Food, Wine, and Sandboarding; A Nice Way to End the Trip

Our trip is coming to an end as we disembark from our short bus ride from Santiago to the port city of Valparaiso. The city is the second largest metropolis in the country and home to numerous universities, a major port, and the Chilean Congress.

The city is divided into the flat area and the hills; where most of the businesses and infrastructure are in the flat area, and most of the population lives in the hills. The most picturesque and touristy areas are the cobblestoned historic neighborhoods of Alegre Hill and Concepcion Hill.

The city gained UNESCO World Heritage status in 2003 based on its unique architecture and its improvised urban plan. Part of what makes Valparaiso unique and interesting is that it (a) has the oldest original trolly cars still in service in the world and (b) due to the majority of hill areas being inaccessible by public transportation, it contains a series of funiculars that convey people from the flat area to part way up the hills. At one point there were 28 different funiculars in operation, but now there are only 15 still functioning and only 6-8 working at any one time. Over our two and a half days in the city, Em and I rode in the two oldest of these (the oldest having been built in 1883) and also in the only one that was actually an elevator (as opposed to a pulley system).

Em had originally booked us into a hostel in the automotive section of the flat area. When we tried to check-in early to drop our bags off, the door was locked and no one was around. Not liking the area so much and being fearful that if the hostel closed randomly during certain times of the day we wouldn't be able to get our bags on our last day, I decided that we would be finding somewhere else to stay.

We meandered for a while until we encountered a cute tea and sandwich shop where we had a great lunch, I got chai for the first time in weeks, and there was wifi, through which we located an adorable B&B on Allegra Hill in the heart of the historic area. It turned out that the B&B was run by a husband and wife team, who lived there with their identical twin 2.5 year old daughters and that we were the only guests. The husband component of the team, Rene, was our main point of contact. He was very knowledgeable about the area and an avid amateur photographer.

I had been interested in trying some authentic Chilean food and so we had booked a Chilean Cooking class for our first night in the city. The class consisted of meeting at a small coffee shop on the side of Sotomeyer Square and discussing all the options for what we could make for dinner; taking a city trolly car to the local market to buy the ingredients, and then returning to the cooking school to prepare and consume everything.

The day we participated, there were five other fellow want to be chefs: a French couple, a British Couple, and a Bostonian. Due to the Bostonian being a vegetarian and a huge fire on New Year's that had burned many of the fishermens' homes high up in the hills (meaning they were dealing with that and not fishing), dinner was a vegetarian affair (except for the meat empanada that two of the participants made). Our menu for the evening consisted of an appetizer of hearts of palm stuffed avocado served with Pisco Sour; an eggplant, raisin, olive, and egg empanada served with white wine; a squash, potato, green bean, corn, onion, and carrot stew served with red wine; and the Chilean version of flan for desert. Everything was also accompanied by a homemade salsa. The entire evening was fun and all our fellow cooks provided lively conversation.

The next morning, after a very satisfying breakfast (a perk of a B&B), we meandered back to Sotomeyer Square to meet up with the Green Bicycle group for a wine and bike tour of the Kingston Family Vineyards in Casablanca. We had convinced Amber (the Bostonian from the previous day) and the British couple to come with us, but it appeared that the tour had a higher than usual number of pre-registrations and they weren't accepting walk ons. So Amber and the Brits commandeered their own taxi to tour the wineries, and Em and I continued with the tour.

The tour takes you to the Kingston Family Vineyards about 30 miles outside the city. There you grab a helmet and a mountain bike and spend and hour and a half biking through the the vineyards while the guide periodically stops to explain something of the area, winery, and or processes used. During the tour, you get to try an airy and light Sauvignon Blanc in the vineyard, before returning to the main facility to sample a Pinot Noir and two consecutive years of the Syrah. I liked the Sauvignon and the Pinot, but both Syrahs were terrible.

The winery began as a dairy farm in the early 1900s and didn't start looking at wine production until 1998, when one of the original founder's decendents came back with a degree from Stanford and decided to attempt making red wine in a region previously only known for white wine. While everyone scoffed at the notion of red wine in this area, but it's the Kingston Family that is laughing now, as their Syrahs and Pinot Noirs are world renowned.

While on the bike tour, Em and I made the acquaintence of Carol, a fellow resident of Los Angeles, who told us she was going to the Atacama Desert to sandboard. The bike guide overheard our conversation and told us that there was a location about 30 minutes from Valparaiso where we could do that. Armed with this information, Carol, Em, and I headed back to Valparaiso to catch a small intercity minibus to the sand dunes at Concon.

The two sand dunes are all that is left of the original habitat of this area and are estimated to be 25 million years old. The dunes are also unique in that they are comprised of a series of sandhills that hang out over sea terraces, separated by a rocky outcrop. Everything on either side of the dunes is built up and sadly within the next 10-20 years, the little bit of desert still present, will also make way for industry and humanity.

At the upper edge (the inland side), you can rent a homemade sandboard (looks like a small snowboard and has two pieces of cloth stapled to it to make loops to attach your feet) or a sled board (you sit on it and slide down the dunes). Carol, Em, and I rented two sandboards and one sled and then proceeded to spend the next hour running up the dunes and boarding down them. Em turned out to be the best at the boarding and I spent a lot of time falling down in the sand to the amusement of the other two (luckily it's a hell of a lot softer than snow). The excursion ended up being a lot of fun and I'm glad that we met Carol and that our bike tour guide was ease-dropping or we may never have had the opportunity to try it.

We started our last day in Valparaiso, and in Chile as a whole, with an off the beaten path walking tour. The "Where's Waldo" company, called Wally's, offers two free (you tip what you like) walking tours per day. The tour that we were on took us through some of the touristy areas, but they sort skirt around most of them and go into some of the less traveled areas. The tour also focused a little bit more on the political history of the city (not all of which was filtered through Rose tinted glasses). I like these tours because they a great way to know the city that you're visiting and because everytime you take one, it's a little different than the last, as the tours are colored and shaped by their guides.

After the tour, we had one last lunch, grabbed our bags and took a roller coaster (aka bus) around the curving hills back to the main bus terminal. We arrived at the terminal a few hours before our bus back to Santiago and therefore set out to visit the only funicular in the city that was actually an elevator. Someone else had told me that they had had a graffiti expo/competition in the city the previous year and that around the tower were over 60 pieces down by artists from around the world.

To access the elevator, one pays their $0.18 admission and walks down a 100 meter underground tunnel. The tower has three floors and zero graffiti and so I was super confused when we got there. There were however multiple murals on the sides of the buildings in the neighborhood where the tower was located so we wandered around those for a bit.

A while later, we caught our bus to Santiago and an additional one to the airport and began our long trip home (mine made even longer by weather delays in the Bay Area affecting flights around the rest of the country).

Until the next grand adventure...

Santiago is a Great City, Just Not for New Year's

We've arrived in Santiago, our penultimate destination for this trip. Time has flown.

Em and I changed our schedule around to make sure that we'd get to Santiago on December 31st to celebrate New Year's Eve in the city. We'd read internet articles and talked to family whom had all previously experienced the changing year there in the past and we were thus excited to see for ourselves. Turns out that we either did it wrong, or it's just not my thing.

Having shown up the morning of the end of the year, we didn't really have a clue where to go or what to do for the night. We figured we could just kind of find something that day. Turns out this doesn't really work out too well. Most things in the city shut down around 5 or 6 pm on New Year's Eve and don't open for one to three more days (we found this out later).

Since it was still early when we arrived, we decided to do one of the free walking tours to help get acquainted with the city. Our AirB&B was centrally located and walking to the Plaza de Armas was pretty simple. We met our guide, Valentina, and preceded on a four hour jaunt through the downtown and some of the outer suburb areas. Through the tour, we learned a lot about the history of the city, the location of a bunch of places that we would go back and visit over the next few days, and where the tourists go to eat local fare.

At the culmination of the tour, Valentina informed everyone, that except for a few fancier restaurants, the entire city would essentially shut down for the next two days and therefore if anyone wanted to eat, they should grab some groceries within the next few hours. This caused a small change in our plans and had us racing to the nearest supermarket to acquire provisions.

Valentina was not wrong. By 5 pm, the streets were deserted and the shops all locked up. New Year's dinner was home cooked by me and served with some nice local wine; not too shabby.

At 10:30 we set out with the other million or so in denziens in the area to find a spot to watch the fireworks from. We were told that the best location was at a tower about a mile away, so we started walking; until we ran into the barricade. Turns out that the city likes to separate its population during New Year's Eve and just erects fences and manned barricades around certain areas. We attempted to walk around the pen to get through to the tower, but gave up after 45 minutes of swimming upstream through the throngs of people and not finding an exit. We meandered back to the main street where a huge crowd was gathered and you could still get a clear view of the tower and sky surrounding it.

I think this will be the last year that I ever go anywhere with huge crowds for special events again. For an introvert like me, the last hour of 2016 was a nightmare. There had to be at least 100,000 people all squished together in the street waiting in anticipation for the "ball drop". As the minutes ticked down, more people crammed together and my personal space bubble went from a foot to half a foot to a few inches to a claustrophobic inducing few centimeters. There were happy, dancing, selfie-taking, popper blowing, silly string throwing people everywhere; and they were more than happy to be smushed into each other; me on the other hand, not so much.

The fireworks, when they finally started at midnight, were wonderful, but I was way too "let me out of here!" by that time to truly enjoy them. Em had a blast and thought it was hilarious watching all the crushed together people throwing glitter, silly string, and bubbles on each other. As soon as the last firework fizzled out, I grabbed Em's hand and hightailed it out as fast as the crowd would allow (which was a tortuous shuffle step of a few feet per minute). I didn't breath easy until we were safely ensconced in our room. Big crowds of hyped up people are definitely NOT my thing.

New Year's Day, like Christmas Day a week past, also happened to be a Sunday. We knew that some things wouldn't be open but I guess we weren't expecting a complete ghost town. We wandered from our place back through the Plaza de Armas and onward to the Fish Market, passing few people, and no open businesses. The Fish Market was open (all the guide books state that it's a New Year's tradition to come here and have a bowl of fish stew to help abate any lingering hangovers), but we weren't really hungry enough for anything there at the moment. We meandered around, took some photographs, made some locals' day trying to get an Americano for Em (these are not common and apparently not readily understood when explained), and moved on.

Outside the market is the main throughway, Cardenal Jose Maria Caro, which follows the Mapocho river. Along one of the overpasses we found a dozen or so women selling food from their shopping cart stalls. Always crazy enough for street food, we wandered over and were happy to see it as something yummy. The women were selling a fish and octopus cerviche over noodles, with some roasted corn and onions thrown in for good measure (we later learned that these women were Peruvian and not Chilean). It was pretty damn tasty. There was also a cart where we picked up some sort of desert that tasted like a combination of bread pudding and mochi.

We followed the river for a bit and ended up in Forestal Park, outside the Bella Arts Center (Fine Arts Museum), a museum that was unfortunately closed for the day. The park was peaceful and we relaxed for a bit before continuing onward towards the Santiago Metropolitan Park, which is Santiago's version of Griffith Park if anyone has ever been to LA. Turns out everyone else had the same idea as us. Where previously we'd only seen a few handfuls of people, there were throngs here.

The main reason we wandered over to the park is that Valentina had told us that there was a funicular and a newly opened gondola that would take you to the top of Cerro San Cristobal (within the park) where you could see the statute of Immaculate Conception (a giant statue of Mary) that overlooked the city and get some spectacular 360 views. Since we were on the side of the funicular, we joined the crazy line with the other 100 or so people and spent the next hour inching our way to the entrance (through a small castle facade).

The funicular ride was fun and harrowing as it goes almost vertically up the side of the mountain. It deposits you just shy of the apex. From there you can take photographs, buy trinkets, get a bite to eat, or continue up past the art collection of individually designed crosses, through the small outdoor theater, and to the base of the statue of Immaculate Conception.

After admiring the view for a while, we attempted to find the walking path back down the mountain, with the goal of ending up at the zoo (which was near the bottom, by the start of the funicular). The so helpful information people directed us to the wrong path and we ended up following a main road down a few miles and coming out on the complete other side of the park. While the zoo was a lost opportunity at this point, we did get to pass by some more great viewpoints, a couple of parks, another closed museum, and we were able to follow the path of the gondola we had opted not to take. This side of the park appeared to be in a more affluent part of the city. The streets were wide and tree lined, the homes large, and the inhabitants of a different breed. We walked for a bit, admiring the homes and area, noting once again that all the businesses and restaurants were closed, and eventually arriving at Avenida Providencia, where we caught a bus home.

As Monday rolled around, we expected things to open up again and were excited to see the city awake. This turned out to be a foolish hope; it appears that Santiagoians like to take an extended weekend for the New Year. One thing we knew for sure was going on was the changing of the guards at the Palace de la Moneda (means mint, but is the presidential palace). Every other day the guards put on a show for the tourists that involves marching, horses, and music. It was supposed to start at 10 am as it was a weekday, but I guess they were still thinking it was a weekend cause they began at 11.

We watched the show for a while before leaving to enter the museum below La Moneda (the only museum in the city open on a Monday). The museum was having a special exhibit on Picasso with many of his pieces from the Paris National Art Museum on tour. While Picasso may not be my favorite artist (or even top 100), I can admire his technique and creativity for what it was and the movement it started.

Em has been dying to go to a Chilean winery after hearing so many good things about the wine here and so we had booked a bike vineyard tour for the afternoon. The tour met at an older vineyard, Vina Cousino Macul, at the outskirts of the city and was set to have us bike through the vineyard, take a tour of the processing center, and sample a few varieties. What ended up happening is that we took a series of metros and then walked a few kilometers to be meet by the bike tour guide's apologetic face as he conveyed the the winery was participating in the extended holiday weekend and therefore there would be no tour this day.

Disappointed, but deciding not to waste what was left of the day, we backtracked to the heart of the city to visit the general cemetery. Before the creation of the cemetery, the dead were buried all over the place or if they weren't Catholic, they were just thrown off the side of Santa Lucia Hill. Obviously, this lead to a lot of social, political, and hygienic problems.

The idea of a general cemetery was created to fix these problems and was originally thought up as a "Parthenon;" a place for all the heros of the Chilean Nation to rest and for everyone else to pay homage to them. All of the main leaders of the country (with the except of two), are buried there, as well as many artists, writers, and members of influential families. Many of these families have exorbitant mausoleums.

A wall was built to deleaniate the more affluent from the common and the distinction is very apparent. Whereas there are massive crypts on one side, with tree lines alleyways, the other side is home to what I've taken to calling apartment complexes for the dead. These are two and three storey buildings filled with coffin sized cubby holes. Some of the cubby holes have awnings or trinkets or vases of flowers surrounding them and some are blank and dilapidated.

Tuesday was our last day in Santiago and the one day where we got to see what the city looks like when its four million residents aren't hiding out in their homes. It was also our only day to explore some of the city's extensive collection of museums. We made the most of the day and visited the Chilean National History Museum, the Memorial and Human Rights Museum, the Natural History Museum, and the Bella Arts (Fine Arts) Museum/SAM (Contemporary Art Museum) (housed in same building). Santiago proscribes to the same philosophy as London and some other major cities, in that all their national museums are free; making the experience even better.

We also managed to squeeze in a lunch at the Centro Market to try the fish stew that most people enjoy on New Year's Day morning. The stew was palatable, but nothing to write home about. Em's garlic shrimp were pretty tasty though, once they showed up. Originally they had brought her some octopus dish and explained that that's what we had ordered. Regardless of whether they heard calarami (squid) or camerones (shrimps) in Spanish, neither sound anything like pulpa (octopus), so the error was not on our end.

Of all the museums that we visited, the Memorial and Human Rights Museum is probably the most visited and most poignant. This museum is dedicated to explaining the dictatorship lead by Antonio Pinochet that was Chile's government from 1973 until 1990 and the atrocities committed during that period against the Chilean people. The exhibits are a mix between visual, auditory, and interactive, and provoke much contemplation.

Due to it being summertime now in Santiago, it doesn't get dark until 9:30 or 10 and so with some extra time after the closing of the museums and dusk, Em and I decided to climb to the top of Santa Lucia Hill. The crest of Santa Lucia Hill was where Pedro de Valdivia declared the city conquered in 1541. Currently the hill is a nice city park with a series of haphazard staircases that eventually lead to Fort Hidalgo, the remaining one of the two forts built in 1820 as defensive points for the city. The fort looks like a mini castle, and from the top turret, one is able to get some great views of the city. The fort itself did not appear to be open to the public.

While on the walking tour a few days previous, Valentina had told us about the native dish, Pastel de Choclo (sweet corn pie). This dish is traditionally made with pino - a mixture of ground beef and onions sauted together - mixed with olives, raisins, and egg, and then covered with a mashed sweet corn topping and all baked together in a ceramic pot. It's supposed to be the South American version of Shepherd's Pie and a must try dish.

Viva la Vida is the only restaurant that make a vegetarian version of Pastel de Choclo, where they substituted soy meat for the pino. We'd come back to the Bellavista area three different nights in an effort to find them open so that we could try this dish (they'd been enjoying the holiday too much to open their doors). Turns out that in the vegetarian version, it's not just the pino they take out, but all the rest of the extras as well; the dish we got was an entire pot of corn mush with some questionable soy product in it. After three days of wandering back to the Bellavista area to try this, I was severely disappointed.

At the restaurant we also decided to try Terremoto (Spanish for Earthquake). This is a concoction where crappy wine and grenadine syrup are mixed together and then a scoop or two of pineapple ice cream is added to the mixture and allowed to slowly melt into it. The end result is instantly rotten teeth and diabetes. It was even too much for my constant sugar cravings.

Are last day in Santiago was a success in terms of cultural experiences, but a fail in terms of food.

The Lake District

Em and I left the windy and cold summers of southern Chile for the warmer Lake District. We were picked up at the airport and dropped off at our AirB&B, where the proprietor, Sergio, used the Google Translate app in conjunction with my Spanglish to convey how happy he was to have us staying at his home and if we needed anything, then all we had to do was ask.

After we had booked this place to stay, our tour operator said he drove by and that while the place was in a residential neighborhood, he didn't think we should be staying so far from the center of town (we were about 3 km away). After about 10 minutes in the area, I figured the operator probably thought tourists staying in a working class part of the town without the glitz and glamour of the center would scare us or give us a negative impression of the city. We didn't really mind at all and even liked the people as there was a nice chicken restaurant next door where we had a fun conversation about the local Maupuchin people while the girl cut up a portion of roast chicken for us, and bought beer and fresh bread at the local bakery and corner store over the course of our three day stay in the city. After we discovered that you can hail a colectivo (shared taxi) from five feet outside our door and take it to the center for about $0.75, we were even happier.

We had originally booked two tours of sites in the area, but got up sold two additional ones by the tour operator when he picked us up at the airport. One of the extra tours we purchased ended up being our favorite and the other, we decided to cancel in order to make our own plans (this ended up working out much better).

The first two tours we had were both half day tours; one after the other. In the morning we went to visit the Orsono Volcano, and Todos Los Santos Lake (All Saints Lake) and the Petrohue Waterfall (both within the Vincente Perez Rosales National Park). The afternoon tour took us to Llanquihue (means Deep/Hidden Place in the Maupuchin language), Frutillar (the Chilean word for strawberry), and Puerto Octay.

All of these towns and attractions are within the Lake District and mostly ring the Llanquihue Lake (the second largest lake in Chile). This area was heavily settled by German immigrants in the mid-1800s and therefore their history and influence can be seen in the architecture (the oldest wooden structures are found here), the cooking (kuchen is a super yummy cake), and the habits of the locals.

The Lake District of Chile is part of the Ring of Fire and thus surrounded by a series of volcanos. One of these volcanos, Calbuco, actually erupted a year and a half ago and caused many of the residents in some towns to have to be evacuated for six months. After the earthquake here a few days prior to our arrival, it appeared that two other volcanos were venting small plumes of smoke.

The biggest, and most accessible, volcano in the area is the Orsono Volcano, and this was our destination. On the way there we traveled along the Route CH-225 (the scenic lake route), through the Vincente Perez Rosales National Park and stopped at the literal end of the road, where the Emerald Lake (officially known as the All Saints Lake, but aka the Emerald Lake because of its color) was.

Here, everyone else in our group hoped on a short boat ride around the lake while Em and I conversed with Elmer (the German we'd met crossing the border days earlier), whom we were surprised to see, who was waiting for a bigger tour boat to take him out. We also tried to see the small local history museum, but they kept saying it was closed (regardless of it being within opening hours).

After the Lake, we back tracked a little to see the Petrohue (means "Foggy Place" in the Maupuchin language) Waterfall. The Fall is created by water from the snow at the top of the volcanos careening down over millennial cooled lava flows and basalt rock. The site was beautiful and I was sad that due to the hectic pace of the tour, we only had a short amount of time in the park and couldn't even begin to hike any of the trails.

The last, and main, attraction for the morning's excursion was to visit the Orsono Volcano. We drove up a very narrow and twisty road to get to the ski resort, that in summer becomes a zipline/hiking/tourist location. We lucked out as our sunny days continued unabated and we were afforded magnificent views of the entire area. At the top of the volcano, we opted to take the ski lift to the top of the ski run so that we could march through the Mars-like terrain to see the Red Crater. The area is interesting in that the ground is a sand made of black lava rock that was most likely ash that fell during the last eruption. Going up the ski lift and walking on the edge made me feel like I was in a Star Trek episode; I kept expecting someone with phasers to come cresting over the next hill.

Whereas the morning tour felt a little rushed and Em and I didn't particularly like our guide (he was way too "everyone smile and have fun" to the point of coming across as patronizing when trying to gain audience participation), but we thoroughly enjoyed the afternoon tour. This tour headed out along a super scenic road that rung the Lake and our guide, Rodrigo, was wonderful with his melding of Spanish and English to explain about the history of the area and the German influence that was readily apparent.

Our tour glided through Llanquihue, driving through, but not actually stopping, before heading on to Frutillar, where we were allowed to wander a bit. Frutillar is small touristic town where in addition to the foreign travelers, it is a favorite summer destination for other Chileans. We loved the town because of its instantly pleasant and calm atmosphere and the German Museum. The Museum is a compilation of original houses and buildings built by German settlers in 1856 and then donated by their decendents to the city, and subsequently moved and arranged into the semblance of a German town.

We finished the tour with a jaunt through Puerto Octay, which was a main port city in the area until the now defunct railway was built in Puerto Varas in 1912. The city is also known for it's cheese, which is like a Gouda; so of course we had to buy some of it to try. The town has a fun story for how it got its name: there was a German landowner named Ox, who owned the general store. When people needed something, the townsfolk would always say that "Ox has it", which in Spanish would be "Ox Hay". Overtime this was just run together and the town name became Octay.

If you have a car or a lot of time (to take public transportation), I recommend not taking any short city tours in this region, but actually going place to place on your own. The tours are nice in that they pick you up at your hotel, tell you somewhat about the history of each place and make sure you're not stranded anywhere; but they rush you through everything (due to time constraints), try to get you to buy additional excursions on the tour (a boat ride across a lake, a chairlift ride up the ski run that is on the volcano, lunch at a fancier restaurant, etc.), and are mainly there as a form of transport from one place to another.

On our second day in the lake district, we took a tour to visit Chiloe (pronounced Chill-o-way). When we booked the tour, we thought that Chiloe was a city, but it actually is an entire island; the fifth largest in South America and contains over 200,000 inhabitants. The tour that we took, visited four of the cities on the island: Chacao, Castro, Dalcahue, and Ancud. The island can only be arrived at via ferry or plane, although there is talk of creating a bridge to connect it to the mainland (there's much controversy with the bridge because the Islanders are split as to whether they want to be more, or less, separated from the mainland folk).

Chacao is the first city on the island after one leaves the ferry port. It's quaint, and contains for the most part a nice pathway along the shore (with views of the ferry dock), and a small central square with a few residential street radiating off of it. I did get a few nice photographs of the school playground that was in disrepair while we were there. From Chacao, we drove across the island to Castro, the biggest city on Chiloe.

The main reason we set out on this tour was to visit the colorful wooden palafitos (stilt houses). These homes were quite common and originally where the more unfortunates of the city dwelled, but like most things, there was a gentrification and the quaintness of the areas in which the buildings still exists became popular. While some of the homes still appear to be ramshackle and potential death traps, many have been fortified and now house hostels, boutique shops, and restaurants.

The homes are located along the water's edge at the entrance to the city of Castro. Since the tide was low when we had arrived, it was quite easy to see the stilts and admire that these buildings were still standing (especially considering the volcano eruption a few years ago and the the we earthquake a few days prior). The tour stopped at a lookout point for one set of the homes, allowed us to venture down the street and enter a few (we gained permission to go on the back patio of a hostel after one of the boutique shops asked that we buy a coffee in order to look off their patio) in another sector, and just drove along the street outside the third area. Originally, Em had though about trying to book us a night on the island, but as Castro was primarily just a small city with not much in the way of tourism, we're glad we just did the day tour.

From Castro we began our trip back across the island towards the ferry dock. Along the way we stopped for a bit in Dalcahue and then Ancud. Dalcahue was another smaller town with a lovely artisan market selling many wooden and wool products. Ancud was the second largest city on the island and the tour company had a deal with a fancier restaurant where they try to entice you to eat an overpriced meal. Em and I, always ones to be difficult, decided to leave the others and set out on our own for more local fare. We ended up with some piping hot homemade seafood empanadas, which we shared with another couple that had also decided that fancy was not their foray.

While waiting for the others to finish their meal, we and the other couple wandered the remains of the the San Antonio Battery. This was the best preserved of the two forts and four batteries that made up the the colonial Ancud Fort system. All that remains of the area now is the outer seawall, which is lined with canons. Once we met back up with the others, everyone went to the center of town to view a small local museum. The fumes of fresh paint drove almost everyone out almost immediately, but I persevered and spent a few minutes attempting to read the Spanish information panels.

As we were getting ready to get back on the bus, an artist working on his sculpture next door to the museum at the Cultural Center, beckoned Em and I over. The artist was super sweet and kept showing us his latest project and trying to get us to see the rest of his work inside. Since the bus was waiting on us, we begged leave and were rewarded with Basalt worry stones after a quick hug and kiss on the cheek by our new friend.

Our last day in Puerto Varas was our own. We originally had a tour booked, but decided we'd prefer to go without a plan and had it canceled. There was a museum that Em had seen while driving along the waterfront and we decided we wanted to visit it. The museum is a living art piece in that it's the home of Pablo Fierro, who makes a living repurposing old/odd junk into add-ons to his house. The house was once Puerto Varas's water station, but has since been transformed to include a car sticking out the front, a giant coocoo clock, a replica school house, port windows, and numerous other unusual items. Pablo was home working away and allowed us to wander at our leisure through his masterpiece.

After our museum tour, we headed through town and up the hill to take photos of the now derelict train station. The station had once connected Santiago with the Lake District and was an alternative to the ports. The entire rail operation in the Lake District shut down sometime in the last decade, but I'm not sure why. It could have been due to track damage caused by one of the many earthquakes, or maybe a financial thing. Now the station is a place for aspiring street artists to ply their trade and the downtrodden to catch a few Zzs.

As we were taking a circuitous route back along the waterfront to the main town, we stumbled upon a small yacht just getting ready to embark on an hour tour around the bay. We decided to join them. It was a lovely day and Em and I enjoyed sitting on the bow of the boat sipping our supplied Pisco Sours and enjoying the views.

After our boat tour, we hailed a colectivo and ran back to our AirB&B to once again thank Sergio for his hospitality, grab our backpacks, and then catch a minibus to Puerto Mott. While riding to Puerto Mott, we passed a Cruz del Sur bus station at the edge of Puerto Varas, which made me paranoid so I had Em recheck our tickets to make sure we weren't going to the wrong city to catch our overnight bus to Santiago. Five minutes later we found the tickets and saw that they got messed up and we really were supposed to stay in Puerto Varas, but as we still had hours to go and we wanted to see the famed Angelmo Fish and Artist Markets in Puerto Mott, so we continued onwards.

The minibus dropped us off at the main bus terminal in Puerto Mott and we were able to talk to a representative at the Cruz del Sur counter that stated we could catch the same bus there, just a half hour earlier. With this knowledge, we put our giant backpacks in a locker and set out to find the markets.

The Angelmo Fish Market dates it origins back to the 1700's when the inhabitants of Chiloe and the other islands that make up the nearby archipelago decided that this cove was a nice place to make port to sell their wares to the mainlanders. Over time, restaurants popped up to feed the fisherman, and then women arrived to sell a myriad of crafts. Today the market is a colorful place to get fresh seafood, artisanal cheeses, honey, local alcohol, and wool and wood handicrafts.

Em and I wandered through the various stalls and tried some of the local oceanic treats; we had something that may have been abalone or just a giant mollusk of some kind and which started out okay, but ended with a nasty back-end flavor, some local fish and salmon cerviche, and some smoked salmon. We even shared some with the sea puppies (sea lions) and pelicans chilling by the docks. We finished off our sampling with some terrible local chocolate and gummies. I'm largely convinced at this point that neither Argentina nor Chile know how to make chocolate; this stuff is worse than Russell Stover's.

We walked back to the bus station from the market and ran into our own rendition of the scene from Home Alone where the family is valiantly running through the airport to catch their plane before they shut the gangway door. The bus station we were at was huge and had over 20 stalls where buses could arrive. I asked around and was told that our bus would show up near one end and so there we waited...and waited...and waited some more. I even kept bugging the driver of every new bus that pulled and was displaying a destination of Santiago, and they all kept saying "Just wait".

Ten minutes after our bus was supposed to arrive, finally one driver told me to talk to a man in a red shirt that appeared to be in charge. I showed the man in red our tickets and asked about the bus. He shook his head, asked who told us to be at this station, yelled at a woman behind the counter to call the other terminal to hold the bus, found a taxi driver at the kiosk and told him to get us to the other location ASAP, and then told us to run; we had 13 minutes.

We raced with the taxi driver to his car, threw our bags and our bodies in, and the driver peeled out into gridlock. The driver was trying to ask what happened and whether the bus would be waiting for us, and we could only half explain and hope that they really did hold the bus for us. Turns out that the bus was at the other station in Puerto Mott and not all the way back in Puerto Varas, or we never would have made it. We arrived at the alternative Cruz del Sur bus station and ran through it with our taxi driver in the lead shouting out to everyone else "where is the bus to Santiago?" Turns out the bus was the only one there and everyone was waiting on us with fond exasperation. We thanked the taxi driver and the bus employees profusely and clamored on to the bus; causing only a 15 minute delay in departing.

We had booked a cama seat for our 12 hour ride and that was the equivalent of first class. We (and the other 6 or so first classers) had our own closed off section, large comfy seats that reclined a decent distance, a blanket and pillow, and our own bus steward.

Our steward was super friendly, didn't speak a lick of English, and his duties included: serving everyone a terrible dinner consisting of a ham and cheese sandwich and soda, playing a movie for everyone, and then tucking us all into bed. This last part cracked me up. At 9:30 the movie ended, the steward clamored over everyone to shut their window curtains, unfolded our blankets, and physically tucked as all in like children. At 10:30, the steward turned all the lights off (except the reading lights). I didn't not realise that first class came with bedtimes.