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The Colors of Chile |
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The capital city of Santiago isn't as flashy as Rio or as cosmopolitan as Buenos Aires. But it doesn't try to be either and it all works.
FRESH SNOW SPARKLES along the narrow mountain road and on the hoary boughs of ancient alerce trees. Here in the Andes of southern Chile, the only sounds are the raspy cry of a crested caracara and the slosh of hot chocolate being poured by our bus driver.
A rustic log gate looms like a torii entrance to a Shinto shrine. “BIENVENIDO A CHILE” is carved on one side, “REPUBLICA ARGENTINA— BIENVENIDOS” on the other.
It is the damnedest international border I have ever seen: no searchlights or sniffing dogs; no idling motors or agents in smoky glasses.
Two national parks meet in this rain forest: Chile’s Vicente Perez Rosales and Argentina’s Nahuel Huapi. Twentytwo species of fern thrive here, and two sturdy breeds of bamboo. Giant rhubarb or pangue—a plant so old it’s called “dinosaur food”—grows 8 feet wide. The view is lorded over by Tronador, a 12,000-foot extinct volcano whose name means Thunder. Seven glaciers grind down its binational slopes before crashing over razor-edge cliffs.
The only vehicles allowed are the stubby, blue 4-by-4 vans of the Cruce de Lagos tour company, a pioneering overthe- top venture launched in 1913 by Swiss immigrant Ricardo Roth. The historic relay between Puerto Varas, Chile, and San Carlos de Bariloche in Argentina involves four buses and three lake steamers.
I first made this crossing as a graduate student living in Buenos Aires. My memories, lovingly polished over the years, are of hidden lakes the color of gemstones: turquoise, apple jade, lapis blue. And of the cannon-like roar of Petrohue Falls, where torrents of water sluice through black lava walls. Little seems to have changed—except today’s catamarans are more comfortable, and I can now afford to stay overnight along the way.
In the extended light of summer (winter in the Northern Hemisphere), the journey can be made in one long day. But the treat is to settle in at the hospitable, creaky-floored Hotel Peulla, built in 1890, or its new four-star neighbor, Hotel Natura, a woodsy 45-room resort with an impressive young chef, Eduardo Latin, who does wonders with Chile’s seafood and farmed salmon. Both lodgings are owned by Alberto Schirmer, a hands-on descendant of the trailblazer, Roth.
“At other passes in the Andes, traffic whizzes by at 80 miles an hour, and you don’t see anything,” Schirmer says. “Here, you can relax.”
There are only four things to do in Peulla (population 120), says Guillermo Winkler, a tall, blue-eyed Chileno who has led tours for 17 years and speaks with the hypnotic tones of Garrison Keillor: horseback riding, fly fishing, float trips on the Rio Negro and beginner-level zip-line canopy rides that take you from treetop to treetop at heights up to 50 feet.
“There is no shopping,” he warns, with mock regret. “Men tell me that is why they like Peulla more, even than Rio or Buenos Aires.”
I arrived on an overnight LAN flight from Los Angeles, checking into the Grand Hyatt Hotel and a 12th-floor room that looked out on snow-topped Andes. Sometime after 2 p.m., I awakened to a rolling sensation. Jet lag gets weirder and weirder, I thought, before realizing that the TV stand was swaying. On the way to dinner, I asked if there had been an earthquake. “Oh, yes,” said a reception clerk warmly. “I am so glad you are from California and are used to them.”
IMAGINE A KNOBBY walking stick that stretches for 2,600 miles—a distance as great as from Baja California to the Yukon—and you have a map of Chile. Nowhere is the country more than 150 miles wide. Wedged between the Andes and the Pacific, it splinters at the bottom into innumerable islands. Throw in its far-offshore possession, Easter Island, and a chunk of Antarctica, and the geography grows even more complex.
The world’s driest desert—Atacama—commands the northern border with Peru and Bolivia; central Chile is home to acclaimed vineyards, orchards, avocado groves, historic rancheros and the vibrant capital, Santiago. Volcanos and deep, clear lakes cluster to the south near Puerto Varas and Puerto Montt, and below that, the wilds of Patagonia.
I flew to Puerto Montt from Santiago (less than two hours), then continued by car to Puerto Varas on the shores of Lake Llanquihue. The German heritage of early settlers is celebrated in Bavarian-style cottages, a red-steepled church copied from one in the Black Forest, and cheery restaurant signs that say “kuchen” and serve sausages and schnitzel. Snow-crowned volcanos—including the almost-perfect cone of 8,500-foot Osorno— are mirrored in the lake, one of the largest in South America.
“Japanese tourists tell me ‘Fuji is better,’ ” says Winkler. “What do you think?” Swept away by the majesty at hand, I give a thumbs up to Osorno.
Skiing the volcanos has become a favored adventure sport, especially when combined with a luxurious soaking in an outdoor hot-springs pool. The wealthy hang out at Villarica and Pucon; many Chileans I met rhapsodized about Termas de Chillan.
The lake-and-volcano district is sliced by frothy rivers and forested with cedars and red-barked madrones. Clumps of golden gorse stud the landscape; sheep, llamas and alpacas nibble lime-green grass. The horticultural star is the symmetrical, spiky-branched, monkey puzzle tree. I was reminded of the South Island of New Zealand, at about the same latitude, 42 degrees.
Puerto Montt, with 125,000 inhabitants, is the end of the line for Chilean trains and the Pan-American Highway, although a slender version of Ruta 5 picks up on mystical Chiloe island, a 30-minute ferry ride away.
“From here north is one reality,” Winkler murmurs as we wander along Puerto Montt’s waterfront, rebuilt after the devastating tsunami of May 1960. “From here south is another. The reality here is isolation.”
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