Calbuco before and after the eruption

We are lucky that every now and then we can leave our home office behind for some field work, and last weekend we had lined up such a trip to the Los Lagos region, about 1000km south of Santiago. The work involved taking a bunch of photos from a set of specific locations, one happened to be inside Lake Llanquihue.

Lago Llanquihue, with its 860 square kilometres, is the second largest of Chile and is towered by Volcán Osorno and Volcán Calbuco. The point from where the photos were to be taken was several kilometres off-shore, therefore it was out of the question to just hire a kayak or something, we had to get the bigger guns out.

Sailing on Lago Llanquihue

There are people who hire small boats for fishing trips, but these guys are usually based in Puerto Varas in the south-western corner of the lake, which is the tourist hub of the area. That’s about 30km away from where we needed to go and from there it would have potentially taken a few hours cruising through choppy waters… and was therefore not really an option.

The nearest town from our point of interest was Puerto Octay, which is not exactly very touristy, but nevertheless Patricia made it a mission to find someone there with a boat willing to help us out. In a similar situation in Europe we would simply google it and something would turn up… but things don’t work quite like that Chile, yet. One option would be to show up and ask around and with a bit of luck one would eventually bump into someone whose uncle has a friend whose daughter is married to someone who once used to own a boat and maybe still knows someone else who can perhaps help. But we only had a couple of days to fulfil the mission, so it was a bit too risky to try the Chile way. That someone who knows someone else (etc) sometimes requires patience and time scales which are often not compatible with our missions.

In the end we went with a hybrid solution, Patricia spent a few hours googling, eventually bumped into an old newspaper clipping from 2013 which had an advert posted by some random dude from Puerto Octay about boat trips. It came with an email address and phone number. Bingo! Nobody picked up the phone and the email remains without response to this day, but on our way to the Alameda bus station, from where we were catching the overnight bus to Puerto Varas, someone suddenly returned the call and we had made earlier and this way we got in touch with Ignacio, the guy who posted that ad back in 2013. He was a bit perplexed at first about how we had got his number but he agreed to meet us the following morning to discuss our matter.

Patricia and Ignacio

Ignacio was a friendly chap with a small (and a bit battered) yacht which he apparently had already taken all across the pacific, and the two now enjoy the somewhat slower lifestyle of Puerto Octay and the less (but still) choppy waters of Lago Llanquihue. The negotiation over the price went smoothly, it was clear that Ignacio wasn’t interested in ripping us off. He rather seemed to enjoy the idea of spending a few hours on the lake and share some stories with a couple of strangers. A deal was struck and off we went. If you ever find yourself in the mood for a little sailing trip on Lago Llanquihue, give Ignacio a call (+56-9-7758 7090, note he doesn’t speak much English and does not reply to emails). The weather cooperated and we got all the photos we needed on our first day, leaving the second day for some exploring.

A beautiful day for exploring the Los Lagos Region of Chile, Volcán Osorno in the background

One of the things that we wanted to do is to go to Ensenada, a little town on the south-eastern shore of the lake which was badly affected by the fallout of ash during the Calbuco eruption in April. We had stayed in that area on previous visits and just wanted to see for ourselves how bad things were.

Volcán Calbuco from the distance

For example, almost a year ago, after our Osorno climb, we stayed in Casa Ko, a little bed and breakfast with a beautiful view of the three volcanos (Puntiagudo being the third one, a little further away). The house is still there but the green lush surroundings of it are now a grey moonscape and covered by a thick layer of grey, coarse ash.

View from Casa Ko in December 2014, everything is lush and green

View from Casa Ko in October 2015, everything is covered in grey ash

The bed and breakfast, Casa Ko, also relocated to Frutillar in the meantime, a shame but understandable. As beautiful as the setting is, that whole area around the volcano would be better left to itself, protected as a National Park. Presumably, plant life will prevail and turn this place back into a green paradise, but we wondered how long this process may take. Probably worth going back next year to check again.