Across the Andes from Lake to Lake

Monday, March 13, 2017

A stunning day!  Today we had three lake crossings by boat, and drove the mountain roads in between and on either side of the lakes as we crossed the Andes from the Chilean side to the Argentinian side.

We began in Puerto Varas, Chile, and drove up to a Chilean national park where the major feature was an astonishing green river, the color formed by the large volume of silt brought down with the glacial melt water:

  

Our first lake crossing on All Saints Lake gave a glorious view of Osorno Volcano:

We then drove up and up on a gravel one-lane road towards the Argentine border:

  

Customs and Immigration were kind of casual, and as the actual border is a line at the highest point along the Andes, the immigration station was 15 miles (on the one-lane gravel road) from the actual border:

 We had a bathroom stop at a beautiful highlands farm on our way to the pass through the Andes:

Among the animals on the farm were llama and emu:

There were great views, including this one of Monte Tronador:

Our second lake crossing was on Frias Lake:

We then had a short ride between Frias Lake and Nahuel Huabi Lake and an hour and a quarter on a catamaran to our Hotel, Llao Llao (pronounced zhao zhao) which is a glorious property on the shore of the lake.  

We’ll spend a couple of days at this wonderful resort as we miss the giant blizzard coming into Rochester and the east coast.  We have a bedroom, a sitting room and a bathroom with glorious views. Here’s the siting room view across our porch:

 And the view from our bathroom:

There are many activities here—we’ll need to make decisions about what to do.  More later.