Puerto Varas

After Chiloe I headed to Puerto Varas, a town from which you can go walking etc. around the Chilean Lakes District. The forecast was rain rain and also rain. Joyous.

I decided to say 'fuck you weather' and crack on with my plans regardless, which led to a near-drowning experience on a rental bike when I ended up lost in a monsoon. It was raining so heavily that I couldn't use my mobile to look at a map, because the screen thought that the raindrops were fingers typing commands. My waterproof trousers and jacket became saturated and from then on served only as fashion items. I was cycling round the edge of the lake to Frutillar, a town created by German settlers which has lots of German style architecture and signs for Kuchen. The first part of the route was a bumpy stone road which was so muddy but satisfying because I had a mountain bike that just bounced over the stones without major issue. I was originally only going to cycle halfway to Frutillar, but the weather changed to normal-level rain and then the rain actually stopped so I thought I better carry on if only to dry off a bit. The whole trip was about 60km and I spent a very quick hour in Frutillar because I had to get the bike back for a certain time. I had cake and coffee and legged it around the town, the most notable things being the unusual architecture and a nice pier into the lake.

Back at the hostel I met an Israeli girl who was very nice but spent half an hour talking to me about how people have masculine and feminine energies and we must listen to the feminine energies and eat certain foods at certain points in our menstrual cycle, etc. I did lots of vacant nodding.

I was very upset to find that I had been moved from the ultimate travellers' goal of the coveted bottom bunk to a top one where the ceiling was 1 foot from my face and I had to do yoga-esque poses to get into it without knocking the ceiling light. The girl opposite me hit her head 3 times in the half an hour that we were reading in bed!

The next day I met up with none other than Carmen, who had disorganisedly made her way to Puerto Varas from El Bolson the previous night without booking a hostel and ended up spending loads of money on an emergency airbnb. Classic Carmen. I met with her and two friends she had made in El Bolson, a French girl and a Swiss German guy, and we went on an adventure to the national park...in the rain. Our first stop off was a waterfall which was quite cool and powerful but super touristy. We wandered around the area and found some lagoons and bits of river which were much quieter and much nicer because of it. The water was really clear and all the lush greenery surrounding the pools, even the rain, made it really atmospheric and led to lots of group selfies and mini videos of us jumping, throwing large rocks into the water in an attempt to take arty pictures of the splash, etc. The lagoons were the archetypal fairy glen.

Afterwards we accidentally hitchhiked to the next place just down the road, which was a large lake and beach area, by this point it was monsoon-level-rain again. Stefano had done a joke effort to hitchhike with a comedy lunge which had worked immediately, though I think the driver thought it was just him, but he coped well with four of us and crammed us all into three seats of his little truck and then had to put his friend in the boot (who he was picking up later). We spent quite a long time in a cafe waiting for the rain to stop then decided to just go for it and had a brief amble around the beach, chatting to an Argentinian guy and trying to take more arty photos of each other on a wonky pontoon over the lake. The lake probably was absolutely insanely beautiful in nice weather and was pretty beautiful in bad weather, with turquoise blue water and jagged, toothy, tree covered hills that looked like they should be in South East Asia.

When 'chatting' to the Argentinian guy I remembered how much easier it is to understand people from Argentina compared to Chile. In Chile everyone shortens words, uses slang and speaks at 100 miles an hour. I met someone from Madrid who said he cannot understand Chileans. However, people from Buenos Aires have a weird dialect where they pronounce 'll' and 'y' as a 'sh' noise. So normally galleta (biscuit) is pronounced gayeta in Spanish but people from Buenos Aires say gasheta. Muy complicado!

Our journey back was eventful as our little local bus began spewing out black smoke from the gearbox area and we had to evacuate into the pissing rain as everyone was choking. Everyone immediately started smoking which didn't seem the best idea to me, and the driver began pouring everyone's bottles of water into the area the smoke was coming from. Stefano took a selfie with every passenger and the smokey bus and then we hitchhiked back before everyone else got the same idea.

That evening I practiced my Spanish with a Chilean guy on the sofa in the hostel and watched Into the Wild. My Spanish practice basically involved me monologuing and then not understanding his replies/questions.

The next day was a lovely rest morning where I wandered around the town and went to a great museum slash art gallery. It is owned by Pablo Fierro who seems to paint pictures of houses and birds. The house is really interesting with lots of wonky ceilings and odd staircases. The artist has put lots of random items all over the house and stuck postcards on which people had written comments for him all over the walls and ceiling. The artist himself was upstairs painting something. I tried to take a photo without him noticing and looked like a creepy stalker hiding behind things.

Off I went to Pucon.

1- soggy lake on trip out with Carmen and co, and attempt at new pose (defo works)
2- museum
3- ridiculous bed
4- wet bike ride
5- pier in FrutillarRead more