3rd February, 1992
The Río Petrohué, a torrent of turquoise water plunging over rapids in its haste to reach the sea, led past Osorno to where Lago Todos los Santos spread a serene greeny-blue sheet between steep mountainsides, enticing us round its S-bend to the village of Peulla.
The narrow Río Peulla valley cuts through the Andes, making it easy to pass over to the other side at just 5,000 feet, although Mount Tronador towers impressively up to 11,350 feet within touching distance. Gaps in the cloud revealed the sensational blue of its glacier’s podgy fingers as we bounced through the Perez Rosales pass. Turbulence was heavy, but less serious than expected.
Then, Argentina stretched ahead, the treeless brown hills and plains of the Meseta Patagonica beyond Lago Nahuel Huapi, rather dull after the dramatic scenery of southern Chile. The blotch ahead was San Carlos de Bariloche. It was not an Argentine version of a Swiss village, as we imagined, but a town of multi-storied buildings lining the lake shore.
From Freedom of the Skies
Glimpses of the journey:
- Around the world
- Crossing the Atlantic
- Saint Louis, Senegal
- Bubaque, Guiné-Bissau
- Timbuktu, Mali
- Cottars’ Camp, Kenya
- Virungas National Park, Zaire
- Mana Pools National Park, Zimbabwe
- Sossusvlei, Namíbia
- Lumbo, Mozambique
- Antananarivo Madagascar
- Adis Ababa, Ethiopia
- Misfat, Omã
- Jaipur, India
- Himalaia, Nepal
- Mae Hong Son, Thailand
- Bario, Sarawak, Malaysia
- Borobodur, Java, Indonesia
- Baliem Valley, Irian Jaya
- Gimbat, Australia
- Munda, New Georgia, Solomon Islands
- Hurricane in Apia, Western Samoa
- Anaa, Tuamotu, Polynesia
- Easter Island, Chile
- Crossing the Andes, Chile-Argentina
- Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
