We spent two days in Puerto Varas – one day we did a lot of shopping: Mathijs needed new shoes, I needed a warmer jacket and pants and we both needed to stock up on food and plan our upcoming adventure going South on the Carretera Austral. We also visited the information office for Pumalin national park and enjoyed the pretty views over the lake of Osorno volcano. 

The other day, we went active again and hopped on a bus to Vicente Perez Rosales national park to go on a hike. Right from the beginning we had amazing views of Osorno volcano. What made it even better were our favourite yellow bushes blooming everywhere. Later on our trip we learned that these are apparently an invasive species… Oops! We still find them very pretty.

What was less nice during this hike were the hundreds of horse flies constantly buzzing around our heads and biting when we stood still for too long. Guess we just had to hike fast then! We soon reached the Mirador, the endpoint of our hike from where we had pretty views over the surrounding mountains and lake while enjoying our lunch.

It was a nice hike to do from Puerto Varas and easy enough as a day trip. After one more night in our hostel camping, we set off for the Carretera Austral next morning…