Sirocco Puerto Varas

... and I trudged along as her parents took the their time following us from behind. As we scaled the stairs along the side of the cold stonewall, an aerial view of the city began to unfold below us. The city’s red roofs stretched across the hilly landscape. Once we reached the top of the staircase we found ourselves before a columned Roman-style building. Souvenir shops and flamenco guitar players catered to the tourists filling the street. To ...

We had decided to visit Segovia for the day - so retrieved the car from one of the many underground car parking facilities nearby and set off early in order to try to avoid the rush hour traffic of Madrid. <br><br>Segovia is around an hour and a half drive from Madrid and well worth a visit. <br><br>We had imagined a hill top town that was visible from a distance (perhaps similar to a Tuscan town) - the reality was that from the direction of our approach Segovia just seemed to ...

... We parked in an underground garage that had parking spaces which were 4 cm wider than the car (no exaggeration). How do they park here? No wonder all of the cars are full of dings and the walls of the parking garage have tons of scratches. Conrad did a superb job parking the car. We did notice that most people had all of their passengers get out and then they parked the car.<br> We walked to street level and headed to the Aqueduct. As you round ...

... but I do believe that only an Almighty God could be so awesome as to make places such as this for even the lowly of creatures to enjoy. You could hear peace whispering through the trees, and joy laughing in waves against every rock. We wait about 15 minutes for the last bus to Puerto Varas to arrive. Five city slickers reflect on their day in the wilderness. It was a good day and a perfect end to a long week<br><br>We take the bus to Puerto Varas and then ...

... managed (through my broken Spanish and his broken English) to get a lift into town, and was also given a few local hostel and restaurant reviews for good measure. I have had my fill of long distance buses; fortunately I wont have to take another for two weeks. Puerto Varas is another Swiss-German town, again on the shores of a lake (this time Lago Llanquehui - the third lagest in South America) and this time overshadowed by three volcaones ...

NOTE!! My camera became all sorts of messed up when I got to Puerto Varas. I think some residual ash and sand got in to where it wasn´t supposed to, and it has been having trouble focusing. Some of these pics are really blurry...but I think the camera is behaving better now. I took a 7 hour bus to Puerto Montt in hopes of just flying out the next day in order to spend more time in the Santiago/Valparaiso/Viña del Mar area. Taxied ...

... we went Whitewater rafting in river Petrohue. Our tour guides were a blast, and there was a cute Uruguayan family and two other Americans in the bus. I made the mistake of wearing a black shirt and was completely attacked by the horseflies when I exited the bus. I found out quickly that those suckers bite!! The Uruguayan father pulled out his thermos and mate within a minute of exiting the bus. (more about ...

We flew from Punta Arenas to Peuro Montt where we had great fun in broken spanish with the rent a car man. Dan had organised the car hire but between our spanish and his english none of us knew what was going on when we collected it. We headed from the airport to Puerto Varas about half way from where we were due to pick Sarah and Blaithin up the following day. This is a pretty little place with lots of outdoor activities. We only had ...

... went in and took the third one. During the process I noticed the man next to me was giving eye signals to the man on the first urinal, who obviously was looking left-and-right and was not the slightest bit in doing his "business" there. With my basic instinct I quickly pulled out of ...

... tried to stand in the middle of this frenzy to have a picture taken as the Queen of the butterflies, but failed each time. They flew away too fast. We had to settle for creeping up and taking silent photographs while they rested. We were even able to see two wan-winged butterflies mating. As we walked, bicycles sped by, not missing the chance to say "buen día" or "gracias" as they passed us. A group of 6 hikers were dangerously close so we started ...