Activity Summary
Saturday 11th November - Day 403- Luke
Overnight bus to Bariloche (Argentina)
Quick venture into Bariloche
Find out the Cardenal Antonio Samoré border crossing could be closed due to bad snowfall
Sunday 12th November - Day 404- Luke
Bus to Puerto Montt
Cardenal Antonio Samoré border crossing
Argentina border control
Chilean border control and bag search
Couple reunited
Hearty home cooked meal
Monday 13th November - Day 405
Mall shopping
Tuesday 14th November - Day 406
Walk around Puerto Montt
Wednesday 15th November - Day 407
Car hire - First-rent-a-car, Downtown
Drive to Puerto Varas
Summary
Puerto Montt
The city is well stocked with large supermarkets (albeit hella spenny), car hire places and shops prior to a trip down the Carretera Austral.
Otherwise there is absolutely nothing of interest here and Puerto Varas is a much nicer place to chill in. But it served a purpose for us and the nice Airbnb completely made our time here.
Transport
Mendoza -> Santiago -> Pucón
Plan cancelled because the Los Libertadores (Twitter handle @CFLosLibertador - very useful) border crossing was closed due to 60km wind speeds and bad snowfall.
Otherwise the plan to day bus to Santiago and night bus to Pucon would have been a good one…
Mendoza -> Bariloche -> Puerto Montt
Alternate plan, travel insanely far in Argentina, overshoot the crossing to then get a bus back across the Cardenal Samore border crossing (Twitter handle @CFSamore) and to Puerto Montt.
There was no way I could get to Pucon for a reasonable time so I had to scrap this plan.
Overnight bus from Mendoza to Bariloche (18:30 - 13:00)
Local bus outside terminal to town - SUBE card can be purchased in the terminal
Walk to hostel
Accommodation
Bariloche - Hostel Like Quijote
Number of nights - 1
Price per night per person - £10
Positives:
Cheap enough
4 bed dorm
Private bathroom was convenient
Kitchen was a decent size
It was quiet so meant I could sleep
Negatives:
Private bathroom is not so private with a full room
Kitchen was not well stocked with appliances, minus a really sharp knife
Quite far from town
Recommend?
Maybe a little too far from town
Puerto Montt - Airbnb,
Number of nights - 3
Price per night per person - £25
Positives:
Whole apartment
Comfortable
Nice and well stocked kitchen
Location was great
Negatives:
Sofa could be comfier
Pricier
Recommend?
Yes
Diary
Saturday 11th November - Day 403
The night bus to Bariloche (Argentina) was pretty cushty. I had two seats to myself, there was plenty of space on the Andesmar bus and after 4 hours killing time I was asleep until about 9am. Not the greatest night sleep I’ll ever have (didn’t want to spend an additional £10 on full cama) but the fold down footrest, the space, not disgusting toilets and not having a stressed and unwell Nicola around made the 1,200km+ and 17 hour journey not so bad.
I arrived in Bariloche at about 1pm, got one of the last 3 available seats on the next morning bus to Puerto Montt (cost £23) and took off to Bariloche town. Turns out you need a SUBE card that is used for all public transport in Argentina but my poor Spanish meant I had no idea what the driver was saying. A kind local SUBE’d me in for the $158 fare and in return she got 20 whole pence ($200).
It was goodbye to lovely sunny 30° Mendoza in the dream dry heat, hello rainy windy and cold Bariloche topping 5° if I was lucky.
I had chosen a bit poorly on the hostel as it was quite a walk from the bus stop and meant my early morning rise would have to be even earlier the next day. But after spending nearly 2 days on my ass waiting for and then waiting on a bus it was some much needed movement up a slight incline, despite the 20kg big bag plus day one.
Welcome my first experience of snow since we left the US. It didn’t bring any joy and hoped it would fuck off quickly so as to not ruin my second attempt at a mountain border crossing.
My trial run for Argentinian accommodation booked on booking.com yielded better results than I expected. I booked a room on the site with conversion set to ARS which gave me a much more acceptable rate of ARS8k, then converted to a whopping big fat USD22. The disparity between the actual rate vs blue dollar is pretty dam costly and booking so helpfully says ‘we have converted to ARS from USD, you will pay in ARS’ so the whole thing is really dependent on what rate the hostel uses - I really wish booking would force places to use their actual currency for prices. This time around I got some whack hybrid that was closer to the actual rate so I ended up paying ARS10k. I could live with a £2 bump up considering it wasn’t a £12 one.
Will make for an interesting experience come El Chalten where we were expecting to pay a small fortune but have now realised it should be at the cheaper actual rate. Could be an expensive argument.
As soon as I was in my room I was in bed with most of my layers on. My roommates were nice enough but I didn’t speak to them all too much.
After some time I decided to venture into Bariloche despite the not so pleasant weather. Still snowing.
The town was nice, with some very European looking alpine buildings and architecture.
The lake looked less than inviting in the muggy grey weather.
Turns out Bariloche is pretty bougie as well. The main town is full of fancy outdoor shops, chocolate and wine merchants. Like being in Switzerland really.
I had a stop at a park church, got myself a much needed SUBE card and turned tail for home via the supermarket when it started properly snowing.
I didn’t enjoy being in a 4 bed dorm again for the first time in a long old while but at least I had a bottom bunk and the shower was warm.
My evening was spent watching tv, cooking, talking to my stranger fiancée who I hadn’t seen for nearly a week and began stressing about the Cardenal Antonio Samoré border crossing I would be doing tomorrow as it was currently closed due to bad snowfall with a reassessment at 8am. Didn’t fill me with confidence given my bus was due to leave at 7.30am and the worst part was the Mendoza border had reopened.
Sunday 12th November - Day 404
6am came around and I was up, packed as quietly as I could so as not to wake anyone and then was walking to town to find a bus. Turns out they’re not very frequent at 6.30am on a Sunday but one did turn up only slightly later than Google said so it meant I didn’t need to get a taxi.
At the terminal there were a load of people sitting and waiting for someone to start directions. Only problem was all the company booths were devoid of employees and there were no buses around. So we patiently waited and to my surprise the Via Tac bus turned up. Not only that, but it began boarding people as soon as it arrived.
Some positive signs got even more positive when it actually started moving at 8am. Must have had some sort of insider information of openness that twitter had failed to say, which only confirmed the border was open at around 10am.
There was plenty of snow on the side of the roads but the tarmac was completely clear. Pretty but still squeaky bum time the whole way.
The Argentinian border control was nice and chill again, a simple scan of the passport and then back on the bus.
The drive through the mountain border pass was like being back in Bryce national park. Tons of snow and is seriously impressive the level of clearance skills it must have required to get the road open. Hats off to them.
As soon as we hit the Chilean border control, the snow was gone. Here we spent an age for the SAG (agriculture) check. Much more stringent than the Bolivian border check, they made us line up our bags and they got two dogs out to sniff around. No idea what they were looking for but I had a banana in my bag and I’m pretty sure that was on the no go list so clearly they suck. The first one was so bad they brought in another to do a better check.
We were standing around for 30 minutes or so before finally got back on the bus and on our way again.
The Chilean side of the Andes was wet but green and so much warmer than Argentina. Once on our way there was no further stress about any potential travel problems, more just being quite long and me wanting it all to be done finally.
Once in Puerto Montt I had a massive faff around trying to find the bus that would take me to the Airbnb, to not see a single one go by and then change tact for a cab, none of which would stop for me and the one I did speak to tried to give me directions to the bus. Exhausted and demoralised I finally got one to stop and then proceeded to have the most irritating conversation, of which I could understand nothing of what he was saying. At least the CLP3k fee I understood turned out to be correct.
Reunited at last:
At the Airbnb we were finally reunited and it was in a pretty nice apartment that we could properly relax in for a few days.
Nicola was a saint and was in the process of putting a half decent oven to work with roast potatoes, accompanied by some not so great Chilean sausages (all are far too frankfurtery) but we could overlook that, gravy and a savagely large jar of applesauce Nicola desperately craved. Took us a while to eat that down.
Monday 13th November - Day 405
It was so nice to continue with the chilled apartment vibes. A lie in with a breakfast bar breakfast was wonderful.
Big activity for the day was getting Nicola more warm clothes. Pucon had informed her she may struggle going forward and the desire for a bigger coat was strong. Fortunately for us Puerto Montt has two pretty great malls, Mall Paseo Costanera, joined together. Plenty of outdoor brands for fun perusing and Nicola managed to find a coat on sale for £20ish. The ‘it has furry pockets’ comment came out a lot as she beamed from ear to ear.
The food court had a wide variety of fast food options of which we chose KFC. It turned out to be well and truly awful and is not a place we will be visiting in the rest of Chile. It did have potentially nice views over the massive body of water, Bahía Puerto Montt, but it would not stop raining for a week solid here. The only upside was it never got truly cold, being around 13 degrees most of the time.
The massive Jumbo supermarket next to the apartment was great and ended up venturing here everyday to try to cook some more interesting meals than we had been able to for an absolute age.
Our evening was spent in front of the TV and Luke running off to prepare for his interview Wednesday.
Tuesday 14th November - Day 406
We had another very chill day.
A lunch time outing took us around Puerto Montt, predominantly along the Bahia waterfront ending at the Naviera Austral ferry port before turning around.
There really isn’t a whole lot to do or see in Puerto Montt so after walking for a short while we returned back to the Airbnb and relaxed some more. It was at least dry while we were outside this time.
Wednesday 15th November - Day 407
Luke spent the morning doing his interview and once finished we checked out and got an Uber to First-rent-a-car, Downtown. The Google location is completely wrong but fortunately the Uber nav was A ok.
We were introduced to our wheels for the next 3 weeks, an MG SUV and it was an absolute basic bitch of a car. Whatever smart features you thought were standard these days, this car had managed to remove. Fortunately Luke still had his portable speaker because it was now the only method of listening to music or audiobooks on our 2,000km+ drive down the Carretera Austral. It was also sadly stick so Luke would actually have to concentrate more while driving on the right hand side of the road.
Luke's first trip was to a supermarket and managed to fail miserably at a hill start up a savagely steep exit that was wet and slippery. Luckily there was no one trying to leave at the same time so he could roll on to flatter pastures… but he would continue to stall on the regs going forward and curse the annoying car.
First road trip stop, Puerto Varas.
Comments