Travel

We left Chilóe island on the day the weather went south… our voyage also took a detour and we are now headed into Argentina via Osorno to the town of Bariloche, a ski resort town situated inside the National Park Nahual Huapi on the western shore of the 180 km long lake that bears the same name as the park.

Chilóe is a large island south of the small city of Puerto Montt, again settled predominantly by germans. We arrived to the island Monday after passing through Pto. Montt, and spent the afternoon walking around the town of Ancud, which was deliciously interesting. We spent a little time watching some crab-fishermen, who came back with boatloads full of crabs….more than I’ve seen since Singapore or Bangkok.

Chilóe is a large island south of the small city of Puerto Montt, again settled predominantly by germans. We arrived to the island Monday after passing through Pto. Montt, and spent the afternoon walking around the town of Ancud, which was deliciously interesting. We spent a little time watching some crab-fishermen, who came back with boatloads full of crabs….more than I’ve seen since Singapore or Bangkok.

Puerto Varas was an interesting little town on the shores of Lake LLanquihue, with a couple of volcanoes in view around the other shores. It was a quite little German influenced town, and we spent Saturday and Sunday there, walking around the lake and the town just seeing the sights.

Once again, quoting from Paul’s mass email:

After a few days in Santiago with Tom we left on a night bus 11 hours to the famous Pucón in the Lake District of Chile. It is a very popular destination because its situated on the black sand banks of an excellent huge lake with the towering Volcán Villarrica not far away. It is a resort town with huge mansion-like hotels and a nice casino that somehow came away with $10,000 (thats chilean pesos) of mine at 3:30 in the morning at the blackjack table, but its also a destination for adventure sports. We missed the summer rush by a few months and the town was nearly dead.

We left for Santiago, 6 hours away on Sunday and arrived and got picked up by tom in the Government van with diplomatic plates. It was pretty cool to say the least. We hung out that night and then monday morning, Tom had rented a car, so we hopped in along with his girlfriend Angelica and headed on a road trip… to none other than La Serena. We went straight back where we had just left. But the trip was cool and we got to go up into the Valle de Elqui where they make Pisco, a local liquor, and tour the distillery.

We are lodged up in La Serena at a private little house in a nice neighborhood and a little old chilean lady named Gladyis is running it. She is quite cool and helpful and there are two Irish chicks, Catherine and Louise, staying at the house. At 8 pm we went to the Elque valley about 70 km away where there are wolrd renowned observatories for watching the sky. The southern sky is quite clear here and this area of Chile is supposedly the best place in the southern hemisphere to see the stars.

After the Salar de Uyuni… we pretty much traveled straight for 2 days to La Serena, Chile. We first had to travel in an old bumpy and dusty land cruiser back to the Chilean Border. We stopped over night in the middle of nowhere bolivia arriving in darkness around 10 pm, they fixed me and Paul a little soup and potatoes, and of course a maté de coca.