Puerto Montt

We awoke to the news of the earthquake in Japan and the chance of a tsunami, heading towards Hawaii and possibly towards us. ?? We watched the president of Chile on TV telling everyone to go to work and to school normally, and the captain didn’t seem worried, so we had breakfast and left the ship in one of the first tenders (thanks to Irunu who got us priority tickets). The day seemed rainy and grey as we approached the port, but we were destined to see the sun as we progressed.  We had arranged for a tour with a local agency to take us to Puerto Varas, to the falls of the Petrohue river and then back to Puerto Montt, with a stop for lunch.

Puerto Varas, and Puerto Montt itself, were first colonized by German settlers brought in by the Chilean government to populate the southern regions of the country. They were given land and initial amounts of food, money and seeds. It was up to them to clear the temperate rain forest which covered the land with vegetation and plant the land made fertile by local volcanic activity. The town of Puerto Varas is lovely. The German influence is still quite obvious. Many of the older buildings have been well preserved and there are many sidewalk cafes and shops for the tourist population.

We drove out of town past green fields and beautiful mountain scenes to visit the Petrohue river in a National Park. The vegetation is lush green all around. The riverbed was formed from lava which quickly solidified when it hit the cold water – black and grey waves of solid rock through which the water rushes and falls. The water usually has a transparent emerald green color to it (which we could appreciate in a video), but today it was dark grey like the rock due to a heavy rain early this morning which filled it with volcanic ash. 

The sun very nicely came out for us and cleared the clouds away from the tip of the nearest volcano, so we were quite suitably impressed with tne scenery. 

We drove back to Puerto Varas for a delicious lunch in a local seafood restaurant with gardens full of roses and hydrangeas and lilies. Next to the restaurant was an intriguing design shop that we wanted to explore, but although the sign indicated that they would re-open at 3:00 by 3:20 there was still no sign of activity and we had to leave to be back on board by 4:30. Irunu left a note for the manager, informing him/her of the tremendous sale they had missed by not opening on time. 

We stopped once at a lookout point from which we could view the harbor and the city of Puerto Montt, then back to the ship. We certainly could have spent much more time here. We’ll just have to come back and stay in Puerto Varas someday.