Puerto Varas & Puerto Montt

Yes my friends.  That massive, majestic, mountain is actually a volcano right on the edge of a lake in the Chilean city of Puerto Varas.  And no, this isn't a product of google images.  I (Clark) took this picture while standing in the sands of the lakeside.  Puerto Varas is beautiful.  {Amy's comments in blue.}  Actually, I am pretty sure I took this picture; but yes, Pto Varas is a darling little town.  Very picturesque.  We were so happy when the clouds cleared up to give us the view of Lake Llanquihue with Volcan Osorno.

This is the main plaza of Puerto Varas.  That small figure you see is Amy. I think.  I tried to convince her to stand closer to the camera, but she insisted that I get her and the whole scene in the shot.  Well there you go, Amy.  Once again, here is another Plaza de Armas. And for the record, he wasn't that convincing.

This is the main road in Puerto Varas.  Those lampposts are dressed up like candy canes.  They look like they belong in a Dr. Seuss story.  The candy cane them would have made more sense if it was Christmas and not New Year's day.

We were walking down by the lake and who did we bump into?  David Hyde Pierce, the actor who plays Frasier Crane's balding brother on the television show Frasier (copyrighted).  Oh wait.  That's me.  Nevermind. 

This was the cottage that we stayed in while in Puerto Varas.  It was over a hundred years old and very quaint.  It was a really nice place to stay, except for the "watchdogs" that guarded the house: a labrador and a german shepherd.  Apparently they were trained to bark anytime the wind blew a little, or a leaf fell off a tree, or somewhere off in the distance a car drove by.  It was hard for me to get some sleep with them "watching over us" so well.  So, one of my student's dad is from Chile and his parents happen to live just outside of Puerto Varas and just happen to have a couple of cabins that they rent out.  It turned out to be a great connection and he got us a great deal on the house.  It was surrounded by gorgeous gardens and fields and sat right near the lake.  After spending 3 very busy, packed days in Patagonia, it was really nice to be in a quiet location where we could relax a bit more.  We couldn't even muster up the energy to stay up til midnight on New Year's Eve!

Our master bedroom.

Our master kitchen.  Do they call it that?  It was actually super nice for the area.  It had a stereo and a satellite TV and a couple of bathrooms.  And this was just the upstairs.  We had the entire cottage just to ourselves.  It was quite fun to make some of our own meals, use the wood-burning stove and stay in the same place for a few days.  And no, they don't call it a master kitchen...ever.  Unless maybe there are multiple kitchens and there is one that only the "masters" of the house use.

This is the surrounding area of the cottage we stayed in.  The picture was taken from the view of our upstairs window.  Looks similar to the Garden of Eden.  Just fewer animals.  And we didn't walk around in the buff.  Except once.  But the best part of our stay here was when Amy said, "lets walk down the really busy road with a 65 MPH speed limit for a mile or two and find a place to eat some Kuchen (German cake)."  As a supportive husband I went along with it.  Seven miles later we decided to turn around and walk home in the pitch black with no sidewalk on the road.  I rated the danger factor of that stroll at an 8 out of 10, just safer than being a watermelon at a Gallagher comedy show and just barely more dangerous than being two teenagers making out in a cabin in a Friday the 13th movie.  In my defense, the walk was initially Clark's idea; I just gave our walk an unreachable destination. 

Another view just outside our cabin.  These are some plants that are indigenous to Chile.  Probably something expensive.  These are pretty much just raspberry bushes.

Here is my beautiful wife standing in front of a beautiful vista by the lake shortly before our leisurely stroll became a Death March..  You can tell that it is getting dark and we are about 7 kms away from our cottage on foot.  Luckily Amy was wearing really good clothing for walking by a busy road in the dark.  Oh, I forgot to tell you that we never found the restaurant or kuchen.

The Cardenas family.  A really sweet family that fed us Lamb on New Year's Day.

This is us eating once (a small meal before dinner) at the Cardenas Family's casa.  I know things look pretty calm in this picture, but the day before (New Year's) was full of drama!  There were lots of people and random relatives in and out of the house while María Teresa was preparing the meal and one of them wanted to discuss religion with me.  He had definitely been drinking and wasn't making too much sense. I tried to answer his questions simply and then just started avoiding/re-directing the conversation.  After a while he started to become pretty rude and belligerent and I started thinking "Hello!  I am a visitor here! When is someone going to do something about this crazy person who is attacking me?!"  At one point he had his finger 2 inches from my face and was shouting "Who is your God?  Defend yourself!"  Finally, the mom told him to get out and when he refused another random relative got up and decked him right in the face about 2 feet from the dinner table we were sitting at.  I looked at Clark with big eyes as a brawl went down right there in the living room.  The drunk guy was definitely losing and they eventually dragged him outside.  The chaos continued outside and I became very nervous for my rental car that was parked in front of the house.  So the carabineros (Chilean police) showed up and María Teresa had to go explain what had happened and things started to calm down.  For a few minutes.  Shortly after another cousin visiting for the week started feeling sick, passed out, was carried to the couch, came to, and then had some sort of panic attack where she was having a hard time breathing.  Then she started having contractions.  Did I mention she was seven months pregnant?  Yep.  They called an ambulance and when it didn't come fast enough, they loaded her up in our rental car and we drove her to the hospital.  It was quite the way to kick off the New Year.  (She turned out to be just fine, by the way).  

This is Puerto Montt.  It is a city about 10 miles away from Puerto Varas and is also by water.  Ocean Water, in fact.  Not as beautiful as Puerto Varas, but still a lot of fun.  This is the view I saw each day as I left my apartment in this area.  We did a drive-by just for fun.

Also, this was my first experience driving a car in Chile.  When we finally found an available rental car at the airport, it was a rainy, busy day, we had no map and the car was a stick-shift.  I was a little nervous (it had been a few year since I'd driven a manual).  I only stalled a few times over the course of 4 days and by the end of our stay we started to get an okay feel for the streets.  Driving them is so much different than walking them like in the mission!

The Pacific Ocean overlooked by Puerto Montt.  And there is a rock in the picture.

This is a family that Amy met while serving a church mission in Chile.  They are fantastic people.  José Miguel and Marisol.  They strolled around the city with us and I was able to have a 15 minute or so conversation with Jose Miguel.  He spoke a few sentences in English and he was really patient with me. They are two of the sweetest, most amazing people.  We spent such a fun day with them.  And for the record, Clark did a great job doing his best to speak Spanish.  He made a great impression on my Chilean friends.   

Bad Boys III

Amy and Marisol by the ocean.

This is a famous set of statues in Puerto Montt.  It is a depiction of the first German settler telling other German settlers where they can go, which apparently is to Falabella, a local department store just out of the picture.  Notice that the first German settler had a dog.  And that dog had 3 dogs and then those dogs had 3 dogs and then those dogs had 3 dogs.  You get the picture.

This is Angelmo, a local strip mall (an artisan market) in Puerto Montt.  We just bought some Coca-Colas and a scarf.

These are some boats in Angelmo.  Pretty views down by the docks.

Angelmo also had a fish market.  These are some of the fish that would be sold at said fish market. 

They also sell other stuff at the fish market.  Here Amy does one of her favorite poses by said other stuff.

We went back to Jose Miguel and Marisol's house and they fed us lunch.  Hamburgers with avocados and Mayonaise.  Delicious.  Did I mention that Chileans put avocados on almost everything and it makes it really tasty?  One of my favorite things about Chile.  That and banana milk.

What can I say about this guy?  His name is Armando and he is a sweet, kind, old man.  He started to cry like I was cutting onions when he saw Amy.  He was a little intoxicated and he didn't have any teeth.  I thought I had been learning Spanish until I listened to Armando speak and realized I couldn't understand a word he said.  Amy informed me that she didn't understand half of what he said either.  I love this man, but he really is hard to understand at times!  But he was super sweet and he gathered his whole family around.  My description wouldn't do it justice, but let me just say that you haven't truly lived until you have seen Armando gumming a piece of chewing gum that we brought him from America.  That is what Mel Gibson meant in Braveheart.  "Every man dies, but not every man has seen Armando chewing on gum without any teeth."  That was in one of the edited scenes of Braveheart.

Here Armando is sporting the unbuttoned shirt look made famous by my grandpa Don Carlos.

More dusky pictures of the Volcano in Puerto Varas.  If I look bloated in this picture, it is because we had just eaten tons of food and drank tons of carbonated soda right before this picture.

And that's all of the pictures.  Hope you enjoyed Puertos Montt and Puerto Varas as much as Amy and I did.