76 TRAVEL+LEISURE | JUNE 2020
ONE MORNING IN March, Charlie and I flew from
Santiago to the village of Balmaceda, which has
a small airport in the middle of a dusty grass
steppe studded with squat, wind-harassed trees.
After picking up our car, we headed north.
Around Coyhaique, the regional capital, the
road is smooth blacktop and the driving easy.
As we crested a mountain pass, the land became
lush and exuberant: banks of fuchsia, whose
elaborately flared flowers looked like tiny pink
dresses clinging to the branches; giant leaves of
nalca, also known as Chilean rhubarb, shading
the roadsides like umbrellas. Aysén has many
microclimates, and we had crossed into the
temperate rain forest of Queulat National Park.
As beautiful as the park was, we couldn’t
stop to admire it. A boat was waiting at a pier
on the Puyuhuapi fjord to take us to Puyuhuapi
Lodge & Spa, a hotel on the far shore that
is accessible only by water. The property is
owned by Christine Kossmann Perl, whose
father fled communist East Germany in
1962 and came to Chile, where he started a
shipbuilding business in Valdivia, just north
of the Lake District. Every summer the family
would sail their yacht down to Aysén. They
came to Puyuhuapi for the first time in 1986,to visit a pocket of natural hot springs warmed
by a trio of small volcanoes. The Kossmanns
loved it so much that they eventually bought
the land on which the springs sit and built a set
of cabins. Over the past 30 years, the cabins
have evolved into an elaborate complex of
wooden chalets arranged around a bay, and it’s
one of the best hotels in southern Chile.
The lodge has the feeling of a grown-up
summer camp—complete with a blackboard
that lists the day’s activities. The family yacht
still sits at anchor out front. There’s a natural
aesthetic about the place, from the elegant
arrangements of moss, stone, and fern to
the waist-high wooden penguin sculptures
dotted around the sofas in the lounge.
Charlie and I had been on the road for four
bone-shaking hours, and our bodies needed
soothing. So we headed to the hot springs a
short walk up a forest path. As we sat in one of
the steaming pools, Charlie scanned the fjordA llama-like mammal called a guanaco takes a breather
in Patagonia National Park.The lounge at Entre Hielos Lodge, a boutique hotel
in the hills surrounding the town of Tortel.TAL0620_F_AysenChile.indd 76 FINAL 4/21/20 8:18 PM