Christmas holidays abroad: Argentina to Chile and saddling up for a trek to the end of the world

When I was a boy, I thought of South America as being the home of the flamboyant Hollywood superstar Carmen Miranda - the Lady with the Tutti-Frutti Hat - who in the early Forties was the highest-paid star in the movies. 

She wore her amazing headgear - a pyramid of bananas, strawberries, lemons and whatever else was available at the fruiterers - in a musical called The Gang’s All Here in 1943. But she first excited my adolescent interest in the earlier Down Argentine Way, in which her over-the-top sexiness outshone even the gloss of legs-up-to-here Betty Grable. Perhaps something stuck in my erotic memory cells: certainly Argentina has always resonated as a country that had to be visited one day. Well, it took nearly 70 years – but at last I find myself touring this fascinating and beautiful nation, with my wife Lynne. 

After flying to Buenos Aires, we stay first at a pampas estancia, or ranch – the lovely La Oriental, about three hours out of the city. Then we travel west for a few days to another estancia, Peuma Hue, near the resort town of Bariloche. This beautiful estancia has more than 500 acres of mountains, pristine forests, creeks, waterfalls and lush valleys, and is run by a dedicated conservationist, Kathryn Hoter, who provides wonderful, organic, full-board food, and 12 warm and luxurious rooms in houses and log cabins. 

Takingg it in his stride: Richard Johnson saddles up There are horses to ride along the estancia’s two miles of lakeshore, some really tough climbs for the enthusiast, miles of trails for hikers and, 15 minutes away, Bariloche’s ski slopes - the best in Argentina in winter. From Peuma Hue it’s an awesome two-hour drive through magnificent lake and mountain scenery to the little port of El Bolson at the eastern end of Lago Puelo. On the quayside the Argentinian customs officials check our bags and stamp our passports and we board a turbo-driven rubber boat for what proves to be an extremely bumpy voyage. When we reach the approaches to the river our boatman pauses briefly and, alarmingly for Lynne, hands out life jackets. ‘For the rapids,’ he announces. I’m used to rapids so I’m looking forward to a thrilling few minutes. As it turns out, these rapids are easy stuff – though Lynne thinks they’re great. 'You see that wire above our heads?’ says our tiller man, pointing to a slightly sagging cable that crosses the swirling waters. ‘That’s the border between Argentina and Chile.’ Living a dream: Actor Richard Johnson goes in search of a fantasy El Bolson sits on a river that connects Lago Puelo, in Argentina, to Lago Inferior, which is in Chile. Appropriately enough, Lago Inferior is lower and the difference in altitude produces the rapids we go slip-sliding down. Once in Lago Inferior, it’s an easy 20-minute ride until we reach a small jetty. ‘This your pick-up point,’ the boatman informs us as he unloads our luggage. I look around for a welcoming party. Nobody. The boatman is on his portable radio. ‘They delayed for a few minutes,’ he says, then gets back in his boat and putters away. It’s a lovely, calm summer’s day now, so we sit on the jetty and dangle our feet in the water. An hour later we hear voices and the jingle of harness, and a substantial pack horse and two young men appear out of the trees. The men load up the horse with our two disgracefully heavy bags, strapping one to each side of the saddle for balance, and the beast sets off with its handler up the hillside’s steep trail. The smaller, wirier of the young men smilingly volunteers to carry Lynne’s backpack. ‘The age of chivalry still exists among the young of this country,’ I muse old-fartishly. The trail is steep and winding, and after ten minutes I’m finding myself extremely short of puff. ‘Cuanto distancia mas?’ I enquire of our guide. ‘Un kilómetro.’ Cap that! Richard's wife Lynne crosses a Chilean lake in the shadow of Osorno volcano ‘OK,’ I think, and let him carry my backpack as well. So? He’s used to the hillside...and he’s probably 60 years younger than me. When we reach the sunlit meadow at the top of the trail, we see a middle-aged gentleman waving to us from the gate of a small house. ‘How charming,’ I think, and wave back. ‘He customs man,’ says the guide. We go into the chap’s modest office, where he takes an inordinate amount of time checking our passports. Maybe he doesn’t see too many people and wants to keep us as long as possible. He asks us what our professions are. ‘Writer,’ I reply, bold as brass, and this is pencilled into the form with approval. But Lynne’s answer of ‘software engineer’ meets with a puzzled ‘Que?’ Lakeside luxury: Loungers on a terrace at Hotel Melia Patagonia He thumbs through his handbook to find the list of professions. There is much shaking of his and the guide’s heads. ‘Tell him you’re a housewife.’ I hiss. ‘Certainly not,’ says Lynne. ‘Software engineer,’ she repeats stubbornly. ‘Mecánica?’ he asks slightly incredulously. ‘Mecánica de coche?’ Lynne looks at me. Well, why not, this could go on and on. So Chile becomes the holiday choice of a female motor mechanic. After posing for photographs with us, the officer returns to his post, and we continue along the relatively flat path to the next lake, Lago Las Rocas – and our ultimate destination. Our guide’s boat is tethered to a tree, waiting. We putt-putt for 20 minutes, round a corner of the lake and there it is: tiny, a hint of a house peeking through the trees...Isla Las Bandurrias. As we get nearer we see the elegant figure of our hostess, Françoise Dutheil, waving to us from the landing stage. Soon we’re inside her nearly-too-charming house, where lunch is laid out on the refectory table in the living room. The house is built almost entirely from local ‘found’ wood from the forest, the lake and Françoise’s mainland farm. It is, as a result, notably short of hard, straight lines. As we admire the beautiful home-made fabrics and art that adorn the room, Françoise tells us that getting her builder to use ‘crookedy wood’ in the construction was the hardest part of the job. Up the creaky, windy staircase is our room, which has a little window overlooking the lake. There are bedrooms, too, for Françoise and her daughter, Cathy, who looks after the organisational and horse-riding side of their tiny travel business, Open Travel, with great charm and efficiency. A five-minute walk from the main house is the Cottage, where there are sleeping quarters for six (or eight at a pinch), two bathrooms and a living room with a wood-burning stove in the kitchen area. It also has a delightful veranda, with stunning views of the lake and mountains and a stairway leading down to a little bathing beach. Both houses are entirely ‘off-grid’. Not just because there isn’t a grid to be on in a place as remote as this, but because Françoise is a committed conservationist, fiercely determined to sustain the beauty and resources of her little realm. Lighting and power come by way of solar-powered batteries; hot water Later that day, two young French women arrive. They have trekked on horseback from Puerto Montt, with Cathy as their guide, spending a night en route at a rustic farmhouse. They have booked the Cottage for a two-night stay. In the evening we all dine in the Main House, where Françoise and her cook’s cuisine show all the delicacy of the French tradition. Françoise tells us that she grew up in France and married a Buenos Aires psychiatrist, but became a widow at a very young age. Disenchanted with city life, she decided to leave the capital after her husband’s death, and discovered the island 37 years ago. She had immediately ‘fallen in love’ with it. She found that to buy it, she would have to purchase a farm on the mainland that went with it. ‘Land was so cheap in those days, I just couldn’t refuse,’ she says. The farm now produces much of the food for the table and supports the 15 or so horses Cathy owns. Next day is Christmas Eve. Rain has been forecast, but in fact it turns out to be a lovely summer’s day – we’re in the southern hemisphere, don’t forget. We chug across the lake with Cathy in the dinghy, going to meet our horses for an afternoon’s riding in the forest. Lynne is very new to riding. After some stressful childhood experiences, she grew up with a healthy distrust of the creatures. It’s really only because I’ve told her this is going to be the gentlest horse’s back she’s ever likely to encounter, that most of the trek will be at a walk, and that we will never go faster than a guardsman’s trot, that she has agreed to give it a go. We set off on the trail, part of which passes through the ancient almost-rainforest, with mighty hardwood trunks soaring skywards, moss-encrusted branches sometimes brushing our faces, and many little streams carrying melting snow-water into the lake. ‘There aren’t many fish,’ says Cathy. ‘The water’s too acid for them. Such as there are live very deep – this lake is 400ft in places - and they grow very big.’ Lynne has some difficult moments as her horse trots uphill, or puts its head down to cross streams, but she carries on gamely, and her fears begin to be replaced by exhilaration. ‘I can’t believe I’m actually enjoying this,’ she tells me when we take a pit stop at a mountain farmhouse. I’ve a feeling this is an experience that could change her life. The farmer invites us to help ourselves from his cherry tree, as is the custom when horsemen come to call. Picking cherries from a horse’s back enables one to reach fruits that earth-bound hands cannot. I enthusiastically bite down on the first cherry that I pick, not realising it consists of less flesh and more stone than your average supermarket offering. Ker-unnnch! Result: one lost lower-jaw front tooth and a gaping black hole in my smile. (Oh, well, fix it when I get home...) Later, back at Las Bandurrias, a superb festive dinner of turkey with many different accompaniments – in the European manner – is served for all who are staying this Christmas Eve. There’s plenty of fine Chilean wine and lots of stories and laughs, as if the fact that we have known each other for only a few hours is of no significance. I ask for a Chilean joke and get: ‘How does an Argentinian man commit suicide? He climbs to the top of his ego and throws himself off.’ Same thing as the Scotsman, Englishman and Irishman jokes, I suppose. We feel that, for this night, we are the Isla’s family, and in keeping with this spirit, Cathy brings out a selection of thick, hand-made Chilean slipper-socks, a pair for each guest, and a memorable souvenir for the years to come. Christmas Day is glorious, with not a cloud in the sky and temperatures in the low 80s. Lynne leads a bathing party into the lake. ‘It’s Christmas Day!’ she yells enthusiastically from time to time. We think about the other places we’ve spent Christmas in recent years: South Africa, Ecuador, Seattle (Lynne’s home town), Thailand (when we escaped the tsunami by a fortunate chance), and decide lovely Bandurrias Island is best of all. Later, the French girls and Cathy leave to trek on horseback back to Argentina and, after their departure, Lynne and I move into the Cottage. Our remaining three days pass blissfully. Lynne’s riding improves all the time, helped by all-day excursions, taking picnic lunches at the river or neighbouring lakes. On our last morning, we say a sad goodbye to Françoise, take the dinghy across the channel to the mainland and ride our horses through gentle upland farms to where the road to the outside world begins. Here a car is ready to take us to Puerto Varas, our next Chilean destination. The route lies, again, through beautiful Andean mountain scenery. At one point we take the car aboard a ferry and chug slowly up another of the huge lakes, stopping once or twice for a farmer to unload sheep. At another, we stop the car to watch horses wade out into the giant Lago Ranquilan to graze on the rich carpet of floating weed in the shallows. In this mountain country, horses are the most commonly seen animals: they’re the most important means of transport, after all. After five hours – only the last few miles on a metalled road – we reach Puerto Varas, where we are booked for two nights into the luxurious Hotel Melia Patagonia. Puerto Varas is situated at the northern end of Lago Llanquihue, one of the largest in South America. Opposite the Melia Hotel, at the far end of the lake, is the perfectly shaped, snow-capped cone of the Osorno volcano, and we choose a room facing it. Tired from our long journey, we go down to eat in the restaurant. It’s pretentious and very expensive (which perhaps explains why it’s almost empty). We get the impression that the hotel, though almost new, was designed for another era. Late last century, perhaps. Puerto Varas is a pretty town, with the slightly faded charm of many old-established resorts. There are plenty of shops selling hand-made articles from the area, and one or two decent restaurants: we particularly liked the Mediterraneo and the Rada, both of which have excellent staff and fresh fish of every kind. Next day at 8am we set out on the Sailing the Andes trip. This is organised tourism at its best, it seems to me: not too many people, not too expensive, ‘ooh-ah’ scenery all the way. We take a bus to Petrohue, then enjoy an hour-long journey by catamaran across Lago Azul, with views dominated by cloud-wreathed volcanoes. Then it’s another bus for the short trip to the pleasant Hotel Natura, arriving in time for lunch. Next morning there’s yet another bus, another boat, lunch, another bus, and a final, spectacular boat trip lands us back at Bariloche in Argentina. It sounds rather hectic, but actually it’s very gently paced and there’s lots of time to eat and sleep and make friends with fellow passengers. Then there’s the air, the volcanoes drawing the eye like magnets, the crystal waters of the lakes reflecting the blue of the sky... I honestly don’t think I’ve seen more impressive mountain scenery, even in the Himalayas. In Bariloche we stay at the nice, old-style Tunquelen Hotel, a five-minute taxi ride from the landing stage. By now it’s New Year’s Eve and Archie, the Scottish chef, cooks a many-coursed Hogmanay dinner. In the small hours, from the balcony of our room, we look down over another huge lake, dotted with fir-clad islands and ringed by mountains. Moonlight glints on the water. Dreamy! Our route has described almost a circle, from Bariloche to Bariloche; it has lasted 11 cherishable days. You could tag on a couple of nights in swinging Buenos Aires (try the Casa Calma Wellness Hotel, which is downtown, green and gorgeous) and be home after a couple of weeks you won’t forget. Getting thereSunvil Traveller (020 8758 4774, www.sunvil.co.uk) offers tailor-made trips throughout South America. A 14-night itinerary similar to Richard's costs from £4,699 per person. Price includes B&B at the Casa Calma in Buenos Aires, the Estancia La Oriental near Buenos Aires, Isla Las Bundurrias, Hotel Melia Patagonia and Hotel Tunquelen, with return BA flights from Heathrow, transfers, excursions and internal flights. Source:dailymail.co.uk