Puelo Valley - Arg to Chile

Trail to cross from Argentina to Chile through a valley shaped by rivers and lakes with the Puelo river in the middle, a beautiful and wild place where you will see animals, waterfalls, lakes, forests, jungles, and farms. A unique experience to get in touch with the wild Patagonia.

The trail starts from "Gendarmeria" that its the border control from Argentina, but you will have to start it from the "pasarela" a small bridge to cross the river that is next to Puelo. Puelo is the last place where you can buy food and stock yourself before starting the trail.

IMPORTANT:
- Bring a GPS with enough battery for a week, if not you will get lost.
- Bring enough food and be prepared for the worst. You can break a leg, fall from a cliff or worse, and it can be a day or more before you get in touch with someone.
- It is difficult, prepare yourself, bring good shoes, warm and light pairs of clothes a warm socks. You will have to remove your shoes a lot of times to cross rivers by foot.
- Be careful with the fire, you can make fire everywhere but do it only near water sources.

Day 1 - From the "Pasarela" to "Gendarmeria": ~18 km, the trail is marked, is very difficult to get lost, but it can happen, so be aware of the signs everytime and you will be fine. (This part is not tracked in the trail). Reference: https://es.wikiloc.com/rutas-senderismo/lago-puelo-gendarmeria-hasta-los-hitos-limite-arg-chile-14622904

Day 2 - From "Gendarmeria" to "Las Rocas" Lake:
From Gendarmeria you have 4 km to get into Chilean lands, after that another 12km to reach "Carabineros" that is the Chilean border control, from there you have 500m to be in Las Rocas lake, where you can spend the night.

Day 3 - From "Las Rocas" lake to "Pesca" lake:
This is maybe one of the best hiking days in the trail, it is only 12km from lake "Las Rocas" lake to a tiny and beautiful lake that is between "Las Rocas" and "Azul" lakes, the first time we did the trail we fished a lot, it is a very unique and beautiful place to spend the night we found it with my brother after being lost for 6 hours on our first visit to Cochamo, it is hard to find but if you follow our trail you will find it :). Spending the night there was one of my best experiences in the wild, we went to bed watching a clear sky night and wake up with wild horses next to us drinking water from the lake.

Day 4 - From "Pesca" lake to "Llanada Grande":

This is maybe the hardest day of the trail, you will have to climb 300mts in 6 kms, the trail doesn't help at all, so be prepared to suffer. But this is also the day with one of the best views, there is a photo of it uploaded in the track with the lake "Azul" in the background.
Start early because once you reach the dirt road you have to go to Llanada Grande, a very small town that is 20km down the road, we did hitchhike here, there is no reason to walk to Llanada Grande in the dirt road, but maybe you will have to.
Once you reach lake "Azul" you will see a house with farms and buildings next to the lake, you can ask for help there if you need it.

Day 5 - From "Llanada Grande" to Gullermo's farm or "Puerto Urrutia":
You can spend a night or two in Llanada Grande and recover, buy more food and walk around this small village. Ask for instruction to go to the waterfall, this waterfall is in private property but you can pay to visit it and it is worth it. Another unique place where you can see the force of nature.
After you recover and got more provisions for the next three/four days you have to go to Puerto Urrutia and ask for someone to take you to the other side of the river.
We were luckily to cross in the same boat with Guillermo, Guillermo has a farm on the other side of the river where he invited us to stay there. We spend the night and then continue walking the trail up north.

Day 6 - From Gullermo's farm to the forest next to "Puelo" river:
This day we just walked a lot, the terrain was much better and plain than the first days but there is still some hills that you need to climb. We spent the night in the middle of teh forest, just look for a good place near a water source, set a fire and have a good night to get ready for the last day.

Day 7 - From the forest to Nancy's farm:
We knew that we had to go to Nancy's farm, Nancy is the cousin of an Argentinian that hosted us on a cabin in Llanada Grande, and from her farm we had to find a way to cross the river. When we reached Nancy's farm she wasn't there, so we waited in the river shore for a boat to appear and ask him to cross us to the other side, after hours waiting a boat crossed us to the other side of the Puelo river.
Here we were facing the last part of the trail, we knew that we had to go to the dirt road marked in our GPS but we couldn't find any trail so we managed to climb the hill and make our way till we ran into a trail that leads us to the dirt road that ended up in a place where we could take the ferry to cross lake Tagua Tagua.

Conclusion:
This trail is hard, we did it twice, the first time we were just two people and not prepared at all, we got lost between lake Las Rocas and Azul and ended the trip once we managed to get to Llanada Grande. The second time we went prepared with GPS, good clothes and we were four people.

This is by far the best experience I had in the wild, don't do it alone is a great trail to do it with friends that you know you will get along and won't fear run into unexpected situations. Is a trail about adventure and nature, getting in touch with the wild Patagonia but not far from civilization.

If you need help or have any questions about the trail send me an email to me@augustolemble.com