Thewesternprovinceblog

Hola todos! Last one for Chile 🇨🇱 This is all about my brief stay in Puerto Varas. So vamos a empezar!

Firstly the bus ride down was pretty uneventful but it was getting noticeably colder here as we head south into Patagonia proper with the landscape very much changing to resemble northern Europe or Canada than the tropics we’ve spent most of this trip in.

A good point to start would be on arrival, my esim had run out of data on the way down and I didn’t save the location of the hostel on the map so getting here I went into the terminal and asked them on the counter if they had wifi they kept telling me no when there clearly was one you could tap into. They just couldn’t be f*d to help you. I end up asking a random stranger if he could look the place up for me and lucky for me he does and it’s also walkable so I thank him and get on my way. Checking into the hostel is luckily pretty hassle free so once that’s done out we go to have a look round. I booked an initial 2 nights here and would then decide what my next move was after getting the lay of the land.

What to say of Puerto Varas itself, well it is quite a pretty little town that looks very northern European and that is exactly right as it was built by mostly German immigrants during the mid to late 1800s so the town is built in a European Germanic style and from it’s German descendants the gastronomy here is pretty much entirely Chilean/German infusion and there are lots of restaurants with German food with Chilean twists to them. Right off the bat you would think this place is okay and I would imagine in the high season it probably is though for me the experience wasn’t so great.

So with the lay of the land sorted I go back and chill for a bit then go out to dinner, now we’re not exactly spoiled for choice here with half the places being shut but I decide to go to this place called Club Alemania to give some German scran a try and end up having some bratwurst and sour kraut with a few chips and give some of their craft beer a go. I have my food and one drink, I then have a second I’m done eating. I like this place and just want to have a gentle few here then turn in to my hostel so I ask for a third, I’m told no. “We wont serve you a third if you don’t buy more food” okay then check please. I end up going for a wander and go to second place, have 2 drinks then they won’t serve you anymore if you don’t buy food with it. Bruh I’ve eaten a big slap up meal I don’t want more to eat! From what I could see they weren’t pulling this on anybody else just me which pissed me off needless to say. At the end of that night I decided I was getting out of Puerto Varas one way or another after my 2 nights here are done.

How would I be getting out of Puerto Varas? Well we had 3 options:

1. Go over to Puerto Montt as was originally planned (I came to Varas instead as literally everyone was telling me how great it was on the way down through Chile and Argentina)

2. Do a side quest and go and visit Chiloe Island (5 hours south by bus or longer by ferry)

3. Chin this leg off and cross back to Argentina making for Bariloche.

I decide to explore options 1 and 2 initially by doing a day trip reccie over to Puerto Montt. Puerto Montt looked like a dump if I’m being honest, just an ugly working modern port city without much going on. That was option 1 off the menu, option 2 then? 

The bus route would have been 5 hours and would have also meant coming back to Puerto Montt or varas for a night before bussing it to Bariloche. What about the sea route then? Well walked to the port couldn’t get any info there so did some googling there was no direct ferry connection to the island, I would have had to have done an overnight ferry to this town further south to catch another ferry to Castro, the main port on the island. 

Now I may have done this little adventure had it been earlier in my trip and there was a direct path to Argentina from that connection town but from what I could see there was not and so once again we would be backtracking to PM or PV. I also looked at what exactly there is to do on the island and guessing it’s a similar setup to Pucón where you probably need a motor if you want to do it at an easy pace. Did consider seeing about hiring a car or a moped but decided the juice wasn’t worth the squeeze on this one given the logistics involved either way you did it and the simple reality of time starting to get a bit tight now that we’re close to the end. 

So that left the only logical choice, pushing on to Bariloche early. That is exactly what I did, I scooted on back to Puerto Varas and I was in luck as the Andesmar office was open so I asked if there was a bus mañana, indeed there was one a las 8. Lovely stuff I’m getting out of there. It is worth noting that not only was it cheaper to book in person but the pick up point for this bus was a bit confusing online so better to clarify this with someone there.

Next installment will cover our crossing back to Argentina and first full day in Bariloche!