Puerto Montt

Today was our last port of call from the ship.  The next time we get off, we're off permanently.  So this was Puerto Montt.  It's the port city at the southern end of the most populated area of Chile.  We're now out of the south and out of Patagonia.  The port is buried among Chilean fjords.  We came up a channel to get here and will be going back out the same way.

We hired a tour guide and we started out in Puerto Montt itself.  From here, we had a good lookout over the city.  Although it was sunny for most of the day, it was still foggy in the distance - low clouds.

We then went up to Lake Llanquihue in the Los Lagos region.  The town of Frutillar is on this lake and is known for its music and music festivals.  All along the lake edge in the town are "statues" of musical instruments - like this piano.

We went to an outdoor museum there.  The area was settled by Germans and people from that area.  Much of the architecture in the area looks Bavarian.

After a while, we needed a banos and a coffee was also in order.  The person in the middle of this photo is Carolina, our tour guide.

And along with the coffee, we had a pastry.  Yum.  Notice the treble clef of chocolate on the side.

There is a very big-leafed plant here (couldn't tell you the name), and the stem is much like our rhubarb.  Gerard gives you some idea of the size of the leaf.

One of the attractions of this town is the theatre built on the lake.  It's a beautiful facility.  We couldn't go inside, but this is a photo on the wall of what the auditorium looks like.  A concert here would be wonderful!

After we left Frutillar, Dan mentioned something about grabbing a beer somewhere.  At one point, our driver did a U-turn because this sign was sitting out, which essentially says "get beer here".  So we did.



Here we are enjoying a local beer at the side of the road on their stand-up patio looking over the lake.  Notice the weather is warming as well.

Because we can't seem to get enough food and drink, we had lunch at this place.  It's a tiny little spot, but the food was authentically Chilean.  This is in Puerto Varas, another town at the end of the lake.

The timeframe in between was quite a bit more than it sounds.  We spent about 6 hours with them.  That's Carolina on the right, and Manuel, our driver, next to her.

Back on the ship, the clouds are lifting and we're starting to see Calbuco Volcano much better.  This is a volcano that erupted on 3 different days in April, 2015.  Quite a spectacular scene, apparently.  There are actually 3 volcanoes across the lake, but none were visible while we were in Frutillar, and we can only see this one here in Puerto Montt.

Tomorrow we will be at sea, then we will be arriving in Valparaiso, the port city of Santiago, Saturday morning.  My next blog will be from Santiago.