Ooh, this week’s theme might open up a can of worms! Finally, you all get to see just how weird I am! (I understand some of you realize this already).
Things I Collect…
Face Masks and Pottery Heads. This collection started when my best friend and maid of honor gave me a pottery head/cookie jar of a guy who looked like he might have been an extra in the original Mad Max movie. That led to me buying a second head by a different potter, which led to my sister-in-law buying me a funky face mask of a guy with huge red lips and sunglasses smoking a cigarette, which led to me buying a companion face mask from the same artist of a woman in hair curlers and an earring that says, “You’ll have to marry me first.” Which led to at least half-a-dozen face masks since then. I only have room for one or two more face masks above my desk, so I’m getting pickier.
Weird Cat Statues. Okay, I have three floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, and while I have a lot of books, they would look boring (to me) if they only had books on them. So I started collecting weird cat statues. I must have at least twenty of these statues in various places–on my roll-top desk, on my bookshelves, on top of my grandmother’s china cabinet–but I’ve heard about other folks’ animal collections, elephants and such, and I don’t think I’m too out to lunch with this one.
Leather-Bound Classics. For years I collected leather-bound books, and I have about 110 of them on my bookshelves (but have only read about 50; gotta get moving on that again) along with contemporary hardcovers and trade paperbacks. I don’t keep many mass market paperbacks, just my absolute favorites. The books were the reason for the bookshelves, which then begged to be filled with cats and pottery heads and other stuff, such as…
Unique Bookends. I have at least a dozen quirky bookend sets, and not all of them get to sit on the same shelf as their pair. I need maybe one more set of bookends so I can get rid of the last tin set.
Wooden Body Parts. Yes, I know it sounds odd, but it’s not, really. I found this life-sized wooden foot in a store in Mexico, and it was a nice change from wooden ducks, etc., so I bought it. Then we went to Cuba, and I found a Cuban clenched fist. That seemed to go along. I have a couple of mom and daughter wooden heads my parents picked up in a foreign country ages ago. I’m open to more wooden body parts, so if you have some, send them along! *Note, I have no need to collect skulls. I will leave that to some of my relatives.
If you think my adult collections are a bit off the wall, as a child I collected:
Pamphlets. Every time we went to a motel/hotel (not often), I would collect the tourism pamphlets. Then somehow I discovered that I could send away to companies for information on their products, and thus collect more pamphlets! I sent away at least twenty letters to places like Firestone, using up all my dad’s business stamps, just so I could get these pamphlets. I had a dresser with pretty skinny drawers, like a tallboy. One drawer was filled with pamphlets. I have no defense for this collection other than we didn’t have an encyclopedia set, it was before the Internet, I craved information, I craved words, I craved reading, I craved learning, and I craved what I would later realize might be called research. I just loved words so much I needed all the words I could find. I no longer have this collection.
Bird Parts. Yes, I know this one is odd, and my mother put a stop to it as soon as she discovered the little wooden box in my closet with bird heads and claws that my cat left over after she finished eating a bird beneath my bed. They were petrifying nicely. This was around the time I wanted to be a pathologist, and the birds were already dead, it wasn’t like I was the cat, you know. So it made sense to me. But my mother feared collecting dead bird parts might lead to collecting, I don’t know what she thought. But I had to stop.
Teeth. Yikes, I can see you running away. But, you see, there was a time I wanted to become a dentist. So it made total sense to collect my brother’s baby teeth as they were falling out. I had a couple of own teeth and put them under plastic wrap in my scrapbooks.
Just go ahead, tell me something weird you collect or collected as a child. Show me up. I dare you.
Yi-yi, what an adventure! We set forth from Chepu Adventures EcoLodge to a completely mysterious B&B in the Ten Ten area of Castro, which is the major city on Chiloe Island. We were extremely lucky to find accommodation. Upon arriving at Castro, we took the very first opportunity to stop and gaze at the palafitos (houses on stilts) while the tide was in:
These were on our left as we drove into Castro with our horrible directions to the B&B. Our directions consisted of an address in “Ten Ten,” but we had no idea what “Ten Ten” was. Turned out it was an area on the outskirts of Castro, before you get to the palafitos.Palafitos on the right, later when the tide was out. There are restaurants on stilts in Castro, even a gym on stilts! The architectural style has existed in Castro and other Chiloean cities since the late 19th century.
We had decided that we weren’t going to book ahead for our two-night stay in Castro. Instead, we would stumble upon whatever we found once we were there. That was before we discovered we were traveling at the height of Chilean travel season (for Chileans). On the advice of our host at Chepu Adventures, we went ahead and found a B&B on Booking.com the night before leaving, and, let me tell you, the Interweb pickings were slim. When we arrived in Castro, the traffic was crazy, it was hot, and the little hotels along the main drag looked hot and sweaty and noisy. Our B&B sounded fantastic…if only we could find it.
We stopped at a gas station to ask directions. The guys were pretty sure the gas station attendant said to head back out of town and take “the second right,” but for reasons unknown to SILly and Moi, the guys took the first right, “just to see” if they could find the B&B that way, you know, not trusting that they heard “the second right.” Hey, I wasn’t driving. I had to leave things in the capable hands of our resident experts.
We drove a lot of dusty gravel road. Finally, when we began to wonder if our B&B existed, my dh, who was in charge that day, noticed a Castro police car on the side of the road. So we stopped, and he attempted to communicate in his lousy Spanish (have I mentioned we neglected to bring our handy little Latin American Spanish guide on our trip?).
My poor dh! He couldn’t understand the police officers’ Spanish well enough, and they couldn’t speak or understand English at all. So he got the bright idea to take my iPad to the police, so they could look at the address. They understood immediately where it was and attempted to communicate the information, but alas, alack, amiss, it was not to be understood. These police officers would not let a little language barrier stop them from helping us! First, they called the B&B to ask questions and let them know they had their guests. Really, they were looking for a stolen car, but I think we were more interesting. Because next thing you know, they volunteered to escort us to the B&B!
The coppers turned on the lights and drove very, very quickly toward our destination, which consisted of several twists and turns on the dusty gravel road. BILly (a “professional driver”) kept up rather well. FINALLY, we arrived at our destination, which was a one-bedroom plus loft guest house, I guess, on a larger property.
If you’ve been following my Chilean adventures, you might remember that my husband brought two gifts from Canada to give to folks who he felt went above-board. One he gave to our wine tour guide around Santiago. The next he gave to the officer who helped us, and the officer was very happy. 🙂 🙂
Too bad, so sad, we found our destination but our hosts had not finished cleaning it for our arrival. No problem, we went back into town for lunch. We parked down at the water and found a place called Nueve Galicia. It was excellent. If you’re in Castro, you have to eat here! We sat at the very back, which meant we had a view of the cooks:
“BILly and me” eyeballing the cooks.BILly had “Curanto,” a traditional southern Chile dish, which consisted of mussels and potato and dumpling-thingies and ham and pork and sausage and…you could go on!
After lunch, we visited the Church of San Francisco downtown, which is famous for being constructed entirely of wood on the interior (we would see another church like this the following day). Exterior:
The nice bright yellow begged us to enter!Pictures can’t do the interior of the Chiloe wooden churches justice. It was just breathtaking.
Finally, remembering our directions from the kind police officers, we returned to The Loft at our B&B, and discovered, to our delight, that it was practically brand new. DH and I took the bedroom, and BILly and SILly took the loft. We shared the fashionable bathroom. Everything about the place was funky and fashionable. The Loft came with a little fridge and sink and stove, and also with a wood-fired hot tub that had never been used before. It took quite a while to get going, but eventually those of us who wished were able to enjoy a soak.
Trying to get the hot tub going!Yes, I found it necessary to cackle loudly and pretend to be a witch preparing to stir her victims. Yours is not to ask why. Yours is to simply wonder…
This week’s theme is Scents that Conjure up Memories…
Fresh Pastry –> Paris. My then-boyfriend/now-husband and I backpacked through Europe during our university years. Okay, this was a long time ago, and I had never tasted croissants before! For years after visiting Paris, and even sometimes now (despite the proliferation of croissants in my part of Canada since), if I pass a bakery and catch the whiff of freshly baked pastries, I am transported back to memories of the left bank, Notre Dame Cathedral, the Eiffel Tower, and the Sewers of Paris (which was a very interesting tour, although no croissants were consumed during the informative boat trip).
Chainsaw Oil or Sawdust –> My Husband’s Early Forestry Days. My husband is now in the business end of the forest industry, but he began as a silviculture field forester plus he logged with my dad for a brief spell. Now, whenever he gets firewood or “prunes” (his term for huge tree haircuts) in our backyard and then comes in the house, when I hug him I breathe deeply of his work shirt. I admit it, I find the scent of chainsaw oil and/or sawdust romantic! (By the by, the hero in WHERE SHE BELONGS, Adam Wright, is a forester–shameless plug).
Mothballs –> Visiting Other Granny. My “Other Granny” was my mom’s mom, my maternal grandmother. She always lived in very small houses, and the closets smelled like mothballs. She has been gone a very long time, but I will forever associate the scent with her. And you know what? She’s not the sort who would mind it. 🙂
Scent of Fireplace Burning (well, firewood IN fireplace) –> Watching Movies on TV with my DH and Our Kids. I love the scent of firewood burning in an open fireplace! We are lucky enough to have a wonderful chimney in the middle of our house, in the family room, which is in the basement. My family loves movies, and we watched a lot of movies with our kids with a hearty fire crackling on the hearth. When your fireplace is in the middle of the house, as opposed to an exterior wall, a fire in the fireplace heats the whole place, giving it a super cozy feeling. The scent is “home” to me.
Do you have any scents that conjure up good memories?
Originally, we decided to visit Chiloe Island off the coast of Chile so we could visit the town of Castro and see the houses on stilts. That led to us discovering Puerto Varas (discussed in last post) and also a place called Chepu Adventures, where you can stay overnight and arrange to kayak at dawn amidst the dead trees and sunken forest of the Chepu River. Now, I am not athletic and have only kayaked a couple of other times in my life, but the story of the sunken forest had grabbed hold of me and wouldn’t let go.
In 1960, Chile suffered the most massive earthquake of the twentieth century. Magnitude 9.5, the strongest quake ever recorded. It hit the particular region we were traveling in hard, and the effect was devastating. Our host at Chepu Adventures described how the earth dropped around 10 feet in the area of the Chepu River where we were, and the resulting tsunami rushed in and swamped the forest, the salt water killing the trees and bleaching them white, which is how they remain to this day.
Now imagine getting up at 5 a.m. and heading down a path to the river to go kayaking. And the only people doing this are you and your three travel companions. It’s not the sort of opportunity I am good at missing. 🙂
There are directions to get to Chepu Adventures from the mainland on their website. Basically, you drive from Puerto Varas or Puerto Montt to Pargua, from where you can take a short ferry to Chiloe Island. They leave every 20 minutes or so, and you don’t have to reserve in advance. It’s a commuter ferry, always on the go. There is a lot of gravel road on Chiloe Island, so keep that in mind when booking a rental car. Ours was a little low to the ground (a typical sedan).
We arrived at Chepu Adventures after a bit of a confusing journey, because we felt it necessary to have lunch in Ancud first. But we finally found the place. There are two matrimonial cabins for rent (as in they have a double bed).
The view of our cabana from SILly and BILly’s cabana.
Be prepared for bugs if you travel there in Chilean summer!
Also be prepared to see tiny Chilean dear called pudu. I didn’t see any pudu myself, but everyone else in my party did. I was back in my cabana when the pudu decided to make themselves known. Sorry, no photos of the Pudu from Cindiana Jones, who is embarrassed, but such is life. I did get to see some really cute cats.
And here is the interior of our cabana:
It was quite comfortable, but one of the goals at Chepu Adventures is for the guests to use as little water as possible. Apparently, they have a way to track if you are using too much. It’s supposed to be fun, competing to use the least amount of water, but in the end I guess we didn’t use our allotment because it was never nastily turned off. But we were very good. So good that I needed to take a shower at the very next accommodation opportunity….
It was nice to have a little patio and the table and chairs, but there were too many big bee-type bugs to encourage me. I spent most of my time at the main lodge, where you have dinner (big dinners!! Way too much food. We overate trying to be accommodating to our hosts). My time at the main lodge was spent gazing out at the view. Because it was incredible, and pictures can’t do it justice. It was like looking out at a beautiful oil painting.
The stretch of river upon which we would kayak at dawn the following morning. Alack, I am not being a very good travel blogger, because I did not take a camera on the kayak trip. I figured I would be lucky not to drown. So I just enjoyed the experience.
The next morning, you get up at a time agreed-upon the night before with the host, and this fellow named Carl magically showed up. We hadn’t seen Carl before this point. There was another fellow who magically showed up when it was time to serve dinner. Otherwise, we saw our hosts. There are a lot of great photos of the kayaking experience on Trip Advisor.
We happened to have a rainy day. That’s just the way the ball bounces. So we kayaked, and it was eerie and surreal and quiet. BILly, being an experienced outdoors-man, spotted an otter, but by the time my husband and I made our way over, BILly had scared the otter away (my theory is he scared away the pudu, too). BILly and SILly got very close to a heron or crane (it was very dark when we started out, so we were guessing a lot of time where we were supposed to go, what sunken tree branches to grab and sit for a spell, etc). You guessed it, the crane/heron/bird thing disappeared as soon as my husband and I kayaked along. I am beginning not to believe BILly’s fishing stories as a result…
A close-up (with my zoom lens) of the view of the Chepu River sunken forest, taken from the main lodge. You are not allowed to kayak into any of the tributaries. There is a vague route the hosts explain, and you stick to that. These people are very passionate about the river, so I wouldn’t want to tick them off and venture out of bounds, but that’s me.
After the kayaking trip, you’re left with a whole ‘nother day. You can choose to stay only one night, but we had opted for two. And, really, even though it rained a LOT on our kayak day, it was comfortable hanging around the lodge and just soaking up the gorgeous views. Our host packed us a light lunch, and we followed directions to drive to a point where we could walk down a very steep gravel road (not suitable for our rental vehicle), and the idea was to walk to the ocean. But it was cold and rainy, and the ocean, she seemed very far away. Maybe we turned the wrong dune.
Here I am on the dunes:
We could see the ocean from this dune and we could hear the waves, but we didn’t want to walk to the two joined rivers, we specifically wanted to walk to the ocean, and after lunch we decided it was time just to return to the lodge and try to squeeze in a hot shower.
Dune foliage ready for its close-up:
Would I recommend Chepu Adventures? In the end, I would have to say, yes, it was a good experience. The one night would suffice, I believe, as long as you arrive early enough the first day to get enough of the view. We strictly didn’t need the second night, but to me in the planning stages it seemed odd to go all that way and then only stay one night.
While we were there, we saw evidence of perhaps a ferry crossing being constructed, and we also saw more construction along the river. But the spot itself felt very isolated. So you go for the kayak adventure and a hike, and then you continue on your travels.
Thanks to our host Amory, we came to realize that it was high tourist season on Chiloe. We hadn’t booked accommodations in Castro, to where we would drive the next day. She recommended that we should, and so SILly and I found online what appeared to be the only spot available in an area of Castro called Ten-Ten. We wound up with a police escort to our bed-and-breakfast.
Welcome back to the #ListifyLife Spring Challenge! Weird Talents or Skills I Have…
Conversing with Animals and Puppets, Especially Allie McBeagle. Now, I have enjoyed talking “for” animals and inanimate objects since I was around 18 and my then-boyfriend/now-husband bought me a Grover hand puppet. Honestly, creative folks shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near muppets, puppets, and the like. I always talked “a bit” for previous cats and dogs, but Allie McBeagle pretty much jumped into my brain and started conversing regularly with me from the time she was a few months old. She’s slowing down in that department now that she’s 14 and a half. She no longer reports on her earlier entrepreneurial endeavors (like beagle T-shirts, the Beaglah University she started in England, or “Alpha Training”), but we do okay. Believe me when I say, with a beagle around, I am never alone.
Predicting Weather with My Knee. Eighteen seems to have been a defining year for me. In 1978 I was in a high school production of Oklahoma, and I had to dance during some dream sequence scene. There was a wagon wheel backstage, and someone (accidentally, I hear) pushed me into it right before I needed to go on-stage. I really REALLY hurt my knee, but didn’t tell the doctor about it for, oh, thirty years. It took several months for the knee to heal to the point where I only have to pop it several times a day. I really don’t know what’s wrong with it, but it’s fairly reliable at predicting rain. It’s really picking up on barometric pressure changes in the air, not actual rain. But if I tell you, “It’s gonna rain,” I usually mean within hours.
Objects Fly Off Shelves/Out of My Hands for No Reason. I can’t quite figure this one out. All I know is that if I’m opening the bathroom medicine cabinet, 80% of the time something will fly out at me. Or I’ll drop whatever I’m holding that I just took out. This goes for kitchen cabinets, too. I gather it’s because I’m a klutz or not paying enough attention, or I lack hand-eye coordination, but I’m also the type who gets in an elevator which then refuses to go anywhere, or if I step on an escalator I’m likely to get my jacket caught in some mechanism or other. This sort of thing happens to me all of the time. I’ve just come to accept it, but my husband shakes his head.
I Can Put My Foot Behind My…Never Mind. My chiropractor says not to do it anymore, so I haven’t practiced in awhile. It’s just one foot. The other doesn’t work as well. But putting my foot…wherever I can put it just leads to spinal problems, so we’re done with that.
Last we left off, we were on Easter Island. On February 4th we basically flew back to the Hilton by the Santiago Airport and crashed (as in fell into bed) for our flight the next day from Santiago to Puerto Montt, from where we would rent a car and drive to Puerto Varas. Some Travel Tips!
Remember when I said the Holiday Inn by the airport was more expensive than the Hilton Garden Inn? I guess because it’s really close and you don’t have to get a shuttle. For the Hilton by the airport you need a shuttle, and, man, did we waste a lot of time getting organized. There seemed to be no easy way, with the language barrier, for us to find which was the free shuttle that would take us to the Hilton Garden Inn. We were told a number of things and eventually we found our way. I guess I should have taken note of how to find the shuttle for other travelers reading this, but it’s out of my brain now, sorry. Maybe google “how to find shuttle for Hilton Garden Inn at Santiago Airport.” It’s one of those things that once you know (if you remember), it seems sorta easy, but at the time it seems crazy disorganized.
If you decide to rent a car at the Puerto Montt airport (recommended, and booking in advance also recommended), do not, I repeat, do NOT ask the rental car folks for their wi-fi password so you can email the supposedly non-existent front desk at your destination hotel. You might get the information you need (“Yes, of course we have a front desk, you nimrod, we don’t care what the hotel sites say about emailing or calling ahead to find out how to get in”), but you might also find yourself suddenly locked out of your email. This happened to poor Moi, who just wanted to send one simple email. My server decided it looked super suspect that I had been in Chile for two weeks, was in Easter Island two days earlier and had now–gasp!–found my way to Southern Chile. So, you know, best thing is to lock Cindy out and force her to spend an hour chatting with tech support once at the hotel instead of having a Pisco Sour.
Yes, use the rental car wi-fi at your own risk. In retrospect, a quick in-and-out check of my email might have appeared suspect, so I can’t totally blame my server.
Here’s another Travel Tip! Let your server know you are traveling and where. Just like you might do with your credit card company. Why didn’t I think of that?
By all means, rent a car at the Puerto Montt airport and head straight to Puerto Varas, which is maybe half an hour away at most via Route 5 and ABSOLUTELY BREATHTAKINGLY BEAUTIFUL. If I ever have the chance to visit Chile again, I think I would spend more time in the Lagos region (lakes). We had two nights in Puerto Varas before heading to Chiloe Island, and we could have easily used a few more days to drive north and view more stunning country.
Once in Puerto Varas, we stayed at the Radisson, which was right on the lake, which is stunning. Yes, if you’re Canadian you have seen stunning lakes before, especially if you live in B.C., but it’s always a thrill to find equally stunning lakes elsewhere. I admit, we are spoiled at home for our lakes in B.C.
The Radisson is a great spot. Comfy rooms, walking distance to eating and supermarkets and to the festival grounds half a block away (yes, we had somehow located another festival). Our traveling partners went to bed “early” while DH and I went and hung around with locals and listened to some fantastic bands and music.
The next morning we hopped into our rental car. I was the Secretary or Leader for the day, which meant I was in charge of the purse-strings and making final decisions (such as, yes, boys, we are going to drive around the entire lake). We headed to Petrohue Falls (which really reminded us of B.C.) and then made for our major destination of the day, a view of Lake Llanquihue (sorta say it like Lake Yankeeway) from Volcano Osorno. Volcano Calbuco blew in 2015, but Osorno is still a ski mountain, and you can ride up the chairlifts, walk around, and maybe take a zip line coming down. All recommended!
Lake Llanquihue from partway up the mountain drive to Volcano Osorno. We stopped to help some South American women with their overheating vehicle (the boys poured most of our drinking water into their radiator for them). Lake Llanquihue is big and round, the second largest lake in Chile, about 330 square miles. It takes 5 or so hours to drive around the entire lake, and we didn’t realize the road would not be paved the whole way around. There was a lot of gravel terrain, but it was an adventure.Looking back at the lake partway up one of two chairlifts to the top. You can see the little ski village. We had lunch there.After two chairlift rides, we found ourselves at 1670 meters/5478 feet at the Estacion Glacier. Remember, we were there during their summer, and that’s why there is no snow. If you want to see snow on the volcano, visit the Volcan Osorno Ski Resort website or google Volcan Osorno winter and click Images.I confess, I might have taken this photo before the one above. I might have taken it from the chairlift. Or I might have taken it from the top. Alas, alack, amiss, the memory is amuck. But I wanted to show the ash we were hiking in and a bit of the toe of the glacier (covered in snow in winter) leading to the peak.I mean, wow, isn’t this stunning? No filters were used in these photos at all. That’s just how beautiful it was. We were lucky that the clouds allowed us a wee break so I could snap this view. We also had a view of Volcano Calbuco, which blew in 2015, but the peak was always covered in cloud…or maybe just blown off. At any rate, we heard stories about the eruption from an engaging fellow who kept us entertained back at the second chairlift while we were waiting for our chance to ride the zipline.
Yes, you can zipline down Osorno! You don’t have to book in advance, just walk up to the little window where you buy the tickets to ride the chairlift. You have to tell them at that point if you want to book a zipline trip and they will sell you the appropriate tickets. First, you take two chairlifts up to view the glacier (you don’t have to take the second one if you only want to zipline; in that case, just take one chairlift), and you can do this sort of thing even if you’re afraid of heights. Just make sure the other person in your chairlift ISN’T afraid of heights. I had begun conquering my fear in Peru six years earlier, and luckily I had ziplined twice before, once at Whistler (terrifying) and once in the Okanagan Valley of B.C. (still terrifying but not as much). The Osorno zipline was my third attempt, but it’s set up differently and our group of four were the only English speakers. So the friendly Chilean guy we met, Francisco I believe was his name, interpreted for us while safety instructions were being delivered. There might have been something lost in the translation, because I was not quite clear on what to do if big winds blew up and stopped me IN THE MIDDLE OF THE LONGEST ZIPLINE. You know that idiot who winds up stopping and can’t get going again? Yup, that was me.
Part of the issue was language. The zipline is the type where you wear a thick leather glove and hold the line and use the glove as your overhead brake. I hadn’t ridden that type of zip before and like I say, I lost something in the translation. So not only did the wind stop me cold on the longest of the four ziplines, but I then had no clue what to do to get going again. I gazed in wonder at Lago Llanquihue and tried to will my heart to stop beating in my throat. I was getting quite freaked out.
Here is what it looks like if you’re doing it correctly:
That’s, um, not me. That’s SILly.
I had stopped quite a ways back…. Ahem. So my husband and the Chilean zipline guy are yelling directions, and I’m like “What? What? Frack, my heart! Frick, the height! Nice lake! I am going to die! I AM the idiot hanging on the zipline who does not know what to do!!!”
My husband and the zippy guy decided to hop off the landing platform and come to help me. My husband was giving me instructions to pull myself hand-over-hand, which, frankly, was what Francisco had mentioned but I had forgotten (in my fear). But then the Chilean guy said, “Just let go!” (Ah, so he did know some English; maybe he hand-gestured, my lungs were in my ears at that point).
“Just let go!” does not mean you will fall onto the ashy ground, it means you will grasp your hanging thingies with both hands instead of one hand on the brake and the second on the thingy. Thusly, thisly, thashly, you will zip to the platform.
How embarrassing.
After a lunch at the ski lodge, we headed back down the mountain and began our circumvention of the lake. We saw a lot of this:
The gravel road was a surprise and we weren’t quite sure if we were heading in the right direction, but eventually we realized we were, and we also got to see a lot of Chileans enjoying summer in what was, to us, a freezing cold lake. We came upon a lot of campsites with cars and families cavorting and picnicking. We also came across this nice hawk, who posed for me with the volcano in the background:Volcano Osorno with hawk who REFUSED to look at me. Hmph!
One of the things we read to do was head to a small town called Fruitilar, but if Fruitilar is your destination, head LEFT out of Puerto Varas. Believe me when I say you will get there a lot faster. Head RIGHT if you want to visit Petrohue Falls and Osorno. Coming into Fruitilar the way we did isn’t as, picturesque, shall we say, as driving from Puerto Varas to Fruitilar.
Any way you want to slice it, the Lagos Region is a site to behold. I am so grateful to folks on Trip Advisor for sharing their experiences. We flew to Puerto Montt as a way to get to Chiloe Island via ferry, but someone on TA told me Puerto Varas was not to be missed, and they were right. I would have loved a few more days in the area.
Two restaurants we chose in Puerto Varas were outstanding. The first night we wanted Italian and found a place that might have been Restaurant Tratria Di Carusso. Pity I didn’t write down the name. There was only one other table besides us while we were eating. I had minestrone soup that came in a cauldron that could have fed four and then beef gnocchi that was amazing. If the chef is a round older fellow sporting a feathered pen and wearing his chef hat, you’ve found the place. Amazeballs.
The second night we wanted steak but didn’t have a reservation, and it was festival time, remember, so it was super crowded (as in Chileans were filling the streets crowded). We were extremely lucky to get a table for four at La Marca. The folks in front of us had six in their party and could not be seated. We had to sit right in front of the grill, which was a bit hot (the back of my neck was to the grill), but it was great to see how they cooked, the coals, etc. And the food was divine!
I didn’t expect the food to be as wonderful as we found in Puerto Varas. I would have loved more time just to sample the gastronomic delights!
