Such a beautiful little adventure town, they had festivals on the weekend, and a cute little market in the main square with homemade niknaks and fresh fruit. There are 3 different towns in the same area, Puerto Varas, Puerto Montt and Osorno. Puerto Varas is the place to stay. Puerto Montt and Osorno are just transportation hubs. We took the bus from Bariloche to Puerto Montt since none went directly to Puerto Varas. At Puerto Montt they had mini blue busses leaving every 5 minutes to Puerto Varas and cost 1USD.
The two big activities we did here were canyoning and the Osorno volcano.
Osorno Volcano
They had many options for the Osorno Volcano, you could climb the whole thing, take a day tour to the ski chalet and then take 2 sets of chair lifts up it, walk around the base of the ski chalet or even zip line down it. We took the afternoon tour to the base of the ski chalet and hiked around. The volcanic rock was black and red and very coarse. We also had gorgeous weather.
Canyoning
Canyoning – What a great experience!! We did a half day trip and that was plenty. They also gave us all the gear we needed, from socks to 2 pairs of gloves. We had to hike up a fair amount to the start of the canyoning path and it got extremely hot. but once at the start point, getting in the water was extremely cold, even with the wet suit on, but you adapted pretty quickly. Canyoning consists of sliding through the rocks natural grooves cut out from the river, so most of it is smooth – the wet suit adds a lot of cushioning as well. There was also a lot of jumping off cliffs into pools of water and then at the very end, we repealed down the side of a waterfall. We didn’t have the perfect wether, it was overcast the whole day but you never even noticed cause you were always between two big rock faces. If you have the chance to go canyoning, i’d highly recommend it!
THRASHER TRAVELS 