Puerto Varas (February 19th)

Friday, February 19th 2016

We opened the door of our tent to find a rooster no more than two feet away and crowing repeatedly! Luckily we were already awake trying to get a head start on breakfast. We figured it would be really busy since there were so many tents and all of the beds in the house were full. Breakfast is set up at a table in the kitchen and only has room for about 8 people. We were surprised to find that no one else was eating when we got inside! We each ate 4 of the typical Chilean bread rolls with honey and cherry jam (this time free of rocks!) that we have come to love so much! 

We let our tent dry out from dew while we had breakfast. After we were all packed up, we walked back down the hill to the bus station to catch one of the frequent buses to Puerto Varas. Puerto Varas is the most touristy town in the region and is along the way to our next destination, the Cochamo Valley. It is much more scenic than Puerto Montt with its location on the shore of Lago Llanquihue (Yan-Key-Way) with views of two volcanoes.

We accidentally stayed on the bus too long, because we kept expecting it to pull off on the same street that buses going to Puerto Montt pick up on, but it never did. We ended up getting off a few kilometers down the shore of the lake and had to walk back. It was a lovely walk though. Once we arrived back into town we began looking for a hostel. We had difficulty finding the first place since it was off the edge of the map in our Lonely Planet book. It ended up being full, and so was the next place we tried. We were getting tired and frustrated, but luckily found a nice blackberry bush where we stopped and took refreshment. After about an hour of walking around, we found a hostel that had space for us to camp in the backyard. The hostel is called Compass Del Sur and is a big old wooden house located on a hill above town. 

While we were getting situated we got to talking to an American girl that was in the kitchen cooking when we arrived. Her name is Nancy Rose, and she is on a one year trip in South America, all expenses piad by fellowship money that she was granted after graduating from Harvard! She told us about some food trucks down by the lake and we gleefully went on our way to inspect. It was about time we had a good meal! We were in heaven and overwhelmed with the options! We ended up sharing a veggie burrito from a Mexican food truck and a veggie burger and vegan blueberry banana ice cream from a vegan health food truck! We also had two pieces of different styles of kuchen (German style cake). There were probably 15 food trucks in total, and we decided we had better come back for dinner!

We spent the afternoon in the hostel talking more with Nancy Rose, and another guy who joined us where we were seated outside, Johnnie Mac. He was an older guy from Boston, who was a musician and a carpenter. He´d just finished a 6 week job at a Chilean summer camp for rich kids. It was impossible to have a normal conversation with him, or to even get a word in, he completely monopolized the conversation. (He has a website, you can look him up if you want to!) He was interesting and played some songs for us, and was definitely a talented musician, but after awhile it being all about him got annoying. After several hours we managed to escape with Nancy Rose to return to the food trucks, where we enjoyed french fries and falafel burgers.

We felt as if we had wasted the day talking to Johnnie Mac, as we had not been able to focus our attention on making further travel plans. With the abundance of wonderful foods available in town, the urge to be Señor Turista for one more day was strong, but we decided that we would move on to Cochamo the next day, since it looked like a good weather window was opening up for us. We made a rough plan before bed with the help of a map of Cochamo that Nancy Rose gave us. (She had already went.) Cochamo is considered the Yosemite of Chile with numerous granite domes and abundant rock climbing. We are excited to get back out on the trail! Our plan is to through hike into Argentina, coming out near the town of Bariloche.

Tents crammed in the back yard at Casa Perla

A map of the area around Puerto Montt and Puerto Varas. It also shows the Cochamo area and the route into Argentina that will take 5 to 6 days.

We are back in the land of hydrangeas. This was a very pretty colored one!

Puerto Varas

Blackberry refreshment

Lots of nice flowers all around town.

Lago Llanquihue with views of Osorno and Calbuco Volcanoes.

Maqui Bliss Burger from the Bless Yuz food truck. In Chilean Spanish Yuz is pronounced like juice is in English, so the name is a play on words, as they make lots of fresh juices.

More nice flowers and an assortment of just a few of the many food trucks.

Blueberry kuchen.

Nice map of the area that details a route we may take when we return to Chile.

Another nice poster on the wall at our hostel, shows all of the lakes and volcanoes in the area, starting with Pucon in the North/left side of the photo.