Puerto Varas, Chile! Dec. 16-18, 2012

Our bank cards arrived on Saturday (the post office fellow recognized us when we walked in and had the envelope ready!) and on Sunday we took the bus over the mountains to Chile. It rained along the way, so we had no great vistas, but the scenery was impressive none the less. We arrived in Puerto Varas on the shore of of Lake Llanquihue in late afternoon.

The rain had stopped and in the evening the clouds lifted enough that we could see the tops of the two volcanoes towering across the lake.

We stayed at a small, friendly hostel a block from the lakefront. Again, our fellow guests were European. English and French were spoken as much or more than Spanish.

We had our first taste of Chilean seafood in Puerto Varas. Paila marino, Mike’s favorite, is a clear broth filled with 8-10 different kinds of fish and shellfish. I had a crab chowder so thick with crabmeat that the spoon stood up in it. We did not know what we were missing when we passed up the pisco sours, but we found out the next day when we reached Chiloé.