Cabanas y Piscina Rucamalen Puerto Varas

... days with some home cooking. Actually, one night when we were cooking Lorraine and I were talking in the kitchen and an American traveller who overheard us didn’t realise we could speak English as she couldn’t understand a word we were saying. Turns out it was just our Scottish brogue and that we were talking so fast that she presumed we weren’t English speakers. We found that very funny! Ended up spending the evening sharing a couple ...

... When I got to the hostel, the owner greeted me in French. Turns out that not only is this hostel French-owned, it's also next door to a chocolaterie. I think I'm in heaven. Puerto Varas is very picturesque and is a popular base for lots of activities and trips in the region. Instead of going on one, however, I opted to take the day off today. I wandered around the town a bit, took a book down to ...

... lovely cabin. I lived and ate meals with a caring and compassionate family, consiting of the cowboy, his wife Tatiana, and their 9 year old son, Andreas. I donīt know if it is the result of living in a very remote farm, but Andreas sang or made some sort of noise every second of every hour of every day. I would normally find that quite annoying, but I loved hearng him hum and play around the house all day when I was sitting on ...

Vandaag al veel van de grond gegaan ... het was meer een vliegbus , via Concepcion en Temeco in Puerto Montt aangekomen, de auto stond klaar aan de luchthaven (luxe he) en dan naar ons hotel; hier is het iets minder warm een kleine 24 graden (nog meer luxe he). PM is in de zomer eem stuk aanntrekkelijker dan in de winter. GROETJES AAN IEDEREENĄ Aan Werner: hoe gaat het met onze dieren, alles OK?

So it took about 3 hours from Valdivia to Puerto Varas (for some strange reason every journey we take in Chile seems to be 3 hours long!) The bus stop was a little bit out of the centre of town but as we walked to the centre we saw Steph who had come to meet us. The pair of them were feeling a little bit worse for wear after the last night together with their tour group, who had now all gone their seperate ways. They showd us the way to their hostel, where we would stay that night ...

... and fog. Beautiful weather it was not but moody and Patagonian it was. There were other Australians on board, French, Austrian, English, Italian, Chilean...the Chileans were the most fun. The blonde and I sat with Fabian (a 30 year old Chilean engineer from the Atacama desert who was quite serious until drunk when he would then pat the blonde's belly and ask how many little dogs were in there) and Pancho (slightly crazy 70-odd year ...

... to say farewell to Chile and start our first crossing of the Andes. We set off at 8am for our first bus trip of 2 hours around the southern rim of Lago Llanquihue with a stop for a walk to the spectacular Petrohue Falls in Chile's oldest National Park. The paths were slippery and rough and several older people fell over so we had to be careful! Then our first lake crossing; a 1 hour 40 minutes boat trip across Lago Todos Los ...

... seen, it was built by German Jesuits in 1918 and is a copy of the Marieenkirche in the Black Forest. I also loved the interior I think because it wasnīt as ornate as most of the churches Iīve seen. It was just a simple wooden interior with some great paintings of the stations. Afterwards I found the greatest empanada of my life!!! Canīt wait for Argentina!

... there was to know and was a huge fan of Metallica, Korn and Primus. It was pretty funny considering he was a pretty clean cut guy. Our van drove right onto the ferry from the main part of Chile and we took the 25 minute ferry ride to the Island. Of course they had tried to build a bridge here once and when the private company that was building the bridge asked for some money from the government, the plans were squashed. The ferry service was ...

... t have enough food to wait any longer or go any further. The cowpats weren't as I imagined going down, but after 2 days of rain and 250 cows the path had degenerated into a bog and I found my feet sinking in to levels higher than my boots in places. I think the weather combined with this was too much for Manny and he decided he wanted to head up to the north of Chile and some warm dry weather. I said good bye and continued through to Bariloche for what was to prove a very eventful 5 day trek.