Hiking Volcan Osorno (Not Recommended)

Volcan Osorno is one of the best-known sights in northern Patagonia. Innumerable travel guides and postcards feature photographs of the volcano behind the lake, taken from the waterfront in Puerto Varas. What most travel guides fail to mention is that Volcan Osorno is best viewed from afar.

Unfortunately Kenny and I did not read or hear any such advice. On our first day in town, we wandered around, looking for signs of the “adventure activities” for which Puerto Varas is so famous. Oddly enough, the only sources of such activities seemed to be a couple of travel agents and a city-operated tourist office. So we sauntered into the tourist office, and after reading a few brochures about activities like hiking, using a fish finder for kayak fishing, and an excursion to Chiloe to see penguins, we settled on the Osorno hike for the following day. The young woman at the tourist office gave the hike a strong review, took our money, and told us how to get to Puyuhue to meet our guide.

The next morning we arose bright and early, caught a bus, and went to the Puyuhue adventure office. Our guide handed us two lunch packs, rounded up his two dogs, and led us out onto the trail to start what was supposed to be a 7 hour hike up to “Desolation Pass”.

The first part of the hike was on flat ground with light tree cover, and the first thing we noticed was the large number of flies around us. And then we continued to notice it, as they did not seem to go away as the terrain changed gradually — in fact they only seemed to increase in number the further we advanced.

Now, these are not your garden variety house flies. They are large black and orange horseflies, with a penchant for flesh. They have a tendency to find the only living creature in a large area, and swarm around it. They like to bring friends. And if you swat at them, they will invite even more friends to attack you.

When we asked our guide about the flies, he smiled, and called them “malditos.” He told us not to worry, that there would be fewer of them when we got to the canyon. He was correct. For the entire canyonous part of the hike, Kenny and I each had only one or two horsefly friends attending us. But what the guide failed to tell us was that after the canyon, the horseflies would increase in number. Significantly.

The remainder of the hike can only be described as miserable. We were unhappy and uncomfortable, but for some reason, we trudged forward. We managed to get a few nice views of the volcano, and we tried to get our spirits up, but it was difficult to do so while being constantly surrounded and bitten by malditos.

When we got to the summit, we were supposed to stop for lunch. I made it through about a bite of my sandwich, while trying to keep away from the horseflies and even more importantly trying to avoid eating the flies that were landing on the sandwich itself. At that point, I had completely had it and I announced that we were leaving. Kenny agreed, and our guide started to lead us back down the trail. He took us back a different way, so that we could see some different scenery and save a bit of time. We walked as quickly as we could for the remainder of the hike, even running for certain parts of it. I was getting a blister on my heel, but I didn’t even want to stop to adjust my sock. Kenny told me that it was “the first time he had ever felt like crying on a hike.”

At some point, our guide saw that I was getting fed up by the flies, and he pulled off a tree branch and told me to hold it above my head. I don’t know whether the branch was supposed to fool the horseflies into thinking that I was a tree (and therefore lacking yummy human flesh) or if I was supposed to use it as a swatter. I tried a little of each. While neither approach seemed to help significantly, the latter was rather satisfying.

The very last part of the hike took us by a lake, where the flies were thicker than ever. If you zoom in very close on this photo, you can see lots of black dots. Each of those is an evil horsefly.

Near the end of the hike, our guide told us that the horseflies are only a problem in January. We stopped dead in our tracks. We were so angry we could hardly speak. Then he continued, “in February we have large bees the size of these horseflies. Then the rest of the year it rains, so we cannot hike.” So perhaps we got lucky?

We finished our 7 hour hike in 5 hours, got ourselves to the bus, and got the hell out of Puyuhue. We were ready for a shower, a nap, and hiding out inside the shelter of our hotel room for a little while.