TravelStream™ news feed for member bansemer on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/bansemer en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Mon, 21 Jan 2008 02:36:13 -0500 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/bansemer/s_america2007/1200208440/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/bansemer/s_america2007/1200208440/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/bansemer/s_america2007/1200208440/tpod.html Mon, 21 Jan 2008 02:36:13 -0500 Backpacking from Bogota to Patagonia (without our twelve grandchildren), via the Amazon and the Andes.

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Auckland, New Zealand

Sunday January 13th.We crossed the international date line during the long night, so Sunday never happened !
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/bansemer/s_america2007/1200294960/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/bansemer/s_america2007/1200294960/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/bansemer/s_america2007/1200294960/tpod.html Mon, 21 Jan 2008 02:18:57 -0500 Backpacking from Bogota to Patagonia (without our twelve grandchildren), via the Amazon and the Andes.

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Adelaide, Australia

Monday January 14th to AdelaideWe arrived in Auckland and found that the stupid rules about liquids, which had only infected European airports in February, had spread like a plague to New Zealand. Anything that looks remotely like a liquid, and this includes lipstick, is totally forbidden if in a container bigger than 100ml (even if it is practically empty), or if it is not presented in a sealable plastic bag (which they don't insist you seal !).Barb drank her water, Pete drank the coke in the fancy bottle destined for his daughter Kathy, but they refused to let us drink any of our rum. Barb unfortunately sneezed while drinking the water and made the pompous official behind the counter very angry as he got water all over him. Sorry guys, but if you don't display a notice saying these are the rules before you get to the confiscation point, then expect cross passengers. Some of us have been travelling a very long time, and simply do not know the current status., Had we known, the water would have gone into the nearest pot plant. We rescued our almost-empty indestructible 200ml shampoo bottle by Barb pleading to be allowed to empty it in the toilets. Convenient-sized bottles with screw caps are hard to get hold of. Well, the system could not cope, and the toilet floor got covered with foamy froth up through the floor drain ! Serve them right.We find these new rules absolutely beyond belief. If someone can tell us how a tiny lipstick can be dangerous in a cosmetics bag, but safe in a sealable (but open) plastic bag inside the same cosmetics bag, let us know please. We had a few spare bags and handed these out to other very grateful passengers.We had 5 hours to wait in Auckland, (all the fault of Zuji.com.au) and another couple of hours in Sydney, plenty of time to buy our allocation of duty-free Johnnie Walker whisky at half the bottle shop prices. It would have been nice if our family could have met us in Adelaide, but Pete doing a Pete, had emailed them to say we were arriving Tuesday. But there is a public bus from airport to town, and another to half a kilometre from our home, so we did what we have been doing for a year, got the bus ! It sure is strange getting to a place and knowing we will not be moving on in a few days.FootnoteMost of the garden is still alive, as the plants are drought tolerant Aussie natives, only a few have succumbed to the draconian watering restrictions imposed last July. We faced a huge mountain of mail and a week later are still wading through it. The shops are full of unnecessary extravagant consumer goods, house prices have risen yet again, and a trolley of essential goods in the supermarket set us back $100. Barb already has itchy feet ...
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/bansemer/s_america2007/1200121920/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/bansemer/s_america2007/1200121920/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/bansemer/s_america2007/1200121920/tpod.html Mon, 21 Jan 2008 02:13:46 -0500 Backpacking from Bogota to Patagonia (without our twelve grandchildren), via the Amazon and the Andes.

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Buenos Aires, Argentina

Saturday January 12th, chaos at the airportThe local morning TV news showed footage of shouting crowds at the airport. It was chaos. But this will have cleared up by the time we get there, we thought. So we had another go at visiting the bird reserve. It was still closed, and the bloke on the gate was just as unhelpful as yesterday. He told us to go to the other gate, 2 kms away, where hordes of disappointed people were being turned away. If they have to close such a popular place on a Saturday it would make sense to put out a noticeboard on the road so people did not need to walk 200 metres to the gate to find it was locked. Even the tourist office had no idea the place was shut. We had several hours to kill, and ended up going to the airport just after lunch. You can only wander round the shops in San Telmo so many times, and we thought we might as well waste time looking at the duty free shops instead. So we arrived at the airport 4 hours before our flight, and what a good thing too. Oh dear. Total chaos greeted us. There have been regular strikes by the airline Aerolineas Argentinas for a while, and this time some staff had walked off and irate stranded passengers were stopping people travelling on other airlines from going into the immigration area. Some people had been in the airport since yesterday or before, and tempers were very frayed.No-one told anyone anything, in any language, but Pete had a hunt and found we needed to fill in immigration cards, and pay airport tax. Even though we were told we had paid all taxes, you still have to buy an $18 US tax stamp at the airport. We handed over our book receipt at the place where you get a refund of GST (IVA), but were told the bookshop should have given us yet another piece of paper, or no money. After a while of standing in a non-moving queue to go to immigration, where a man who proclaimed himself a surgeon let rip at the person blocking the gate, and others took photos of the spectacle, an official told us all to change terminals, go to terminal B. The chaos was dreadful in B. A mass of people were waiting outside a small door, and a few were being let in occasionally, and some irate passengers were yelling their complaints at the top of their voices. Others slow handclapped. Then an unrealistic female employee came and yelled that we all had to move back 3 metres (into the melee of bodies behind). She said we should have queued properly ! Like where ? Barb got shoved completely off her feet and fell backwards, and there were some very frightened children. They eventually let us through and we got stamped out of this annoying country, but others behind us were not so lucky, and stood outside the door clapping and chanting.During our long wait in the departure lounge there was a confrontation at the entry door, which got heaved off its runners. People behind the door were yelling and shouting and shoving the door, those on our side were handclapping and stopping the door from opening. We sat next to a German couple who had already missed their flight and thus their connecting flight and were going to have to overnight in Santiago. No-one behind the LAN counter had a clue what was going on, or if we would even take off. Finally we were called to board the plane, which then sat for another couple of hours on the tarmac. Passengers who had checked in were jammed in the queue at immigration downstairs, and one by one they appeared, but the fully-booked plane was still half empty when it took off. We are so lucky we opted to get to the airport well ahead of time, or we would have been stuck in Buenos Aires airport overnight.In Santiago we had a rush to get our connection to Sydney, but made it. The plane was full of a school party from Brazil and plenty of noisy small children, but we were about to escape.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/bansemer/s_america2007/1200035460/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/bansemer/s_america2007/1200035460/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/bansemer/s_america2007/1200035460/tpod.html Mon, 21 Jan 2008 02:12:34 -0500 Backpacking from Bogota to Patagonia (without our twelve grandchildren), via the Amazon and the Andes.

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Buenos Aires, Argentina

Friday January 11th, Buenos AiresWe found out the hard way that the 10% hostel deposits booked over web site bookhostels.com are retained by the online company, and if you cancel they still keep the lot. The web site says there is a $2 booking fee, but this is a fraction of the truth. Our one night actually cost us 121 pesos, not 110.We shifted to the hotel Brisas del Mar a few blocks away, where for 50 pesos we have a double bed, nice bathroom, soap, ceiling fan and cable TV. Next item on the agenda was a visit to the ecological reserve beside the sea. En route we found the dock area, which has been snazzed up, has a spectacular pedestrian bridge looking like a harp, and is a very nice space to wander in. We had an early lunch at a roadside stall, expecting to be in the reserve for hours. Just our luck again. It was closed, and a team of electrical maintenance guys in hard hats were just arriving. 99.9% of the place has no electricity, so why close the lot ? The guy on the gate, who really didn't want to leave his comfy chair to talk to nuisance tourists, grudgingly said it will be open tomorrow at 8am.We still hadn't seen the zoo, and with not much else to do headed off there. Adelaide Zoo would weep with gratitude if it ever had such immense queues outside its gates. School holidays, and half the Buenos Aires families were taking their kids, who are free up to 12 years of age. You can either pay 8 pesos for general entry, or 15 to include such essentials as the aquarium and snake display. Pay just the 8, and everything else is an add-on of 4 pesos.Well, it was mediocre. The rainforest display was dismal, with a few sorry plants and a group of sad macaws.  Lots of animals were in cages far too small, and were unnamed. But we have seen far worse, and the animals generally looked healthy. Maras (Patagonian cavies) were free-roaming. Children tried to fill them up with zoo food, but they preferred grass.Back in the hotel, as this is being written, we are watching the local news. Riots are taking place in the dock area of Puerto Madero, where we were lunching just a few hours ago. For once we were not in the wrong place at the wrong time !The pedestrian mall Florida usually has lots of buskers, so it seemed a good place for our last night in Argentina. Just off the metro, a lady gave us a restaurant flier for a place round the corner. Barb had cannelloni, Pete steak and chips, and we stuffed ourselves totally with a piece of apple pie and cream between us. The cannelloni was the best meal Barb has had in this country, but Pete says his mum used to make much better apple pie, with far more apple. There were plenty of buskers. A guy of our age singing bluegrass songs was really good, and a pair of tango dancers showed us how it should be done (but you need to be lithe and 20 !).Back at the metro we were let in free, and this meant they were about to close for the night. At 10pm on a Friday ? But our trains arrived, and the hotel is just 5 minutes from a station.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/bansemer/s_america2007/1199948880/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/bansemer/s_america2007/1199948880/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/bansemer/s_america2007/1199948880/tpod.html Mon, 21 Jan 2008 02:11:20 -0500 Backpacking from Bogota to Patagonia (without our twelve grandchildren), via the Amazon and the Andes.

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Buenos Aires, Argentina

Thursday January 10th Buenos AiresThe bus trip was not actually the best. We were upstairs, and sometimes the top of the bus swayed so much on the bumpy road, there was still a roaring gale pushing it sideways too, that Barb woke during the night feeling nausea. She is never bus sick, and luckily wasn't this time either. A pity, breakfast did not meet the standard of last night's dinner. A 'media luna' (sweet croissant), a piece of cake and a few dry cracker biscuits, and coffee or tea. We got to the bus station only an hour late after 15 hours travel, superglued our possessions to our bods and rushed for a taxi. No robbers this time.We had made bookings at a hostel, Telmotango, which was pricey (110 pesos)  but the best we could find on the internet hostel site. They had already blotted their copybook by saying we had a room with bunk beds, but an email protest changed this to 2 single beds. Grudgingly we took the digs rather than forfeit a night's fee, despite an airless room with usless wall mounted fan, 2 very narrow single beds we couldn't put together, an unopenable wardrobe jammed against one of the beds, and a shared bathroom that had tiny showers almost out in the corridor and an unlockable toilet. Come on guys, for 110 pesos we expect better than this. Free internet, breakfast and armchairs don't make up for suffocation and lack of privacy.Pete wanted some new clothes so he can chuck out the ones that by now look very shabby. (Barb looks shabby too, but doesn't care). We headed to the pedestrian street Florida with its flashy shops. But he is too thin. Trousers are not made for skinnies like him, neither are jumpers.Back at the hostel Pete found another hotel for tomorrow, and we chatted to an English woman a couple of years older than us She is heading home early, as the crowds have got too much for her. The day she went to Iguazu there were 6000 visitors. She found the same at Torres del Paine in Chile, where our rip-offs pale into insignificance compared to what she had to pay for a posada in the park. She had her debit card eaten by an ATM, her UK  bank supplied another, but failed to tell her before it was too late that it can only be validated in the UK, so she had to borrow from her son. (We have learned the hard way, and travel with a pocketful of cards drawing on several banks.)For dinner we headed off to a favourite haunt from 6 weeks ago. Barb ordered a tomato, lettuce, potato, ham and cheese salad, straight off the menu. Carrot, celery and apple arrived. The elderly waiter disappeared, Barb marched over to the counter, mistake in hand, and the waiter almost had apoplexy. Customers carrying a plate of food in his restaurant ? Can this be true ? The right salad quickly appeared, in mammoth quantities.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/bansemer/s_america2007/1199862360/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/bansemer/s_america2007/1199862360/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/bansemer/s_america2007/1199862360/tpod.html Mon, 21 Jan 2008 02:08:14 -0500 Backpacking from Bogota to Patagonia (without our twelve grandchildren), via the Amazon and the Andes.

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Neuquen, Argentina

Wednesday January 9th, a miserable day in NeuquénAfter another non-breakfast we went to get the minibus to the bus station. After 15 minutes a kind man asked where we were going and said we were actually at the wrong bus stop. At the right one a friendly Guaraní woman from Paraguay, who worked at the bus terminal, said she had been waiting for a bus for 20 minutes. Half an hour later, bus-less, we set off to walk or find a cab, no bus in sight. Alas, contrary to what we had been told, not one of the buses heading to Bariloche would stop near El Chocón, and the only bus company that went there had 3 buses a day, 6.30am, 12.30pm and late afternoon. If we caught the next bus we would have 15 minutes to see the dinosaurs then have to run for the 2pm bus back. So,no dinosaurs. By now Barb is again breathing fire.Back in the city Misinformation Office we were pointed to a travel agent who had a car going to another dinosaur site in the afternoon. This went to a dig, but for $40 each we would have half the afternoon in a car and only 1½ hours there.So we went to the anthropology museum, which was nice but very small. It had a poster describing the theories of how people reached South America. The generally accepted one is that migration started from Siberia over the (then) land bridge, and hunter-gatherers gradually came southwards. But some anthropologists have suggested there was another migration from Europe, across the Atlantic.By now there was a howling gale outside, and half of the centre of Neuquén consisting of a dusty park (ignore the green pictures in the brochures), we found ourselves in the worst duststorm we have suffered for at least 30 years at home.So on to the Fine Arts museum. This had a very nice, but very small, collection of European art and Argentinian art. There was also what we call modern rubbish, and weird sculptures. For example, a flat slab of granite carved so it looked as if it had been bent at one corner. The same artist (artist ?) had created an installation of 39 chisels, neatly arranged in a rack. It could have come straight out of Pete's shed.We hung around the internet caff till 4pm so we could confirm our LAN flights at the local agency, Aerolineas Argentinas. The hotel guy had done a lot of phoning around to find out this bit of rubbish, but we hadn't the heart to tell him. There is no LAN agency in Neuquén. The hotel lobby was very hot so it was another taxi to the bus station ... where the only seats were in the sun. Barb sat on the floor for an hour, fuming again. Without her diabolical Sudoku book, Argentina would have driven her totally round the bend by now.But the bus exceeded our expectations. The evening meal started with a hefty nip of whisky, continued with schnitzel and rice, various nibbles, beer, soft drinks, and champers to finish. This was all included in the ticket price.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/bansemer/s_america2007/1199775840/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/bansemer/s_america2007/1199775840/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/bansemer/s_america2007/1199775840/tpod.html Mon, 21 Jan 2008 02:06:30 -0500 Backpacking from Bogota to Patagonia (without our twelve grandchildren), via the Amazon and the Andes.

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Zapala, Argentina

Tuesday January 8th, bus to NeuquénThe country was very pretty en route to the mining town of Zapala, with distant vistas of snow-capped mountains. It is mostly hilly grassland, with a few rivers, homesteads surrounded by Lombardy Poplar tree windbreaks, sheep and a few cattle, and the occasional gauchos on their horses. We passed a cliff that is home to condors, with a viewing area, but the condors were in hiding.From Zapala the road turned east, we lost the hills, and oil derricks were dotted over the landscape, but being small they looked OK. About half way to Neuquen we went through the towns of Cotral Co and Plaza Huincul, where part of the skeleton of the biggest dinosaur ever was found. This is the Argentinosaurus, 40 metres long and 18 metres high, a herbivore. As they only found a small part of the skeleton it is amazing they could work out its total size. Apart from a dinosaur museum there appeared to be absolutely nothing to do in either of these towns, which are there because of the oil.Neuquén was a couple of hours further on across a featureless plain. It was a mistake to stop there ! The bus station is new, 4kms from town, and fancies itself as an airport. It is long and narrow with 4 boarding gates and about 46 bus ticket offices, where even the sales staff wear shirts with stripes on the epaulettes, like airline pilots. Luggage is taken to an airport-style carousel, rather than the usual standing by the bus till your stuff is pulled out.The tourist office is hidden right down one end, with no sign to it. They told us which buses went to Buenos Aires, which was just as well or we would still have been bus-hunting by bedtime. We found tickets on a 'bus cama' (with seats that recline almost to a bed) on special for 124 pesos, and bought them for tomorrow.There is NO public bus to town, only minibuses which won't take backpacks, so we had to use a taxi to one of the old LP suggestions, Hotél Inglés, which they claimed to cost $12. The place was weird. We were let in through a Fort Knox steel gate by an anorexic woman in her 70s, who went and found another anorexic woman in her 50s. Between them they hardly uttered a word. We were shown a miserable room with 2 narrow saggy single beds, and an apology for a bathroom, for the equivalent of $30 US. So we ambled round the corner and ended up in our most expensive digs in a whole year, 140 pesos ($56), much like a cheap motel room at home. But it least it had CNN on cable so we could watch the exciting contest between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for the New Hampshire primaries. (She won). We went to the city tourist office to see how we could get to the dinosaur museum at El Chocón tomorrow, and were given directions that sounded quite plausible. We should have known better than to believe it. The same guy directed us to an internet café which had had the interior ripped out.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/bansemer/s_america2007/1199689380/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/bansemer/s_america2007/1199689380/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/bansemer/s_america2007/1199689380/tpod.html Mon, 21 Jan 2008 02:04:39 -0500 Backpacking from Bogota to Patagonia (without our twelve grandchildren), via the Amazon and the Andes.

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Junin de los Andes, Argentina

Monday January 7th, JuninWe had intended to move on to Alumine, but there are buses only on Tuesday, Thursday, (maybe) Saturday, and Sunday. Besides, Barb now has a rotten head cold and has spent half the night coughing. So we are staying here another night then going to Neuquen tomorrow.Junin is a lovely place to relax. It is quiet, has all the shops you can want, ripe cherries, peaches and nectarines, artesan's workshops, internet, restaurants, and a delightful river with small accessible islands. Add beautiful scenery, and what more could you want ? Ice cream ?  Take your pick of half a dozen ice cream and gelati shops. We bought ours at Tio Tom, which tempts you with chocolates as well (Pete always gives in to this sort of temptation). But make sure you arrive cashed up. The queue at the one and only ATM was usually 20+ people, and if you need to actually enter the bank take your next 2 meals in your daypack.There were many tourists around, mostly Argentinians, but it is not touristy like San Martin. In fact it is one of the nicest little towns we have visited in our 11 months away.We visited the Mapuche museum, with its genuine dinosaur bones 70 million years old, chunks of petrified trees, and photos of the many examples of rock art in the province. The church is really lovely. Built in 1999 on old foundations, it is the nicest modern church we have seen, possibly excepting the church at El Penol in Colombia. Painted glass windows depict local life rather than saints. There was a Mapuche man on his horse with 'bolas' (stone balls) on ropes chasing a rhea, another of a group of nuns driving a horse-drawn carriage.This is the only area in Argentina where we have met indigenous people, the Mapuche. Just across the Andes to the west live indigenous Chileans. Somehow they escaped being wiped out by the Spanish invaders many centuries ago. They are usually short in stature, have black hair, and darkish skin.We spent a couple of hours by the river, which is crystal clear and slightly blue. The water comes from yesterday's lake, and is entirely snow-melt at this time of year. Despite the chilly temperature of the water, and the fast-moving current, local people were happily swimming.Traditional men here wear plus-four trousers, very wide fancy belts, sometimes a cravat, and usually a flat cap.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/bansemer/s_america2007/1199342460/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/bansemer/s_america2007/1199342460/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/bansemer/s_america2007/1199342460/tpod.html Mon, 21 Jan 2008 02:03:04 -0500 Backpacking from Bogota to Patagonia (without our twelve grandchildren), via the Amazon and the Andes.

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Choshuenko, Chile

Thursday January 3rd, ChoshuenkoWe caught a morning bus to Panguipulli, and had spectacular views of the conical volcano Villarica. 20kms or so away, with plumes of white smoke coming from its snow-surrounded crater. Panguipulli looked nice, with a lake, but not too different from Valdivia, so it was on another bus to Choshuenko. By now the roads are hilly and the countryside is covered with trees. We got glimpses of the dormant volcano Choshuenko, with snow, but on reaching the village it had disappeared behind the hills. The bus dropped us at a cheap hostel and it was not difficult to select a room. We got the one with the cherry tree outside.Choshuenko sits beside a small lake with hills all round. How idyllic ... but this is the first time we have encountered tábanas. These are horse-fly type insects, about 15-18mm long, dark tops, orange tummies, green eyes, and a sting. They flew all around us in large buzzing swarms, preferring Pete this time. Luckily they are fairly sluggish, don't like smooth skin, and if they settle on your jumper there is usually time to swat them before the bite comes. Bites are a quick prang, and hours later we have not come up in lumps.Barb walked barefoot on the edge of the lake to avoid the tábanas, and managed to tread on a bee, which retaliated on the sole of her foot. Bee stings are definitely worse than tábana stings.We walked some more but not near the lake, Pete flapping his hanky at the pests, Barb limping alongside with a soccer-ball size swelling under her foot. There always has to be a catch to Utopia.Our hostel serves dinner, but at a hefty 4000 pesos. We searched every shop in town and bought some bread, cheese and ham for tomorrow lunch, strawberry milk for our cornflakes (thank goodness we bought a mammoth cornflakes pack last time). There is no fruit available in town, and the only vegies are very sad, 10 rotting tomatoes to every so-so one. Then we set off on the hunt for somewhere to change US dollars, or we could not afford dinner. No-one could, or would, but the only other restaurant in town accepted Visa cards. Great, we can eat. In Chile our money flows out of our wallets faster than we remember to replenish it from the ATMs.After a trout dinner, a young female Italian cyclist travelling on her own came in to have a meal and we got chatting. She is very brave, travelling by herself, especially on roads like today's, unsealed and very rough. She told us hair-raising tales of her 2 years working in Sao Paolo, Brazil, where you can find a gun poked at your head through a taxi window.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/bansemer/s_america2007/1199082660/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/bansemer/s_america2007/1199082660/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/bansemer/s_america2007/1199082660/tpod.html Mon, 21 Jan 2008 01:57:31 -0500 Backpacking from Bogota to Patagonia (without our twelve grandchildren), via the Amazon and the Andes.

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Puerto Montt, Chile

Monday December 31st 2007Party ? It didn't happen. This morning we woke to a drizzly grey sky and no land in sight. The gulf south of Puerto Montt is very wide. And so this continued all morning, with little to see, as land was very distant. This was the only part of the journey that for us became a little tedious, and the birds could hardly be seen through the rain. Our young German room mates had had Boredom written all over their faces since half way through the first day, and a well-travelled Spanish lady said that one day had been enough for her. Lunch was on-again, off-again, depending on what time we arrived at Puerto Montt, and ended up not happening as we started to dock about 12.30pm (this took ages). It still took nearly an hour before they let the first passengers off, except a few who were running to catch a bus.We had made a reservation at a hostel found on the web, and the owner said he would meet the ferry. We were not surprised he was not there, as we were about 5 hours late, but after getting a rip-off taxi to the hostel, who asked for 3000 pesos when it said 500 on the windscreen (we had to pay 2000 to get our luggage freed from the boot). Then we realised it was much more than the promised 5 minutes on foot to the bus station, and found the only people there were a totally loopy woman and a bloke with a few marbles missing. We fled.Just downhill we found a hospedaje in a private house (Ecuador 1399), the senora was very friendly, and we settled for a tiny room (10,000 pesos), and shared bathroom with a view over the bay. As it has turned out, there is no-one to share it with. And we have an English news channel on the telly.The supermarket was absolutely packed with people stocking up. Everything closes about 6pm today and tomorrow nothing will be open. Peaches and nectarines were half our market prices, and enormous German apple cakes cost $1 each (heavenly, they were). We bought food for all tomorrow, and just as well we did.Afterwards we hiked to the bus station and tourist office to see about getting to Parque Nacional Alerce Andino tomorrow. This park has huge trees 4 metres in diameter, a must-see for us. Well, there is only 1 bus going anywhere near the park, at 9.10am, no guarantee of a bus back, and no guarantee the park will be open. A tour for Wednesday was offered, $70 US each, for a 40km bus ride, 4-5 hours trekking, lunch, then back. So no park for us. Our guide book says January is the month for biting horse flies, so we may have escaped a nasty fate.Around 9pm we set off to find something to eat, and had almost reached the other end of the bay when we bumped into Alan and Barbara, the American mother and son we had made friends with on the boat. They had only found the yacht club so far, at $100 a head. Most of the restaurants are closed (on New Year's Eve !) and all we could find was in the smoking area of a very busy place, but a tempting menu and reasonable prices. We pigged out on avocado and chicken entrée, a mammoth piece of salmon, potatoes and salad for mains. It defeated us, there was far too much. Just before midnight the waitress brought us party hooters, masks and paper streamers, we paid the bill, and headed to the waterfront to watch the fireworks. A naval boat was moored in the bay and a superb display was put on, including some fireworks we have never seen before, like silver caterpillars and golden waterfalls. Every car horn in Puerto Montt sounded, party poppers went off, we blew our hooters and it was great. What a way to see in the New Year, and so nice to have the company of friends.
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