How to Get to the Chilean Lake Region, Arrivals and Transfers

The way to approach getting to the Chilean Lake Region is to decide if you are going to visit the northern access point, or the southern access point. If you arrive to the northern point, you can either stay around that area, or navigate through the Lake Region to end at the southern point.

Alternatively, you can arrive to the southern access point and stay around there or navigate north and end at the northern point.

You can, also, decide to arrive somewhere in the middle, too, and if this is the case, we will arrange that. However, the typical routes in are from the north, or the south.

From San Martin de Los Andes or Bariloche. The route over the Andes takes you through a spectacular Araucaria trees, past lakes and forest as well as Volcanoes. San Martin is “just over the border” from Pucon, but this still means a driving distance of around 200km, but it takes about 5hrs or so to drive the route considering the border crossings. Bariloche is further south from San Martin and will add on another 3hrs or so to the drive.

There is also a bus from Argentina, however, we do not handle that transfer.

The only realistic way to get to Puerto Varas, which is located 1,008km south of Santiago, is to fly here from Santiago, which will take around 2hrs, followed by a transfer to Puerto Varas by bus or your own rent a car, either way the transfer will take about 20min.

Alternatively, if you are coming up from Punta Arenas (maybe you have been to Torres del Paine, or coming off a cruise ship), you can fly in from there. The flight time is about 1.5hrs, followed by the transfer by bus or rent a car to Puerto Varas.

From Puerto Varas we will arrange for your stay to be around this area, or we will arrange for you to self-drive up, through the lakes and end at Pucon (eventually flying to Santiago from Temuco), unless you self-drive all the way to Santiago.