the bar car, the dining car served dinner in two shifts.

Breakfast was being served in the morning as the train pulled out of Temuco into a radiant countryside of forested hills, glistening rivers, peaceful pastures and yellow fields of rapeseed.

Milk cans waited at country crossroads, and an occasional ox cart with wooden wheels. In the background, like a preview of scenic splendor to come, loomed the white cone of Villarrica volcano.

The train arrived in Osorno at 1 p.m. and the passengers were transferred to buses for the last 60 miles to Puerto Montt. From Dec. 15 to March 15, during the Southern Hemisphere summer and southern Chile’s main tourist season, the train continues all the way to Puerto Montt. And it is best to go in that period to avoid the worst of southern Chile’s heavy rains.

Full of German-style houses with wood-shingle siding, Puerto Montt is green, clean and cool. Summer temperatures dip into the low 50s at night. On the outskirts is Angelmo, a colorful fishing terminal where food stands sell plates of fresh clams, crabmeat and other sea fare.

A traditional meal in this part of Chile is curanto, an assortment of shellfish, pork, chicken and potatoes all steamed together and served with their broth. Curanto is a specialty of the Restaurante Pazos, a pastel-green house in the seaside neighborhood of Pelluco, where window tables offer an excellent view of the harbor at sunset.

Delicious but Ugly

In the curanto, and also available as an appetizer, is an ugly shellfish called the picoroco that is well worth trying. Its barnacle-like shell hides a stringy but tender white meat that is delicious when steamed.

The main hotel in Puerto Montt, the Vicente Perez Rosales, costs $40 a night for a single and $44 double. In the center of town, it is clean and comfortable.

Next door are the offices of Andina del Sud, the company that conducts most tours of the Chilean lake country. Andina del Sud will make all travel and lodging arrangements for specially tailored itineraries starting in Santiago or Puerto Montt and ending in Bariloche.

For example, a two-day trip from Santiago to Bariloche, including a train compartment and two single rooms in the Perez Rosales, costs about $260 for two persons.

The bus for the lakes left from the Andina del Sud office at 8 a.m., stopping in nearby Puerto Varas to pick up more passengers. Puerto Varas, settled by Germans in 1854, is a tourist center on Chile’s largest lake, Llanquihue.

As the bus skirted the lake, the 8,700-foot peak of Osorno volcano came in and out of view far across the blue waters. On the other side of the bus was another volcano, 6,600-foot Calbuco.

In the mountains beyond Lago Llanquihue the bus stopped at Vicente Perez Rosales Park, a 620,000-acre natural preserve that includes Lago Todos los Santos and ends at the Argentine border. Walking trails at the entrance to the park wind through a dense forest of coigue, a small-leafed relative of the beech, and alerce, a kind of larch.

One nearby sight well worth seeing is a striking stretch of low falls and rapids on the Petrohue River, with Osorno again in the background.

Later, Osorno towered above the bow of Andina del Sur’s 200-passenger excursion launch as it slipped through the green water. Another volcano, Puntiagudo, jutted up sharply to the northeast.

Todos los Santos, or All Saints, is also called Esmeralda, or Emerald, because of the bright green hue of its water. They are tinted by copper and other minerals in the melt-off from glaciers on Mt. Tronador, the Thunderer, an 11,650-foot mass of ice-terraced crags on the Chile-Argentina border.

Blue Glacier

As Osorno receded off the stern of the excursion boat, Tronador came up on the bow. One of its glaciers shone blue in the bright midday sunlight.

But caution: In this part of Chile, it is said to rain more than 300 days a year, and cloudy days are common even in the summer months. Those who have the bad luck to make the trip in cloudy weather miss a great deal.

“We have to tell them just to imagine that here is a volcano, there is a mountain,” says tour guide Jaime Ulloa.

Staying for a day or two at the Peulla Hotel, on the east end of Todos los Santos, is one way of increasing chances for a clear day. Most tours stop there for lunch, but the opportunity for hiking and fishing in the park makes it a worthwhile place to linger.

The gable-roofed, yellow and brown hotel was built in 1896 as a way-station for merchants bringing wool by mule-train and boat from the Patagonia region of Argentina to Puerto Montt on the Pacific.

Ricardo Roth, a Swiss immigrant, bought the building in 1913 and converted it into a tourist hotel, enlarging it in later years. He and his son seeded the rivers of the area with rainbow, brown and brook trout from North America.

Today the hotel is run by Alberto Schirmar Roth, 49, Ricardo Roth’s grandson. Schirmar Roth personally guides hiking and fishing excursions.

The fishing season--using flies on the rivers and trolling on the lakes--runs from Nov. 15 to the end of April. Roth said the trout average three pounds apiece and the wilderness is pristine, with “rivers where you don’t even see a Coca-Cola cap.”

Hotel Peulla rates are $25 for a single and $30 double. Reservations can be made through Andina del Sur or through La Chile Argentina, an agency that also arranges cross-border tours from the Argentine side.

A bus from Peulla winds through a forest of coigue and alerce, giant trees hundreds of years old, and crosses the Andean border through a pass at 3,210 feet. The Argentine side of the border is another park, Nahuel Huapi.

Towering Palisade

A motorized catamaran crosses Lake Frias in 20 minutes, stopping under the Cordon Frias, a rough and towering palisade of snow-laced basalt. A bus continues to a long, blue arm of Lago Nahuel Huapi, and another boat and then another bus make the rest of the trip to Bariloche in about two hours, arriving in time for dinner.

If completed in one day, the trip from Puerto Montt to Bariloche takes about 10 hours in a combination of four buses and three boats.

San Carlos de Bariloche, or simply Bariloche, is a major base in the winter for skiing and in the summer for fishing, hiking, mountain climbing and sightseeing. Spread along the southeastern shore of Lago Nahuel Huapi, a glacially formed lake nearly 50 miles long, Bariloche’s population has grown from 49,000 in 1980 to an estimated 85,000.

The city has a Yukon-style civic center with buildings of rough stone and polished logs. On the plaza, photographers with St. Bernards and huskies take snapshots of tourists with the dogs.

Hertz, Avis and other agencies rent cars for as little as $18 a day, plus mileage and insurance charges. Several circuits for scenic drives are mapped out and explained in brochures available at hotels and travel agencies. Half-day and full-day bus tours are also available.

Some sightseeing routes go through Llao Llao, a pretty village about 15 miles from Bariloche on the shore of Lago Nahuel Huapi. The majestic Llao Llao Hotel is being refurbished as a new Club Med, but is not expected to open for more than a year.

Bariloche has two hotels classified in Argentina’s best category, five stars: the Edelweiss and the Panamericano Bariloche. The Panamericano charges $40 a night for a single room with a view of the mountain-rimmed lake. More modest but very comfortable four-star hotels cost under $30 for a single.

Note: The State Department advises U.S. citizens that travel to Chile is essentially normal from a security standpoint. However, a state of emergency granting broad powers to the Chilean police and military is in effect.

Business, industry, tourist and travel facilities continue to operate normally, and most visitors encounter little difficulty. Visitors are urged to register with the U.S. Embassy upon arrival in Santiago, especially if they plan an extended stay in Chile.

For more information when in Santiago, contact the Embassy’s Consular section at Merced 230, telephone 710-133.