Over the Andes by Coach and Ferry : The journey proves more adventurous than the author, or his wife, anticipated. Also more enjoyable.

I’m an adventurous traveler, but my wife, as she acknowledges, is somewhat less so. Still, I was able to convince her we could have great fun in South America (and no problems) if we decided to cross the ruggedly scenic southern Andes by bus and lake steamer.

So there we were, not much more than an hour into the two-day overland journey, and already we were wading knee-deep through a raging rain-fed stream that had washed away the road ahead of us. It was not the kind of trip I had promised, but then an adventure often is full of surprises. We would have more than one.

At this particular moment, as we felt our way cautiously over tumbling rocks beneath the silty water, we knew only that we were somewhere in the midst of southern Chile’s remote Lake Country. We were headed east, bound for the famous Argentine mountain resort of San Carlos de Bariloche on the other side of the Andes. Our route, we had been informed, would take us through a majestic fiord-like mountain realm by means of a series of five inter-connecting bus rides and three lake crossings by boat. But first the washout had to be surmounted.

In all honesty, I really did feel guilty right there and then about getting my wife into this predicament, although she was managing quite heroically despite the water’s numbing chill. But secretly I also was pleased the trip had gone temporarily awry, because it was affirmation that--as I had hoped--we were indeed venturing into a vast and unpredictable wilderness, where nature retains the upper hand. In my perhaps warped view, the rigors made the excursion that much more interesting.

Our trouble apparently was the result of an overnight downpour somewhere up the soaring slope of 8,730-foot-high Osorno, a mammoth snow-capped volcano just to the north. As the rain spilled over the mountain, it became transformed into a flash flood and was channeled into an old lava flow over which the road normally passed. At the washout, several cars had come to a stop, and their occupants were standing glumly by the water’s edge looking for any sign the flood was receding. It wasn’t. To the contrary, ominous black rain clouds overhead threatened another deluge.

On the far side of the flow, facing us, was another cluster of cars and a little bus like ours. That bus was to save our trip. Using radios, the two drivers conferred and decided to switch passengers and return the way they had come. We would proceed into the Andes on the other bus, and our opposites would continue their journey to Puerto Varas, the little Chilean village where we had spent the previous night. The only obstacle to this plan was getting all of us--and our luggage--safely across the torrent.

Some of the passengers were elderly, and a few looked either too frail or too hefty to attempt the tricky crossing. But by trial and error, the drivers and the sturdier of us scouted out a reasonably safe route, and everyone--about 35 in all--made it without mishap except for dampened trouser legs.

With other volunteers, I criss-crossed the errant stream a half-dozen times porting luggage on my head or shoulder. Finally, our group was able to scramble onto the substitute bus just as another downpour began to fall.

Unfortunately, my wife’s canvas suitcase, strapped hastily atop the bus, got caught in the rain, and almost everything inside became soaked. But she wouldn’t discover this little disaster until later.

Actually, our trip should have gone smoothly, and under normal circumstances the crossing is uneventful. It is, to be sure, an adventure, but an easy and well-managed one that has become almost a standard feature of any tour of the southern half of the South American continent. Our travel agent booked us through a Chilean firm, Andina del Sud of Puerto Montt, which coordinates the arrival and departure of the buses and boats. For a single fee, which included a night in a mountain lodge en route, we were transported in comfort through spectacular wilderness scenery.

About 20 people had signed up for our crossing, and they were an interesting mix of Europeans, South Americans and North Americans. Curiously, the Brazilians among them carried the heaviest luggage. I know because I hoisted some of it over the washout.

No through road links Chile with Argentina through this particular part of the Andes, which is protected on both sides of the border by huge national parks. On the Chilean side is Vicente Perez Rosales, the nation’s oldest park. In Argentina, it is Nahuel Huapi, site of the country’s booming ski industry. They share a glacially carved landscape of towering volcanoes, beautiful mountain-rimmed lakes, dense evergreen rain forests and countless tumbling streams and waterfalls.

Our jumping-off place was Puerto Varas, a flower-filled resort village on the shore of Lake Llanquihue (pronounced yawn-key-way ), where rustic charm blends agreeably with urban sophistication. On a hillside above town is a European-style gambling casino, its bright sign lighting the night sky. On the road below, a pair of oxen are likely to be pulling an ancient two-wheeled wooden cart, a scene out of Chile’s past. Settled by German immigrants, whose descendants make up about a third of the 24,000 residents, the town displays many Bavarian flourishes, and it is as tidy and well-swept as any Bavarian village. The best restaurant is the Club Aleman, where a zither player entertains with country tunes from Old Germany. We dined--after 9 p.m., in the Chilean fashion--on fresh grilled salmon, raised locally in hatcheries.

Our schedule gave us only 24 hours in town, but that was time enough to shop at an Indian crafts market (where we declined to buy one of the anatomically correct male figures that proved embarrassing to Vice President Quayle on his Chilean tour); lose $6 in Chilean currency at the casino’s slot machines; and snack on rich pastries and tea at Dane’s, a friendly bakery and cafe. From our windowside table, we spotted several older men ambling by, dressed in wide-brimmed hats and brightly colored serapes, the traditional dress of the huasos , the Chilean cowboys.

Puerto Varas is about a 90-minute jet flight south from Santiago, Chile’s capital. The airport actually is in nearby Puerto Montt, the departure point for Pacific Coast freighters and cruise vessels sailing south through Chile’s inside passage to Punta Arenas on the Strait of Magellan. In Puerto Varas, we stayed beside the lake at the little Hotel Licarayen, a contemporary wood and glass inn that would fit in nicely anywhere along the California coast. Our very comfortably furnished room looked across the wide blue lake to Volcano Osorno, a symmetrical Mount Fujiyama-like cone rising on the distant shore. It last erupted about 140 years ago.

As prelude to our Andean adventure, the town proved both appealing and relaxing, and we might easily have lingered for several days. But, just after lunch, the bus pulled up to our hotel on schedule, and we quickly boarded and were on our way into the mountains looming before us. The sun was shining brightly, and Llanquihue sparkled as we sped along its southern shore. Initially, small inns and campgrounds dotted the roadside, but southern Chile is sparsely populated and they soon disappeared. We passed two young backpackers hiking toward the mountains and a grinning older woman who waved one hand and carried a string of newly caught fish in the other.

As outlined on our ticket, our projected itinerary would take us around Llanquihue to a mountain outpost called Petrohue, where we would board a steamer for the 20-mile passage across Lake Todos los Santos, reputedly one of the continent’s loveliest. On the far shore, another bus would make the short climb to the Hotel Peulla, a giant old mountain lodge in Peulla, where we would spend the night. Early the next day, we would reboard the bus for a two-hour ride past the Chilean and Argentine border posts to tiny, chilly Puerto Frias on Lake Frias.

Lake Frias is small--the catamaran crossing takes only 20 minutes--but it is breathtakingly beautiful. On its far shore, yet another bus would be waiting to transport us four miles to Puerto Blest, where a full formal lunch would be served in the port’s huge stone lodge overlooking Lake Nahuel Huapi. In late afternoon, an excursion vessel would make the 90-minute cruise across Nahuel Huapi to Puerto Panuelo. The last leg of the trip, a 30-minute bus ride along the southern shore of the lake, would take us to Bariloche, the most popular and sophisticated mountain resort community in South America.

But as I said, not much more than an hour into that inviting schedule we came upon the washout, not the last of our rain-caused difficulties. Though precipitation in the southern Andes is lighter from December through March--the South American summer--heavy rain is always a possibility, and it is wise to keep a raincoat or parka handy. Once across the stream and back on the bus, we looked like a pack of refugees. Like everyone else, my feet were caked with wet sand, and I went barefoot until they dried.

In Petrohue, a small settlement ringed by steep forested slopes, we found a rustic park hostel where we were able to wash up and buy warming cups of tea before we boarded the lake steamer. Summer daytime temperatures are mild in the area, averaging about 75 degrees at midday, I was told. But the rain, now falling in a drizzle, had brought a chill, and jackets or sweaters were needed. On a clear day, the hour-and-40-minute boat trip across Lake Todos los Santos surely must be spectacular; on a bleak day, crowded inside the cabin, I was still impressed.

As the rain periodically eased, we hurried on deck for tantalizing glimpses of the fiord-like landscape. The lake, which is longer than it is wide, wiggles between mountain walls rising sharply from the water’s edge. A thick forest of evergreens begins at the shoreline. Overhead, we could see spreading clusters of ulmo trees, their distinctive white blossoms suggesting a light snowfall on the slopes.

About 300 families, mostly dairy farmers, are said to live around the lake, commuting to civilization by boat. But I spotted hardly any sign of habitation, except a few scattered log cabins. Outside one, a small herd of cattle grazed on a hillside so steep it looked as if one misstep would send them rolling into the lake. Even in the gloom, the lake took on a lustrous emerald tone.

How disappointing, I thought, to come so far and miss the lake at its best, and yet exhilarating to see as much as we had. We docked at Peulla in a heavy rain at 8:30 p.m., about two hours late and ready for a warm shower, dry clothing and dinner. That’s when my wife claimed her suitcase and discovered it and almost everything inside was soaked. For a few minutes, I thought she might decide never to travel with me again. But we found a few things she could wear, hung the rest up to dry and hurried downstairs for consoling drinks and dinner.

I once lived in Chile for almost a year, so I am acquainted with the sophisticated service one can expect at hotels and restaurants in even the most remote pockets of the country such as Peulla. But my wife was surprised, and pleasantly comforted, to discover romantic dining by candlelight in the Hotel Peulla’s spacious and formal dining room. A bottle of fine Chilean wine and an excellent serving of grilled trout put us both back in jolly spirits, and we looked forward to the next day’s journey.

Though appropriately rustic in appearance, the sprawling four-story lodge is otherwise thoroughly modern. Looking much like what you would expect to find in a U.S. national park, it stands in the midst of a gorgeously scenic mountainscape. Here, too, I wished we had planned a longer stay.

Happily, the sky was cloudless the next morning, and from our window we had a grand view of the lake. After breakfast, we had just time enough for a short hike to a waterfall above the hotel. And then we climbed back on the bus and were on our way again--at least for all of, well, five minutes.

Yet another surprise brought us to a sudden halt. At the Chilean border post, just outside Peulla, word had been received that a wooden bridge a short way ahead had been weakened by the storm.

A rickety bridge tumbling ahead of us? The road washed away behind us? Were we trapped in the heart of the Andes? Maybe I’d get my wish to stay in Peulla, after all. There was nothing to do but head back to the hotel and await developments, which developed sooner than we had anticipated. In less than a half hour, the bus driver made an enterprising decision that solved our quandary, and once again we took our seats on the bus.

This time, we quickly passed through Chilean immigration and proceeded a few miles up the one-lane unpaved road to the threatened bridge, where workmen had begun repairs. The driver sent us on foot across the bridge, which remained sturdy enough to support us. Some helpers he had brought along handled the luggage. The driver then boarded the much-lightened bus and detoured it down a steep, rutted path into the stream gully below and then, slipping and sliding, back up the opposite bank. “Hurray!” we shouted. We had conquered our latest and, though we didn’t know it, our final obstacle.

The distance from Peulla to Puerto Frias, the port for our next lake crossing, is only 18 miles, but the trip takes almost two hours. The unpaved road, climbing steadily, winds first through a succession of meadows laced by numerous streams, then ascends into thick woods. On both sides, the mountains soared above like giant rock-tipped walls. As we neared the summit of the pass, at 3,000 feet, the road became much steeper and our bus barely crept upward. Giant ferns, nourished by the rain, danced in our passing breeze.

The summit marks the official border between Chile and Argentina, but we did not reach Argentina’s border post until we had descended a short distance to Puerto Frias on Lake Frias. For the umpteenth time, our driver unloaded the luggage so it could be inspected by customs officials and transferred to the waiting boat. A clearing in the woods, Puerto Frias could have been a frontier outpost from a century ago.

The voyage across four-mile-long Lake Frias is brief but lovely. Milky green in color, the lake is ringed by yet more rocky peaks. Our little boat chugged beneath sheer cliffs, which the captain informed were the home of giant condors. A bus at Puerto Alegre, another outpost that amounted to not much more than a pier, carried us onward for four miles to Puerto Blest, where a waiter in tuxedo was standing ready to serve us lunch in the big stone lodge overlooking Lake Nahuel Huapi.

For much of the journey, we had been wrapped in the quiet of the mountains, but the bustle of Puerto Blest ended all that. The lodge sits on the remote western edge of the 60-mile-long lake. But it is a popular day trip for large excursion boats from Puerto Panuelo near the resort city of Bariloche. On the day we showed up, one of the boats had just unloaded more than 200 passengers. We would, we learned, be joining them four hours later on their return voyage.

Meanwhile, we enjoyed a very good and very leisurely lunch in the lodge’s formal dining room. A warm cheese appetizer appeared first with an Argentine wine, followed by a fish soup, tossed salad, a pasta dish, pot roast with mashed potatoes and a dessert of flan. Afterward, we hiked along the lake, a splendid turquoise in color, and drank in the views of the rock-faced peaks rising beyond it. In the late afternoon, as our boat carved its way toward Bariloche, we watched the sun setting behind the Andes in our wake. One more brief bus ride along the lake’s southern shore brought us to Bariloche, a lively Swiss-influenced place where we spent three very agreeable but less eventful days.

I sensed my wife had enjoyed the lake crossing, as I very much did, despite all the rain and the problems it caused. But I wasn’t really sure until a couple of days later.

At the Bariloche tourist office, where I was asking about mountain hiking trails, we overheard a young American couple who apparently had made the overland excursion a day after us. They were describing the experience unflatteringly to a young English couple, who seemed disappointed at the news. “It was awful,” the Americans said. “Why at one point, the road was gone, and we had to get off the bus and wade across a dirty stream.”

My wife looked at me, shook her head in bewilderment, or maybe it was dismay, and then chased after the English pair to give them another American opinion about the crossing, surprises and all. “It was wonderful,” my wife said, which is really what an adventure should be.

GUIDEBOOK

Andes Lakes Crossing

The lakes crossing is a splendid way to see the Andes at their loveliest under usually comfortable conditions. The trip can be made from either direction--east from Puerto Varas or Puerto Montt in Chile to Bariloche in Argentina, or west from Bariloche.

Two-day tour: We booked our eastbound trip through Solar Tours of Washington, D.C. (202-861-5864), which currently is charging $329 per person, double occupancy, for a three-night package, including all transportation from the Puerto Montt airport to Bariloche, continental breakfasts, one night’s lodging in Puerto Montt, a second night and dinner in Peulla en route and a third night in Bariloche. But other tour companies and airlines serving Chile and Argentina also offer lake-crossing packages: American Airlines has a six-day package at $1,078 per person, double occupancy, including air fare from Buenos Aires to Bariloche, two nights in Bariloche, the two-day lake crossing with a night in Peulla, a night in Puerto Montt, air fare from Puerto Montt to Santiago and two nights in Santiago.

One-day tour: You can book a hurry-up version with lunch at Peulla instead of an overnight stay, making a long day with little time to enjoy the scenery. It’s available from travel agents in Chile.

On your own: Independent travelers can buy bus and boat tickets in Bariloche or Puerto Montt for about $40 and make the crossing at their own pace. Check with local tourism offices.

Getting there: Airlines serving either Chile or Argentina or both from Los Angeles include American, Aerolineas Argentinas, VASP Airlines of Brazil, LAN Chile, Ecuatoriana Airlines and Ladeco of Chile. Through June 20, with 14-day advance purchase, American, Aerolineas Argentinas and VASP are quoting a round-trip fare of $1,350 from LAX to Buenos Aires; LAN Chile and American are quoting a round-trip fare of $1,350 from LAX to Santiago. Additional air fare between Buenos Aires and Bariloche is about $100 on Aerolineas Argentinas, and between Santiago and Puerto Montt it’s another $86 on LAN Chile.

Where to stay: Plenty of good accommodations are available in Puerto Montt and Puerto Varas at the western portal, and in Bariloche at the eastern portal. In Puerto Varas, a room for two at the Hotel Licarayen, a charming inn overlooking Lake Llanquihue, is about $65 a night, including continental breakfast. In Bariloche, a room for two at a mid-priced hotel such as the Interlaken Palace is about $50 a night, in a deluxe hotel such as Edelweiss about $85. En route, accommodations are limited and Spartan. The only lodging in Peulla is the rustic-looking but comfortably modern Hotel Peulla, about $60 a night double. Reservations are advised. Humbler rooms and meals are available at Hosteria Petrohue on Lake Todos los Santos.

For more information: Chile: Chilean National Tourist Board, 510 West 6th St., Suite 1210, Los Angeles 90014, (213) 627-4293. Argentina: Argentine Government Tourist Office, 3550 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 1450, Los Angeles 90010, (213) 736-5232.