Sunday we had the most exciting opportunity to look at a property in Llifen Valley (pronounce yee-fen)
which is a pristine secluded valley in the Andes overlooking Lago Ranco which is about 2 hours north of Puerto Octay.



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It was a roundabout way that we got invited by Adrian & Pat Dufflocq to come for lunch and view the property they had for sale. Pat's brother is an Opus Dei priest in Santiago. I guess he knows Richard, our host, and they were talking about the property for sale and Adrian got our email. We had to cancel our trip 2x because of the weather but it was worth the wait because the view is spectacular on a clear day.
Adrian & Pat bought this property in the 1960's. He ran a fly fishing lodge here for many years. He added to his property in the 1980's by purchasing the piece we looked at on Lake Maihue which if you look at the map it is the smaller lake to the east of Llifen. It has only a couple of houses on it and is largely inaccessible except by boat.
First, i've included some pictures of their home/lodge where we had a delightful lunch over some most interesting conversation.

Prounced coo-meel-a-way It is named for the river which flows through their property The name is mapuche indian for red river so named because in the spring it is covered in red blossoms from the notro tree

We had a delightful lunch on the patio under the trees

After lunch, we drove about a mile down the dirt road to the shores of Lago Maihue (my-way) and caught this boat to go over to the property.

The boat on the left is our ferry. The boat on the right is owned by a farmer who owns a house on the lake. He takes his cows and vehicles over on this.

Just a short trip 10 minute ride to the property

The small beach we landed on had lots of small pebbles that were pumice - porous and lightweight These rained down on the lake at the last eruption of Puyehue about a year half ago

This is the left end of the property which encompasses 32 acres up to the ridge line

This is the right side of the property

On the far right side are a few houses on the edge of the river and behind them is a waterfall which comes from the creek on the property line

Looking back at the landing

This is the headwater of the river that flows from Lago  Maihue to Lago Ranco There are reeds and lots of water fowl- we saw blacknecked swans and coot

The upper part of the property is pretty steep and rocky

It has 3 pastures which are pretty steep

But it does have some level areas

looking back at the boat landing

the creek runs very well during the driest part of the year though this area does get over 100 inches of rain per year!

A level area near the creek has a nice rock for viewing below

Samuel enjoying the view towards the boat landing and the head of the river

Looking down the river west

To the east and the Andes and Argentina

How would you like to wake up to this view every morning?

The sad end to this story is they are asking $650,000. for the 32 acres and they won't subdivide. At $19k per acre, we thought it was a little pricey. Other drawbacks- no road access- electricity is near but you'd have to run it in - you'd have to buy a barge to get your house building equipment and car to the property- we did get cell service but I don't know how the internet would be - probably slow