Peulla, CL to Ensenada, CL

12.4 mi / 11.0 mph / 125 ft. climbing
Home: Solange’s AirBNB

In Peru, we frequently said “if this was in the US, it would be a National Park!”, for places that didn’t even have names. Chile, by contrast, has been much more active in designating National Parks, but there still seems to be little-to-no tourist infrastructure built into them. So although it’s surrounded by Vicente Pérez Rosales National Park, I don’t think that the Hotel Natura in Peulla is actually a National Park Lodge, but it sure feels like one!

The stone walls of Hotel Natura frame the view of the right-there mountains from our walk-out patio.

A helicopter flying down the valley provided scale that made even us say “whoa, those mountains are way bigger than we thought!”

Our very-expensive room was quite large and comfortable, but lacked a TV (I’m guessing they would justifiably say that you should enjoy the view through your window instead). More oddly, it also was one of the first places in Argentina without a bidet, and without one of the quite-firm mattresses (which we very much prefer) that have been consistent enough that we have determined that they are also part of Argentine culture.

Lamby: “duh, maybe that’s because we aren’t in Argentina anymore, you dorks!” Oh yeah, that’s right, we technically crossed into Chile yesterday! I think we can be forgiven though, as we simply aren’t used to changing countries this quickly. Our previous shortest time between two border crossings was 59 days (USA -> Canada -> USA). Here, we’ve crossed three borders in 38 days (Peru -> Chile -> Argentina -> Chile), and the last two in just 10 days. It’s funny how for us, spending only 10 days in Argentina felt like an incredibly brief flash, but for many people, a 10-day trip would be a fairly-lengthy vacation! However, we will likely return to Argentina in the future and accumulate more experiences there.

I had mentioned last night to Rett that the fancy hotel’s modern infrastructure could probably handle it if we flushed our toilet paper, especially since there were no signs directing guests not to do it (which you see frequently at places like this that host a lot of international tourists). I had no intention of doing such a thing, but after my morning business, I realized I’d unconsciously done something with my toilet paper, so my first thought was that the environmental cues must have caused me to revert to my American default and I’d flushed it. But no, it turns out that after 7 months in South America, my unconscious behavior is now to trash it! I don’t think our three months in Mexico was sufficient to ever induce that level of brain-modification, so it will be interesting to see how long it takes me to stop unconsciously building a little pile on the floor after we return to the United States!

The third ferry in the Cruce Andino crossing (like the first two) only runs once a day, so we would have plenty of time until its 3:30pm sailing (Landon, who made it onto yesterday’s boat, helpfully reported that it didn’t actually leave until 4pm). So we slept in until 8am, just in time for the quite-good (and included) breakfast buffet served in the hotel restaurant (adding to our streak of breakfast buffets in National Park Lodges!) It wasn’t long until 11am checkout time, but then the staff had no problem with us hanging out in the Great Room, using the hotel WiFi (we’ve had no cellular connection since yesterday morning). It seemed like the ~10 other hotel guests were all (literally) in the same boat, having spent the night and now waiting for the same ferry as us, so I’m sure the hotel is quite used to it.

The Great Room at Hotel Natura. Not quite as epic as the lodge on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, but not a bad attempt.

The hotel grounds had this informational sign about the horseflies, so they’re clearly a pest to everyone (the receptionist yesterday expressed sympathy and explained that they’re attracted to black/dark clothing, which is most of what we wear!)

As nice as the new hotel was, I was fascinated by the atmosphere of the decaying old hotel, connected to the new one by a breezeway. While not available to the general public, open windows on the upper floors indicated it was still clearly used to house staff or other functions (and other cyclists had reported staying in overflow rooms there that were totally prepared to receive them). But its five stories would seem sufficient to hold the entire population of Peulla 10 times over, so who is it that fills this building?

We went to lunch at (excellent and friendly) OPI Restobar, perhaps the only other independent business in town, and it’s housed in a bottom corner of the old hotel, which gave me some snooping access inside the rest of the building. Up a grand staircase, the large dining room had clearly fallen to disuse, but possibly in a past more-recent than I expected. And there were some indications that there had been aborted attempts to revive the business. Yesterday when I was exploring the grounds, I heard the voice of a woman quietly singing to herself, and shortly saw an elderly lady emerge from behind one of the overgrown bushes where she had casually been trimming flowers. Anyway, if anyone needs a set for a remake of ‘The Shining’, I have the perfect place for them.

The beautifully-decaying “old hotel” in Peulla.

OPI Restobar is housed in the corner of the old hotel, with paint peeling off the walls, but a new-ish vine-covered pergola shading our bikes.

A meeting/dining space inside Peulla’s old hotel, frozen in time since…1950? 1970? 1990? Who knows!

Looking down the hallway to the 2nd-floor rooms of Peulla’s Old Hotel. The abandoned front desk is to the right, which had an upholstered chair randomly slid up against it, a giant stuffed frog splayed upside-down across it, but eerily, also desk lamp, which was switched on.

After lunch we took a walk up Peulla’s only other street, which led to a forest path and a waterfall that became more-impressive the more we looked at it. Zipline-connected wooden platforms had been built high up around many of the large trees along the steep riverbank, but that business now appeared to be inactive or defunct. We saw most of the rest of the hotel guests doing the same walk on our way up and down.

A view down toward Todos Los Santos Lake from our short hike up from Peulla.

Today’s clearer skies reveal some mountains that were unfortunately hidden from us on yesterday’s ride.

And then it was time to make the short ride over to the boat. I had read a cyclist who said that it was best to try to make the crossing in one day, because if not, you then need to somehow spend a whole second day in Peulla, with almost nothing to do. Well, our day felt like it passed in no time at all (we honestly would have happily taken another!), but I guess that’s just an indication of how we operate differently from a lot of bike tourers.

On the way, we were passed by another cyclist charging by so hard that I didn’t have time to tell him “there’s no rush, most of the people taking this boat are still up looking at the waterfall!” But as someone who was clearly making the crossing in one day, I could understand that after putting in all the effort to make it this far, you don’t want to risk missing the boat at the last second!

The hotel had this nice 3D map of our crossing. Bariloche is the red spot in the upper right, we rode west through there along the yellow line to Llao Llao, and the next morning sailed along the dashed line. Barely visible is the short turn south and 2nd dashed line across Frias Lake, and then the next solid line that we rode yesterday. Now we’re back onto a dashed line, across Todos Los Santos, and then will ride to the southeast corner of large Lake Llanquihue.

Our third boat awaits us as Peulla.

Once again, the crew of this third boat was much more-relaxed about the bikes than they had been on the first boat. For us, too relaxed, since we were waved to simply carry our bikes down a flight of stairs, onto the boat, through the passenger deck, and out to the rail on the other side. Our new friend was capable of that feat with his narrow, ultra-light load, but we had to again take off all of our bags and stick them in a big luggage container before I carried our bikes down. Neither the second or third boat even asked to look at our tickets, so whether you end up taking one or two (or more!) days to do the crossing seems to be irrelevant to them. Just like yesterday, the boat sailed at 4pm, rather than the stated “arrive by 3:15, depart at 3:30”.

Looking back to a white mountain that we hadn’t seen in yesterday’s clouds.

A perfect clear day brought a new volcano into stunning view each time we came around a corner. This one is 8,179 ft. Puntiagudo.

A much easier way to travel than fighting gravel and washboards and horseflies!

Backwards again, the is presumably a part of Tronador, the most-massive mountain in the region.

No roads go anywhere near the shores of Lake Todos Los Santos, but for some people, the view is worth it to build there anyway!

Volcano #2, this is 8,700-ft. Osorno.

Osorno putting up pretty good competition with Villarrica for “most-perfect stratovolcano”.

The top of Puntiagudo is so pointy that I guess snow just doesn’t like to stick to it.

Our boat slowed a bit while this skiff pulled alongside, and delivered one of our passengers. The guide on the boat (who spoke excellent English) described it as a “social service” that the ferry provides to these remote houses, but by the looks of it the people who live here could afford to pay quite well for it!

When we disembarked at the end of the lake at Petrohue (another place that had little more than a high-end hotel), the wind was blowing quite strongly, and it blew over my bike where it had been standing on its kickstand. Without its bags on to catch the wind or unbalance it, I hadn’t thought this could happen, and once we rode off, I quickly discovered that without a fat rear pannier to protect it from the ground, the derailleur hanger had been bent inward, messing up the shifting. It was getting late, so I just quickly switched my Microshift thumb shifter from index to friction mode (hooray for that feature!) and continued on.

Since we were coming from the end of a road that dead-ends into the lake, traffic was minimal, making the bike lane feel rather unnecessary, but it’s more evidence of the extremely-intentional effort to make this route bike-friendly. I guess it made up for it by being a laughably-narrow two-way path where there would be no way for two cyclists to pass each other (my guess was the dashed stripe was drawn down its center just to visually indicate to drivers that it was a bike lane.

A look back up the Petrohue River that we were now riding down.

The nearby Petrohue Falls are apparently quite an attraction (presumably aided by having water this color flowing over them), but unfortunately they “close” at 5pm, and access is definitely restricted.

Puntiagudo still being pointy behind us.

And we pass incredibly close by Osorno on our right side, within 5 miles of the summit, but thanks to the river cutting a path, we don’t need to climb at all to get over its toes.

The late-afternoon ferry meant that we started our ride at 6:30pm, hours after we prefer to be finished riding, but with the distance short and the days incredibly-long, it was no problem reaching our AirBNB in the light. Ensenada isn’t really a town, more just a strip of civilization stretched out along the highway, but it was nice to be able to return to a Chilean minimarket with their now-familiar products, and a quick-and-easy frozen pizza was on the menu tonight!