Puerto Montt to Temuco
Puerto Montt is the biggest city we’d visited outside of Santiago. If you’re going south, it’s the last large port before digging into Patagonia, in the “lakes region.”
From Chaitén we took an overnight ferry to Puerto Montt, which was quite the experience. The scheduled departure was 1:00am, but it was delayed because the ferry doubled as a cattle transporter. Who knew?
Once we arrived in Puerto Montt, we were happy to have found reliable grocery stores and ground coffee. It was nice to be in a city after so much time without the niceties; however, we didn’t want to spend much time there. We decided to check out nearby Puerto Varas on Lago Llanquihue.
In Puerto Varas we specifically wanted to find a microbrewery called Cerveceria Malta Chocolate. Since it was outside town, we traveled a little further to get there than we intended, only to find that it was closed (online hours of operation are unreliable here, if you find them at all).
So we were outside town on an empty highway, but luckily across the street was a restaurant. It happened to be open, and featured locally sourced ingredients with a focus on charcuterie.
After that unexpected deliciousness, we tried our luck with the brewery again to find that one guy was working there. They were still closed but he invited us in for a sample. The sample turned into several pints, another charcuterie plate, and a pisco sour. He loved the Rolling Stones, so he turned on YouTube videos of their Santiago show, which he attended. After several drinks his Spanish turned into Chilean, which is really difficult to understand.
The next day we sobered up enough for our next destination. We’d heard from other backpackers to visit Cochamó, about four hours outside the city.
Cochamó
Cochamó is the name of a valley in the foot hills of the Chilean Andes. Once upon a time it was a rest stop on the cattle drive between Argentina and the lakes region of chile. Now it’s a summer camp for climbers and hikers, who arrive for the high granite walls and spectacular views. We’d heard it compared to Yosemite, which was fairly accurate, except it was much warmer and there were less people from the Bay Area.
From Puerto Montt we took a bus to Cochamó, then took a taxi to the trailhead. The trail was about 18k.
Once we arrived in Cochamó we set up camp. The high season for vacationers ended abruptly on February 28th, so there were only about 30–40 people there.
We had our pick of hikes, but all of them required about 6–8 hours round trip. We only had a single, full day in the valley, so we opted to relax by the river.
We couldn’t take a photo of the stars in Cochamó, which were some of the best we’d ever seen. We had no moon, so we’d never seen the Milky Way so bright.
The next day we headed back to Puerto Montt, where we had left some our things at a hostel. We stayed a night, making plans for the coming weeks.
We met an enjoyable couple from Santiago in Cochamó, Belén and Andres, and so we spent another evening in Puerto Varas to meet up with them.
From Puerto Varas we left for a place with slightly cheaper accommodations.
Llanquihue
This town was a little weird. We found a great little cabin for two nights at a good price, and we had to get off the beaten path to get there. Our cabin was one block off the lake’s beach, which was convenient for the semi-truck rally/family picnic that took place.
Our cabin offered bikes for us to ride, so the next day we rode up to Frutillar, another tourist town on Lago Llanquihue about 22km away. The ride turned out to be one of the most beautiful trips we’d taken. The catch was that we rode bikes built for children. One could sort of switch gears.
Our time in the lake’s region was great. Compared to most of the backpacking we’d done, it was a luxurious respite. The next day we geared up for the leg from Llanquihue to Temuco, where we would meet up with Jess’s sister, Mahalia.
