The similarities are eerie. A ferry ride from Puerto Montt to Puerto Natales mimics the Inside Passage trip from Bellingham to southeast Alaska. Mount Osorno looks like Mount St. Helens before the 1980s eruption. The fjords could be in British Columbia and the big lakes copy some in the Cascades. It is summer there when winter here.
Chile is a proud, melting-pot nation of fascinating history and intriguing Spanish culture.
And compared to the occasional shopping mall crowding of places like the Cascades' Alpine Lakes Wilderness, it is easy to have a place to yourself. The locals thought he was crazy. Then Stede went to Argentina and hired on for free at a large hacienda in return for being taught everything the local gauchos knew about horses. He came away knowing how to run horse trips into rugged mountains. He built an attractive base camp at the foot of the valley on a salt water fjord called Reloncavi and dubbed it Campo Aventura.