Hi everyone,
I am in Puerto Varas, a town just north of Puerto Montt, after spending a week moving up the island of Chiloe in southern Chile. Puerto Montt is the big city in this area, but like most big cities it´s not much to talk about. This is the first stop for volcano watchers as they go toward northern Chile. There will be more volcano pictures, I´m sure. I depends on the weather. It rains every day and the visibility is nil sometimes. It poured in Puerto Montt a couple of days ago and was raining here until midday. They said you can see a volcano. (I always forget to bring my Lonely Planet to these internet cafes, so I don´t remember the name.) When the clouds broke, there it was across the lake. In the summer, you can go up there with a guide and the right equipment.
Most of my activity for the past week has been at sea level, looking at cute town after cute town. Chiloe has an interesting history and is distinctve in many ways. For one, the buildings are often this distinctive shingle.
This church dates from 1730.
The style is typical all over Chiloe.
Quemchi (not to be confused with the Korean side dishes) was particularly cute.
The largest city, Castro, has about 30,000, but even it is nice. Plus, it has some ammenities. The boats here are so colorful.
My idea of an ammenity is mussels for under 2 USD per kilo. I´m thinking these guys loading mussels must be working hard for little money for it to be so cheap in the shops.
I got over to Chiloe on the ferry from Chaiten in northern Patagonia, where I had taken the Carretera
Austral, the southern highway, from just south of Rio Tranquil. Here are a couple of typical scenes from along that route.
This next one is of Chaiten itself, taken from the ferry as we left.
The nearby volcano blew in 2008 and 2009. You´d never know from that distant picture how devastated the city was. It´s only about 10% reinhabited. Most of the city has been demolished. Most of the rest is abandonned, and ash has been piled up like sand dunes by bulldozers 10 meters high all over what was once city. Chile experiences so many calamities, it´s no wonder they feel quite able to manage that earthquake a couple of months ago. That gets me to the present. I´m heading north rather slowly. I figure to make a few forays into the mountains among more volcanoes. Maybe I´ll swing back through a pretty part of Argentina called Seven Lakes. There´s supposed to be a cooool university city, Valdivia, and you know how cool I am. There are things to see all the way up Chile. I´m torn between returning to Argentina and checking out the northwest before going to Bolivia, or going to Bolivia from here. For sure, I´ll do something. wherever you go, there you are.
Speaking of the present, yesterday was Sunday here in Puerto Varas. There was a tent set up where artisans and foodies sold their stuff. I´ll leve you with food for thought. Imagine, if you will, a Chilean garage band playing ¨Sweet Home Alabama¨. The accent was not exactly spot on.
Be well, all of you.