A long bus ride south
On Thursday the 20th of March we hopped on an overnight bus from Viña del Mar in Valparaiso to Puerto Montt. We stayed on the bus for 14 hours. It was a long ride but it started with some excitement, we arrived at the bus stop 1.5 hours early, only to be told 2 hours later that the bus “had been and gone!” This wasn’t true because we looked out for our bus all that time. As a solution, we were put on a short bus to Santiago where we joined our “real bus” to Puerto Montt. When we were on the right bus from Santiago onwards, we somehow got the same seats we paid for which was on the top deck at the front of a double-decker bus.
During the night trip we didn’t get out once, but we did stop for tolls quite often. The bus driver also had to stop the bus twice at police stops. At these police stations we would have officers with sniffer dogs come onboard that would search the bus. During the second police stop one of the passengers got escorted off the bus and didn’t come back, we don’t know what happened!
During the long bus ride, there was not much to see out the window since it was a night bus. Luckily most of us got a little bit of sleep on the bus. We were still quite tired, hungry and thirsty (as we only had two bottles of water thinking we could leave the bus via set stops) by the time we arrived in Puerto Montt. We did have some food on us for the long journey. Once we had eaten and had something to drink, we made our way to our hotel. After setting up in our hotel we decided to go and explore Puerto Montt.
Puerto Montt is the capital of Chile's Los Lagos region. It was original named "Melipulli," meaning "four hills" but then later got changed to Puerto Montt. It was named after Manuel Montt who was the President at the time the city was founded. Puerto Montt also serves as one of the major entry points to the Chiloé Archipelago and the Chilean Lake District. Puerto Montt has a large population of German immigrants that arrived long before the First and Second World Wars. The Chilean Government encouraged German immigration in 1848. Many Chileans are descended from German immigrants, about 30,000 of whom arrived in Chile before the First World War.
Puerto Montt has a very big shopping centre with an incredible view of the ocean. I didn’t enjoy Puerto Montt as much as I would have liked to because I thought the town was a bit boring apart from the shopping centre and I don’t even enjoy shopping. Some parts of the town were just falling apart and I think that affects the feeling of a place.
After our exploration of the city, we picked up a pizza and went back to our hotel, had a shower and went to bed.
The next day my mum and brother went out to get the next rabies vaccination, because as I said in my previous blog, my brother got bitten by a dog. That day I went on a solo outing, I bought a new art journal and I went to a cafe for lunch. I got my first ‘Completo’ – it is a Chilean hot dog, and it is one of Chile’s specialties. I didn’t really like the taste of the sausages that they put in these hot dogs, so I was not a huge fan of the Completos. I did however enjoy the avocado, tomato and mayo that they put on the top. I don’t think I will try it again, but I am glad I did try it.
When we returned to the hotel from our outings, a heavy metal band started playing directly across the street from our hotel room. The hotel staff told us that the metal band would continue until 4 am, so we seriously considered moving to a different hotel that evening. But after speaking to the hotel staff, they generously gave us free use of extra rooms that were vacant at the other end of the building – away from the loud band. This was a good solution. We did end up getting some sleep that night which we may not have done if we stayed in our original room.
The next day we moved cities again. We moved because we were not really ‘feeling it’ in Puerto Montt as much as we would have liked. In those kinds of situations, it’s just better to move on and find a place that is more fun. Puerto Varas definitely did that for us. We immediately felt happier in this new town.
As we drove twenty minutes north to Puerto Varas, we got out first good look at the volcanos in the region. They looked quite spectacular. In Puerto Varas we had a very nice little service apartment. That night we decided to explore the new town we ended up stumbling upon a wonderful folklore festival which was really cool to watch. They were dancing some traditional South American dances which was very interesting. There was local music and delicious food.
Stay tuned to the next blog as we walked on a Volcano.
