Up at 6.30 and very blearry eyed. Our first trip out off ship today. We are in the Chilean Lake District, a huge area of lakes and volcanos. As we drove through Puerto Montt the city wasn’t inspiring, but as soon as we left the suburbs, everywhere became green as we headed to Lake Llanquihue. The whole area is studded with glacial lakes, and towering over this lake, with it’s snow capped summit is The Osorno Volcano.. Stunning.
The whole area looks like you could be in Bavaria, not withstanding the volcano in the background. Around about 1850, 5000 German settlers were invited to come and settle in the area. The only problem for the staunchly Catholic Chileans, was that the people who came were Lutherian protestants, but there wasn’t much they could do. Especially when they all settled in well and became high yield producing hard working farmers.
The houses, scenery and villages still look German, and the language is still, together with Chilean, spoken at home. And the kuchen or cakes are wonderful and they have a beerfest every October.
We had a scenic drive around the lake and then drove down to the pier at Lake Todos to catch a boat for an hours cruise past the Osorno Volcano. We were so lucky with the weather today. As with the Lake District backhome, it is reknown for its rain, over here at least 200 days of the year. Today the sun shone and we were soon in tshirts.
The next stop was the Petrohue Rapids, which were great, except for the other 1000 people that were there, great to see, but I didn’t think it was safe walking with so many people. It is Sunday so of course there was our shipload and the Chilean weekend visitors. But hey we managed.
We stopped for a great lunch in a Bavarian restaurant. The area is famous for it’s farmed salmon, which we had with a pisco sour to start, pumpkin soup and hot fresh bread, and then kucken to finish..yum.
Our last stop was the lovely lakeside town of Puerto Varas, or City of Roses, and they were everywhere,together with huge hydrangeas and wild fushia. You would have thought you were in the Austrian lakes, what a lovely place. People come here in summer for their holidays, the rich have cabanas, and we saw some beautiful ones. The not so rich rent cabins or camp by the rivers. Would love to see more of the area sometime.
Tired we staggered back to the ship, cold glass of wine waiting for us.
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