🇦🇷 Argentina · Patagonia
Lago Puelo National Park protects one of the friendliest and brightest corners of Andean Patagonia: a turquoise lake of glacial origin, framed by mountains and surrounded by a humid Valdivian-type forest that comes in from Chile, taking advantage of the low height of the range at this latitude. At just over 27,000 hectares, it's one of the smallest national parks in the country, but also one of the most visited in the Comarca Andina, barely 15 km from El Bolsón.
Its great peculiarity is the climate and the vegetation: at around 200 metres above sea level, at the lowest point of the range in Argentina, humid Pacific air slips in through the Río Puelo valley and lets species grow that you won't see in other Patagonian parks, such as avellano, ulmo, lingue and tique. That cold rainforest lives alongside cypresses, coihues and arrayanes, giving the park an intense green and a milder microclimate.
For the traveler, Lago Puelo means pebble beaches, clear water to swim in during summer, boat trips towards the southern end of the lake and the border with Chile, trekking routes of varying difficulty and a relaxed, family atmosphere. It's the natural complement to El Bolsón and the gateway to a circuit of nature, berries and mountain life in the heart of the Comarca Andina.
The region was inhabited by Mapuche-Tehuelche peoples and worked as a natural crossing towards the Pacific through the low point of the range. In 1937, Decree 105.433 of President Agustín P. Justo brought the area in as the 'Puelo annex' of the Los Alerces reserve, and in October 1971 Law 19.292 turned it into the independent Lago Puelo National Park, to protect its singular Valdivian forest. The full version is on the history page.
Read the full history ↓The heart of Atlantic and Andean Patagonia: Tehuelche and Mapuche land, setting of the only large Welsh colony in the Americas, cradle of Argentine oil at Comodoro Rivadavia, home to the whales of Península Valdés and to the thousand-year-old forest of Los Alerces.
Read the history of Chubut →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
The water of this turquoise lake rises in Argentina, crosses the whole Andes range and ends its journey in the Pacific Ocean, on the far side of Chile. That geographical detail, hardly an intuitive one, is the key to everything else: why trees of the Chilean Valdivian rainforest grow here — ulmos, avellanos, tiques — metres away from Patagonian cypresses, why the water is so mild, and why this corner was, for centuries, one of the most contested gateways into Patagonia.
Long before it existed as a national park, the Lago Puelo valley was a natural corridor between the two sides of the Andes. At this latitude, around the 42nd parallel, the range reaches its lowest point on Argentine soil, which for millennia allowed people, animals and seeds to move between what are today Argentina and Chile. The lake's name preserves that geographical memory: Puelo is an adaptation of the Mapudungun puelco, made up of puel ('east') and co ('water'), that is, 'water of the east' — because, although the lake drains towards the Pacific, it lies east of the high Andean summits.
The Indigenous peoples of the region, Tehuelche and later with a strong Mapuche presence, travelled these valleys taking advantage of the abundance of water, forest and resources, on a cultural frontier that separated — and at the same time connected — the peoples of what is now southern Chile with those of Argentine Patagonia beyond the Andes. The first European to reach the area is said to have been the Spanish conquistador Juan Fernández, in 1621, almost two and a half centuries before the region began to be settled in any lasting way.
The low height of the pass also explains the ecological rarity of the place: humid Pacific air slips in along the river valley and creates a microclimate that let a Valdivian forest take hold, a cold-rainforest formation typical of the Chilean coast, with species that thrive nowhere else in Argentine Patagonia.
Before it was a park, this valley was contested territory. In the late 19th century, the border between Argentina and Chile in the Patagonian Andes had still not been drawn precisely, and the Lago Puelo valley, with its natural connection to the Pacific through the river of the same name, was a sensitive area. Pedro 'Motoco' Cárdenas, a criollo settler who came from Río Bueno (Chile), was one of the first white settlers to establish himself in what he christened 'Valle Nuevo'. In 1885, the governor of Chubut, Colonel Luis Jorge Fontana, organized the expedition of the '29 Rifleros de Chubut', made up mostly of Welsh volunteer settlers, which explored and surveyed these Patagonian territories, until then little known to the Argentine state.
The sovereignty dispute was only settled in 1902, when British arbitration defined the boundary line in this part of the Andes. As part of that process, the Welsh settlers of the Valle 16 de Octubre (today Trevelin), consulted in the famous plebiscite of 30 April 1902, came out for Argentine sovereignty, an episode etched into the founding memory of the whole Chubut cordillera. In 1928, a teacher named Remigio Nogués, sent by the Chubut government, pushed for the organization of a municipality covering the valleys of Lago Puelo, Monte Radal, Las Golondrinas, El Hoyo de Epuyén, El Turbio and Lago Esperanza, laying the foundations of modern local administration.
The protection of the Lago Puelo area as a natural reserve belongs to the great founding wave of the Argentine national park system. On 11 May 1937, Decree 105.433 of President Agustín P. Justo declared four territories in Patagonia national reserves destined to become national parks; among them, the Los Alerces reserve, in what was then the National Territory of Chubut, included an 'annex' some 115 km to the north: the Lago Puelo valley. For more than three decades, this corner was administered that way, as the 'Puelo Annex' of Los Alerces National Park.
Over time, the particularities of the place — its unique Valdivian forest, its mild microclimate and the growing flow of visitors from El Bolsón and the Comarca Andina — justified treating it as a conservation unit in its own right. On 11 October 1971, Law 19.292 separated the Puelo Annex and turned it into the independent Lago Puelo National Park, with the express aim of protecting its singular cold-rainforest vegetation, its waters and its wildlife.
At just over 27,000 hectares, it ended up as one of the smallest national parks in the country, though one of the most visited in the region thanks to its closeness to El Bolsón, its swimmable beaches and its scenic beauty. It's run by the National Parks Administration, which regulates public use, the strict reserve zones and tourism activities.
The real conservation value of Lago Puelo National Park lies in its flora. Taking advantage of the low point of the range and the humidity that comes off the Pacific, a humid Valdivian-type forest develops here, a formation characteristic of southern Chile that in Argentina appears only in a few very specific pockets. Species such as avellano, ulmo, tique (or Patagonian palo santo), lingue and Magellan's beech live alongside Andean cypresses, arrayanes and radales.
That plant wealth supports varied wildlife, with huemul deer in remote sectors, pudús, foxes, forest birds and a remarkable diversity of plants and fungi. That's why the park keeps strict reserve zones, such as the Brazo Sur area, where access is regulated to preserve the most representative specimens of this cold rainforest.
The lake, glacial in origin and an intense turquoise, fed by Andean rivers and streams, completes a landscape that combines mountain, water and lush forest. The coming together of a climate milder than the rest of Patagonia and vegetation almost tropical in its density makes Lago Puelo a singular place, where nature shows a green, luminous face of the southern Andes.
The recent history of Lago Puelo is closely tied to the growth of El Bolsón and the Comarca Andina del Paralelo 42, that region of fertile valleys split between southern Río Negro and northern Chubut. From the mid-20th century, El Bolsón drew settlers, berry growers and, later, waves of migrants looking for an alternative life in contact with nature, giving the town its characteristic artisan, agroecological and bohemian spirit.
Lago Puelo, only 15 km away, became the natural bathing spot and the green lung of the Comarca: its pebble beaches and mild water made the park one of the busiest summer destinations in Andean Patagonia. The El Bolsón fair, the craft breweries, the raspberry and cherry farms and the hiking and waterfall circuits (such as the Cajón del Azul) wove a tourism fabric in which the park is a central piece.
In recent decades, the region has also faced serious challenges: forest fires, made worse by droughts and climate change, have hit stretches of woodland inside and around the park, a reminder of how fragile these environments are. Management today combines the promotion of responsible nature tourism with fire prevention, protection of the Valdivian forest and coordination with the local and Mapuche-Tehuelche communities who live in the Comarca. Lago Puelo remains, then, a delicate balance between the flow of visitors and the conservation of a landscape that can't be replicated.