Erin & Regan's South American Adventure

Hola,

We were met at the bus stop in Puerto Montt by a woman with a hostal, she seemed nice and our last experience had worked out well, plus the price was good and she had a kitchen we could use (we´ve decided that in these more expensive countries cooking for ourselves is definately worth the effort).

That said, we went to dinner this first night at a restaurant she recommended, just up the road.  It was a little more than we would normally pay but the food was excellent.  It appears that here in Chile if you order steak, fish or whatever thats exactly what you get, with nothing else, no salad, chips, anything.  Instead you have to order the chips, salad or even "a lo pobre" (chips, fried egg, and fried onion) as well.  A kind of build your own plate sort of meal.

That said, you can still order "Lomo a lo pobre" so thats what I did.  Erin had the Salmon, with a side order of papas fritas (french fries).  Both meals were excellent.

After dinner we walked down the shore of the bay and explored the town then headed back for a hot drink and bed.

The next morning it was off to Chiloé an island just off the coast.  To get there you hop in a bus which rides on a ferry (like in Bolivia, but more modern).

In Castro, the main city on Chiloé we had a hostal in mind, we just had to find it.  The guide book had no map for this place, it being quite small.  Luckily the guy who recommended the hostal, also drew us a map and so after a couple of questions we were on our way there.  On the way we were intercepted by a guy, with a hostal, which was on the way to the one we were heading to.  We decided to check it out and after a bit of bargaining it seemed a good deal and so we stayed.

That night we did a bit of exploring along the sea shore and town.

We also had to visit the Cathedral which is famous for being built entirely of wood (as are all the churches in this area), including the wooden pegs used for nails.  These days the outside of the building appears to be covered by metal similar to corrugated iron, presumably to protect it from the elements.  It´s still pretty impressive.

The next morning it was really cold, and raining.  Apparently they get 200 days of rain a year here, yikes!  We decided that we didn´t really want to spend our time down here in cold, wet, Chile and so we jumped on a bus back to Puerto Montt where we caught the next bus to Bariloche, Argentina.