Puyuhuapi

Puyuhuapi was founded in 1935 by a small group of young Sudeten Germans from the town of Rossbach, now Hranice in the Czech Republic and then part of Czechoslovakia. Otto Uebel, Karl Bächler, Walter Hopperdietzel and Ernesto Ludwig left Europe out of a spirit of adventure and fear of war, and in Chile they met the German explorer Augusto Grosse, who had been engaged by the Chilean government to encourage German immigration and helped them settle at the head of the fjord. Each took on a role: Uebel ran the farm, Ludwig the sawmill and the building of boats and houses, and Bächler supply and trade.

The founders hoped to bring many more families, but the Second World War ended those plans. After the war their relatives were forced out of Rossbach and reached Puyuhuapi in 1947. From the start the settlement depended on workers from the Chiloé archipelago, many of Mapuche descent, who came as seasonal labourers and then settled with their families; their skills as carpenters and boat builders were essential, and their families gave rise to a population of mixed descent.

In 1945 Walter Hopperdietzel, a textile engineer, set up a factory making cloth and carpets, which employed women from the Chilote families and became the village's economic mainstay and symbol for much of the 20th century; it closed in 2018. The arrival of the Carretera Austral connected the village by road, and tourism, drawn by the fjord, the hot springs and Queulat National Park, has grown since.

The village is a rare meeting of two traditions. Its Central European houses, with steep roofs and shingle cladding, its carefully kept flower gardens and its German recipes come from the founders; the carpentry, boat-building and the seasonal rhythms of fishing and farming come from Chiloé. Local people describe their identity as a blend of the two, visible in the architecture, the food and the village's festivities.

Weaving is part of that identity. For decades the carpet factory employed local women and kept alive weaving techniques brought by the German settlers, and hand-made jerseys and other woven goods remain the village's best-known crafts.

The name itself is uncertain. One explanation derives it from Mapudungun words for a kind of flower and for island; another reads it as "nest" or "place of puyes", the puye being a small fish no more than 5 cm long. The village has become a familiar stop for travellers on the Carretera Austral and has appeared on television, including Top Gear's Patagonia special in 2014.

Puyuhuapi is a very small place: it had 535 people at the 2002 census and had grown to about 830 by 2007. It belongs to the commune of Cisnes and has its own airstrip, jetty, marina and local radio station.

The economy has long rested on small-scale fishing, carpentry and textiles, and now increasingly on tourism, with guesthouses, cabins, restaurants and craft sales that serve visitors all year, though summer is by far the busiest season. Regional sustainable-tourism programmes have backed the village's development.

Life follows the weather and the road. Rain keeps everything green and falls heavily in winter, buses link the village with Chaitén and Coyhaique, and for anything beyond basic services residents travel to the larger towns; Entel and Movistar provide 5G mobile coverage.

Many families descend from the two founding groups, the Sudeten Germans and the Chilotes, and many still live in the shingled wooden houses with gardens that line the few streets by the shore. Fishing boats are pulled up on the pebble beach in front of the village, and in summer the waterfront fills with cyclists, drivers and backpackers stopping on their way along the road.

Puyuhuapi's cooking is a fusion of German recipes and the seafood of the fjord. Cakes and baked goods from the settlers' tradition sit beside the fish and shellfish landed by local boats. Small-scale fishing has long been one of the village's livelihoods, alongside carpentry and weaving.

Like the rest of Aysén, the village shares in Patagonian ranch food. Lamb roasted on an iron cross beside an open fire, cordero al palo, is the dish of celebrations, and mate, the bitter herbal infusion drunk from a shared gourd through a metal straw, is common. Merluza austral, the southern hake, and mussels come from the coast, and trout and salmon from the rivers and lakes.

Calafate, the dark blue berry of a thorny Patagonian shrub, is made into jams and sweets; legend says that whoever eats it will return to Patagonia. Eating out means a few family-run cafés and restaurants in the village, where cakes and seafood are the local specialities.