Puerto Varas and the beginning of the edge of the Earth

A 13 hour bus trip south of Santiago, down the long thin country that is Chile, is a small little town on the edge of a volcanic lake. Puerto Varas looks across that lake towards two snow capped volcanos. It is approximately on the same latitude as Tasmania. It was also populated by several Germans before and after World War II which accounts for the wooden houses with decorated eaves and lace curtains to halfway down the pane. We stayed in a German-run backpackers hostel which was extremely clean and well run, although had disturbing signs in the toilet urging men to please sit down to pee (Duncan studiously ignored these entreaties, muttering things about people cutting his balls off.)

Using Puerto Varas as our base, we took advantage of the abundance of outdoor activities that are possible between the volcanos, the lakes, the rivers and the sea. We rented mountain bikes and rode up the side of Volcano Orsorno by ski road and then down it by bushpath between lava rocks (on the whole, to the detriment of my shins and bum but to the betterment of my spirit of adventure). We pulled in at Petrohue Falls on the way where melted snow pours over lava rocks and the water is turquoise it is so cold. We hiked for a day through the Alerce Andino National Park and swam in a still mountain lake, empty and silent but for us. We went canyoning (strapped into wetsuits) down rapids and waterfalls in the imaginatively named Rio Blanco. Each evening we´d return, worn out but happy, and seek out pasta or fish in the local restaurants to replenish our energies to do it all again the next day and in the village we discovered fresh oysters and Congrio as well as the local version of tempura (which was basically seafood doughnuts, but tasted good!)

While we were staying in Puerto Varas, I read The Boys from Brazil by Ira Levin. It was a remnant of Cesar´s high school English literature reading that I pillaged after exhausting our own literature in our first week in Argentina. It´s a novel written in 1976 about Nazis in South America after WWII. I became acutely aware of how the south of Chile, particularly after Puerto Varas and Puerto Montt where the land breaks up into islands and further south where it becomes glaciers and fjords, is an isolated and distant place. An excellent place for dodgy people to escape to and live anonymously at the edge of the Earth. It was something of this that came to me one night at dinner in the hostel where we sat at a table listening to the shared stories of various tourists. An English couple (he wore a wedding ring, yet she didn´t) who were circumnavigating the continent, a German man named Rene who was a goldsmith but found better money in working at a German coal plant, and a wizened man from the US who described himself as semi retired from the precious gem export business. He told us that he had lived and taught in Brazil in the 60s where he´d met a Brazilian and had a couple of kids and to supplement his teachers salary had become involved with the gem trade betweeen Brazil and the US. Quite without provocation he told us that the US authorities only get excited if you try to bring guns or drugs into the country, they are ¨fairly relaxed¨ about everything else. At which point Duncan and I tried to look at eachother as neutrally as possible while simultaneously thinking - so this guy is basically a smuggler.

We barely penetrated Patagonia and the lure of the south tantilised me while we were there. Another time, another trip, it would be a great adventure to follow the trail of the Andes, cross and criss-cross the borders Chile and Argentina and finally take a boat down towards the ice.

It was with some reluctance that we put ourselves back on a bus to the north again. Until we remembered where we were headed; to Santiago, to the desert, and to friends and Christmas.