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==Season 2025/26==
* <span style="background-color:aqua;">'''2025-12-15 to 2025-12-17 / 3 Days / Packrafting / SOBO / RP + RH / Michel & Lisa'''</span>
Day 1
We took the 8:00 bus from the Puerto Montt bus terminal with the company "Rio Puelo" (more details in the transportation section below). It filled incredibly quickly and left completely full, so we were glad to have gotten there 20 min early.
We passed Cochamo at ~10:30 and the bus was still full, it would've been difficult to impossible to get on the bus there I think.
Got to the ferry by bus at about 12:20. After the ferry on the other end of the lake, the next bus was waiting and took us further. It actually drove up Río Manso all the way to this point: [-41.70165, -71.98239]. But you might have to ask the driver to do that if you wanted to go there since it seemed we just dropped off a few passengers there. This would be an option if you wanted to packraft the Río Manso option (22-07).
We got to X{22-01} [25.0/187] (known to the bus driver as Lago Totoral) at around 14:30. The bus driver told us that we could not camp down the road at the lake (Lago Azul, i.e. Camp (22-02A} (3.7/222]) though he didn't say why. We started walking towards it anyways and found a closed gate with a "private property, do not enter" sign in our path after a few hundred meters. While we were looking at it, an elderly man came to us and started chatting from the other side of the fence. He seemed to be the owner of the land. We politely asked him if we could go down to the lake here to cross it in our boat or camp at the lake if the wind didn't permit crossing. He said yes and mentioned something about maybe helping him out for using his land if we did camp, though we didn't understand him very well. In the end he let us pass without any payment. There's a nicely kept campground a few hundred meters after the gate, which seemed to be his. We continued on the very well kept road to the lake, where there's some boating infrastructure. It seems that there are paying guests here sometimes (maybe in summer). You could camp here at the lake (i.e. Camp (22-02A} (3.7/222]), but there are quite a few structures around, better continue to the other end of the lake like we did (or, if you are fast and have the energy, go all the way to the next lake which would be a really nice place where there are no buildings at all, here: [-41.99745, -71.83223]. Practically no wind on Lago Azul made us put in and start. We had some light tailwind later on but didn't take out the sail and made it in 1 h 40 min, arriving at 18:20 at Settler {22-02} [3.9/217]. There are a couple of houses here and many nice campsites. As we arrived, three arrieros on horses came by who greeted us but didn't come to talk to us. We figured they didn't care much if we camped here, so we chose a site nicely sheltered from the wind close to the small stream (about here [-41.98298, -71.84432]). Some cows came to check us out but they seemed relaxed and friendly, so we stayed (very unlike our experience on GPT16, haha).
Day 2
Got an early start (early for us, anyways) and left by 8:00. The morning was fresh but not cold. We had to open and close some gates at the settler's property and were amazed by all the animals they have here - cows, sheep, horses, pigs, chicken, peacocks. You don't have to cross the little stream that flows towards their houses (we did, only to cross back again). The trail starts a little further up and is very clear. We got to the small lake, where it would be amazing to camp (as mentioned before, no buildings, nice flat grassland to put your tent, here: [-41.99745, -71.83223].) Got to Lago de los Rocas soon thereafter and put in at 10:00 with practically no wind on the lake and got to the end of the lake in 1 h 20 min with some tailwind and sailing. Especially once we reached the narrow end [-42.06854, -71.81438] the wind got stronger and then once we landed (12:30) it picked up even more (ideal for sailing, not too strong). So it could be a good idea to do this lake a bit later, more sailing that way. ;-)
The end of Lago de los Rocas would be fine to camp, but there's a ton of horse poop and two football goals on the big (flat) grass, so it's not that appealing (Camp {22S} [21.8/314]).
We hiked to the carabineros who were really friendly and chatty though a bit disorganized, haha. They said it was absolutely no problem to camp in between here and the argentinian border post. We didn't tell them about our packraft (also weren't asked) but I'm pretty sure they wouldn't have cared. I can imagine it depends a lot on the officer who's in charge at the moment what treatment you get...
We went on to Lake (22S) [20.9/201] where there are nice campsites as well and put up our tent for the night (and afternoon, we arrived at 13:30). It's nice and sheltered here. :-) The two level-ish spots close to the water are not very big, but our two-person tent just fit on one of them.
Day 3
There was some slight rain at night and in the morning which delayed our departure a bit. There was already some wind and waves on the lake but the wind was in the right direction (westerly). We started paddling on Lago Inferior at 8:30 and made the 4 km to the end in 45 min. The waves were almost too big but we managed. After we arrived the wind picked up even more. We then continued hiking and didn't even try packrafting Lago Puelo since we were pretty sure that the wind would be prohibitive.
The officer at the Argentinian border control didn't seem too happy when we told him we had left Chile the day before and camped somewhere in between. But I think that was mainly because he suspected that we had illegally camped on the Argentinian side (at least I believe it's prohibited to camp here, but I'm not sure). We explained that we had camped on the Chilean side and that seemed to be fine. However, he was not too happy that we didn't have exit stamps in our passports. The chilean Carabineros had only put the exit stamp on a printed piece of paper exit form and not inside the passport, which we had thought was weird at the time, too. But they had told us that you don't get an exit stamp in the passport here. Well, after some eye rolling, the officer said "ah, no importa" and gave us our entry stamps. He even shared a tasty tortilla with us. :-)
From there we continued hiking without any issues. The trail is easy and well maintained, just like before. We forded Río Azul here [-42.08661, -71.62103] without issues, the water level was at or just above our knees (we're both around 170 cm tall). If there was rain before, the fording could become a bit of an issue. The views towards the south here are super beautiful! We hiked to the Visitor center of the National Park where the bus departs every full hour ([-42.08902, -71.61789]).