It would be misleading to say that Bob Payne’s solo hiking journey through Chile’s Lake Region, highlighted by a climb nearly to the snowline of the Osorno Volcano, was an adventure of heroic proportions. The truth is that most nights he paid for his lodging with a credit card, and on the way up the volcano he was passed by an ice cream truck.
Among Payne’s lodgings was the Hotel Haase, where Mrs. Haase, an ancient but energetic German woman, apparently saw him as an opportunity to empty her kitchen of everything left over from the summer season. Even when breakfast and your hostess’s life story, beginning sometime around 1900, is included in the prices of your room ($14 for a single without private bath), there is only so much toast, jam, eggs, ham, cheese, fruit, and cake a body can consume. Breakfast was not nearly as good at the Hotel Ensenada, at the foot of the volcano, but the price of a night’s stay did include an opportunity to check in at the only reception desk Payne has ever seen that had a row of outboard motors clamped to it.
In the far south of Chile, the Lake Region looks so much like Switzerland, down to an abundance of chalet-style architecture, that Payne half expected Heidi to come running out of one of the little farmhouses.
Traveling Chile’s Lake Region, it was necessary to know some essential Spanish, such as “Hello,” “Goodbye,” and “That’s a fine looking cow you have.” Yet just from knowing that much of the local lingo, Payne found people so friendly during the journey that the only person who didn’t return his smile was a man driving a horse cart. Significantly, perhaps, the cart appeared to have no springs.
The above description of Chile’s Lake Region is from a story Payne wrote for the December 1989 issue of The Walking Magazine. From that same journey, Payne also wrote a story for the July/August-September/October issue of The International Railway Traveler about a 19-hour journey from Santiago to Puerto Montt, at the end of the line, aboard a train so rough riding that Payne suspected not even Paul Theroux would have been able to take notes.
Bob Payne, is the South American Correspondent for BobCarriesOn.com, a travel blog, featuring Bob Payne’s Travel Humor, that has been sharing travel news and advice since before Columbus landed at Plymouth Rock.
BigStock photo.
