Puerto Varas, Chile

December 20 - 22

The flight from Puerto Natales to Puerto Varas was exciting.  The winds were howling at the Puerto Natales airport.  We were very convinced that the flight would be cancelled as the plane was 45 minutes late and were surprised to see the plane touch down from Punta Arenas.  Even getting on the flight was rough.  I mean the winds were really really strong.  Inspite of this (and to our surprise), the take off and the flight was really smooth.  Maybe the pilots deal with this everyday.
Once in Puerto Montt, Nicole and I bought our tickets to the island of Chiloe and to the bus from Chiloe to Santiago. Then, we took a local bus to Puerto Varas, the more picturesque neighbour of Puerto Montt.  By this time I was ready for the usual.  Throughout our travels we had found that we would read about a place and get excited, but then getting there we'd find over/unplanned development; which would completely destroy the image in our head.  Fortunately, Puerto Varas, even with its development was a decent town (a huge lake next to the city helps a lot).

We arrived without any reservation. We walked to 2 hostels and they were too pricey, and/or did not have availability.  The owner of the second hostel pointed out another hostel.  we found the place but, initially, there was no one who answered the door and we kept walking up and down the premises to see if there was another entrance.  There had been 2 teenagers in a car parked next to the house, but they just looked at us and didn't say anything for 5 minutes.  Only after we hung around for a while, did one of them step out of the car and ask us if we were looking to get into the house.  We told him that we wanted a room for the evening.  He turned out to be the son of the lady who ran the place.  We were wearing two large backpacks each, tired like hell and had the backpacker look, but I guess the teenager brain works differently. Anyway, we really liked the room (probably the best we had in all of South America).  We cleaned up a bit and went out for dinner at a local restaurant.

The next day, we went around to the local information desk to inquire what was around.  The lady told us about the local bus we could take to the base of the volcano Osorno.  We could not see Osorno at the time.  It was supposed to be visible across the lake in Puerto Varas.  Nicole and I walked around the streets of Puerto Varas, got a couple sandwiches to go and went to the local bus station to catch the bus to this beautiful park at the volcano base called Saltos del Petrohue.  Before we started, I saw some people eating from a local stall. Since we love street food so much, we grabbed this fried bread from the stall.  The fried bread was being eaten with a garlic aoli sauce.  The combination reminded me of eating puri with garlic coconut chutney in India......yummy.

The bus ride took us about an hour, when we drove along the lakeshore and then into some really pretty green territory.  Again, the landscape and the rainy environment and the clouds created beautiful vistas.
After buying tickets and making our way through the touristy shops trying to sell Peruvian/Andino goods, we came to the beautiful outlook at the Petrohue falls.  The falls themselves are very small, but the turquoise/blue color of the water and the volume of this glacial water over black volcanic rock created an awesome scenery.  Nicole and I went into this camera crazy mode.  We were trying so hard to capture what we were seeing, but the settings were just not right and I hope we have some pictures to give a sense of this place.  Anyway, after spending sometime at the falls, we walked around the park.  The feeling during this walk was weird.  We were still at a colder latitude (Puerto Varas is halfway along the length of Chile), but the rich volcanic soil had given rise to this incredible vegetation and it felt like a rainforest.

We waited impatiently for quite a while before we could board the bus back to Puerto Varas.  On the way back, we witnessed a fire that had engulfed a house in a small community.  Our driver stopped and a few men from our bus actually got off at the stop, to help out.  Our driver actually made a call to the popular radio station to report the fire.  It was quite incredible (we were inside the bus, seeing him talk outside the vehicle and hearing him through the radio).  The radio host actually told that he would make a call out to the authorities.

10 minutes later,  as we were driving back, we saw a firetruck pass us by.  It probably takes a while for word to get out, and in these cases, locals are very helpful to one another here.

Once back in Puerto Varas, the clouds had cleared and we had a view of the Osorno volcano across the lake. More Kodak moments.

We rested for a bit in our hostel and took a cab to a restaurant out of town to a popular local joint. We thoroughly enjoyed the local fare there and were infact a little stuffed at the end of the night.