Villa Traful

Lago Traful in Neuquén Province is 65 kilometres long, barely three kilometres wide, and ringed by peaks that rise directly from the waterline without the gentling transition of a valley floor — sitting in a kayak in its centre, with the vertical walls on either side, feels closer to being inside a fjord than on an Andean lake. Villa Traful itself has 400 permanent residents, a handful of hostels, a fly-fishing guide or two, and the kind of collective silence that small villages in large landscapes acquire over time. The lake is 300 metres deep in the middle.

Lago Traful is part of the Nahuel Huapi National Park system and sits at 800 metres altitude in a glacially carved valley of the Andean foothills, surrounded by araucaria and coihue forests. In 1978, a section of the lake's western bank collapsed into the water, leaving the tops of a submerged forest of coihue trees visible 30 metres beneath the surface — a diving site now known as the Bosque Sumergido (Submerged Forest) that attracts technical divers from across South America. The lake is fed by glacier meltwater and reaches temperatures cold enough to require a wetsuit year-round, but its transparency — horizontal visibility exceeding 15 metres — makes underwater photography possible in conditions rarely found at this altitude. Condors nest in the cliff faces above the lake and are visible on most morning kayak trips.