Puyuhuapi lies at the head of a long, narrow fjord on the Carretera Austral, in a part of Chilean Patagonia where the mountains drop straight into the sea and the rain seems to follow you from one valley to the next. The village is small, with a few hundred people, and it was founded in 1935 by a handful of settlers from Central Europe who arrived in a wild, roadless land and built a life around a sawmill, a pier and later a carpet workshop that still weaves rugs. The wooden houses with steep roofs, the pier on the water and the boats at anchor give the place a quiet, slightly northern look.
Riding the Carretera Austral here is one of the great pleasures of the continent, though it asks for patience. The surface is mostly gravel in this section, with sections of paving that come and go, and the corners are frequent, with tight bends under dripping rainforest and long climbs over spurs of the Andes. Rain is a way of life: it falls most days of the year, and the mud and wet gravel demand a gentle hand. Summer, from December to March, is the best period, with longer days and a fair chance of a dry spell. In winter, snow and ice can close the higher passes, and daylight is short.
South of the village, the road rises into Queulat National Park, a land of temperate rainforest, waterfalls and glaciers. The hanging glacier that spills from the high ridge is the star, a blue-white tongue of ice that clings to the rock above a lake, and a short walk from the road brings you close. The steep, winding climb of the Cuesta Queulat is the most memorable stretch of the whole region, with hairpins that need care and a view that deserves a stop. Fuel is limited along this road, so fill the tank when you can, since the next reliable pumps are in larger towns far away.
Warm springs on the fjord shore are an old attraction, and many travellers spend an evening in them after a long day on gravel. Take a moment to walk to the end of the pier, where the water is dark and still and the forest comes down to the shoreline in a wall of green. The air smells of wet bark and salt, and the mountains vanish into cloud, only to reappear at dawn. It is a quiet end to a hard day.