We continued south on the Carretera Austral with a scenic detour before visiting Queulat National Park. 

Tearing ourselves away from the lovely countryside around Futaleufú, we got back on the Carretera at Villa Santa Lucia and headed south, thankfully back on smooth bitumen.

Snow capped mountains loomed ahead and small farms lined the roadside. After 7 km and just past an old ruined shingle church we pulled off on a small track to the river where we had a pleasant picnic lunch.

We didn’t actually cover a huge distance on our first day back on the Carretera. Just north of La Junta, we turned east on Ruta X-111 which was a very scenic drive with the high snowy mountains ahead of us marking the Argentinian border. Swinging past Lago Claro Solar, we came to the scenic Pasarela el Quinto suspension bridge.

In a pretty spot spanning the river, it was quite narrow and our little Nissan just squeezed through. We found a great rough campsite on the river bank on the other side and later walked back – it was quite nerve wracking sitting under it when a car went over as the entire structure sagged and undulated alarmingly!

We had a lazy afternoon beside the water until eventually we lost the sun at about 9 pm – we were about 43° south by then.

There was plenty of driftwood to keep a good campfire going – one of the benefits of camping by a river! Eventually the moon rose over the water turning it to molten mercury. 

La Junta

La Junta is a one horse – or in this case, several horses – town on the Carretera. There is a rather insignificant monument to General Pinochet which is not particularly obvious and a cluster of cabanas before one thankfully gets back to forested hillsides again.

The road runs down beside the long Lago Risopatrón where it enters the northern section of Queulat National Park. There is a 10 km return walk to the Laguna Los Pumas with a 945 m elevation gain – it is reputed to be steep and muddy and didn’t appear to be open when we passed.

The little village of Puyuhuapi appears 45 km after La Junta. It was originally colonised by Germans in the 1930’s and from 1943 was the site of a major carpet weaving factory, using natives from Chiloé; it ran for about 60 years.

It is quite a quaint picturesque place with lots of wooden shingle houses and is beautifully situated at the top of a fjord. We turned down a back lane to find Copec to get some petrol – it was the site of the first petrol station in town in 1982 and I don’t think the single tin roofed hut has changed since then. There was no petrol available so be warned not to count on this particular gas station.

Around it there are some original German houses, now sadly in a state of dereliction with sagging roofs and broken windows. We walked around the edge of the fjord to the old wharf which until the Carretera arrived in 1983 was the only means of communication with the town.

On the main street we found a couple of mini supermarkets and some old style B&B’s with weirdly Germanic names – the Hosteria Alemana in an original building is a popular choice or the good value Hostel Don Claudio. It is a pleasant stop as one travels south, although a fairly sleepy one!

There is one famous draw in the region: the  Puyuhuapi Lodge and Spa, a lakeside lodge which can only be accessed by boat from a landing south of the town. Full board comes in at about £400 for a double and although it has an unbeatable location, the lodges look rather dated for the price. 

Queulat National Park

The reason most people linger in Puyuhuapi is Queulat National Park, about 18 km south, especially early in the season when the park campsite is not yet open (possibly 10th December for the 2023 season!)

Although the park covers a huge area, there is very little actually accessible to the visitor. The weird reservation system does not help either, whereby one has to book one’s visit online in advance then pay on arrival. The park is closed Monday – Wednesday at the time of writing and then only open from 9 am to 4.30, with the mirador walk not allowed after 1.30  – it was all a bit of a faff. Be warned there is no internet at the park so if you turn up without a reservation, you will be sent to the local restaurant which charges CLP 1000 for WiFi! For foreign adults, the entrance is CLP 11,000.

It is home to a huge variety of birdlife, including black woodpeckers, kingfishers and condors. The small pudu deer is occasionally seen and there are elusive pumas.

The main walk is the Ventisquero Colgante (hanging glacier) walk, which is 7 km return to a glacier lookout, with 295 m elevation gain. 

We arrived on a very grey morning to do this and wound up through classic thick rain forest of native beech and ferns for 1½ hours to the lookout – this meant lots of puddles, mud, tree roots and boulders. The first kilometre was fairly steep after which it levelled off a bit.

Of course, when we reached the lookout, the glacier was obscured by low clouds with only the bottom half of the two waterfalls visible. We could hear but not see ice breaking off. After an hour of waiting with no improvement in the weather (small shelter and seat provided!) we gave up and headed down again.

Typically, in the hour it took to reach the Lagoon Los Témpanos at the bottom, the clouds had lifted and the glacier was in full view! It was a very clean icy blue one and sat precariously between two mountainsides. Luckily the head on view from the boat launch area was excellent so I don’t feel we missed out much – in fact, if you are not energetically inclined, I would just head straight to this area and do one of the half hour boat trips that wend up the lake (CPL 15,000).

We headed back to the car over the scenic Ventisquero River footbridge with its bird’s eye view of the rushing river.

The Carretera continued south with a mix of rough gravel interspersed with cement. We made a couple more stops within the park to check out some waterfalls: the Salto del Padre Garcia, just a steep 5 minutes off the road and gushing a huge quantity of water, and the Salto el Condor which could be seen perfectly well from the large pull in area.

This parking area had a good Carretera Austral sign which was completely buried under overlanding stickers – I am not sure where a little white Nissan fits in amongst all the cyclists, motorbikes and ‘big rigs’ but we took a photo and headed on!

A little further down the road we turned west towards Puerto Cisnes and found a lovely wild camp on the Río Cisnes, a wide river amidst heavily forested mountains which lulled us to sleep with the sound of its rapids.