Puerto Puyuhuapi Travel Guide

Land of pioneers, of kind and enterprising people, Puyuhuapi is a flashy port village that impresses for its big wooden houses, its exquisite gardens, its emblematic rug factory and its omnipresent natural landscapes, as dazzling as the proper history of this picturesque community that stands in the far end of a canal.

It is a history that began to be written after the German defeat in World War I (1914-1919), when the ensuing economic crisis forced many men and women to migrate to these lands in search of new horizons and looking for a better future.  
 

Within this panorama, the faraway America appeared to be a paradise of riches and opportunities, an unknown and luring land of beautiful settings and impenetrable geographies.

For this reason, Robert Uebel, a German entrepreneur, impelled a migration plan to the Puyuhuapi Canal, in the Chilean Patagonia, a sector that is nowadays part of the Province of Aysen (XI Aysen Region).
 

The abundance of life in the region is so significant that even the name of the town is related to the Patagonian fauna, since Puyuhuapi means "place of puyes" a fish species abundant in the rivers and canals. This is but a sample of the variety of species that have their realm in the nearby Queulat National Park, a masterpiece of nature with ice and snow deposits and lagoons.

Traveller's itineraries should not ignore the healing warmth of the Thermal Baths of Puyuhuapi, one of the main medicinal baths in the country; its pools and Jacuzzis filled with the hot waters of the Melimeyu Volcano are capable of alleviating rheumatism, amongst other diseases, with their 85º Celsius-temperature and its strong mineralization.

Nowadays Puyuhuapi has adequate tourist services, including welcoming lodges in traditional houses, the same that will allow you to fully enjoy this land of colonisers and natives, of Germans and Huilliches who built their future in a distant corner of Chile, in an unknown and luring land.