Lake District and Mendoza

Arriving in the pouring rain in Puerto Montt after a super-expenive but drizzly 3 day Navimag trip from the somewhat depressing Puerto Natales was a bit of a low morale moment. Puerto Montt is a thoroughly nasty town, the only place we´ve visited so far where we gave up looking for a restaurant and went to MacDonalds in desperation. The top tourist attraction is a "graffiti stonehenge". The beer is good, though, but I was disappointed to discover that the consistently inaccurate Lonely Planet "South America on a Shoestring" had made another mistake and the local brew was not really called "Kuntsmann" (It´s Kunstmann).

Arriving in Puerto Varas, everything changed (except the beer). It is a lovely little town next to a lake with views of the Osorno volcano.



We took a very scenic 3 boat, 4 bus tourist day-trip to Bariloche in Argentina, and drove around a bit in a hire car taking in the wonderful scenery.



After a couple of days in the sunshine of the Argentinian lake district, we took a coach to Mendoza. Mendoza is the main wine-producing region of Argentina and a day trip to a couple of wineries with magnificent Argentinian beef and chorizo for lunch was a highlight. The next day in the hot springs was another highlight, reaffirming our love for Argentina.