So, it´s raining again outside for some reason and it´s horrible and cold.. I want to be in the house but I must push on to the next destination today in an hour or so the bus leaves this little town called Puerto Varas through a small city called Puerto Montt for the island of Chiloe.
Well to start I think I should tell you all about the journey on the bus I had coming from Pucon. Got up at 7 for the bus at 8.10 to Puerto Varas right.. Got ready and everything checked out and did all that stuff arrived at the bus stop on time and boarded the bus. It wasn´t a very pleasent looking bus but you would expect that I guess. About an 2 hours into our journey the back seats of the bus started to smoke and this was heavy smoke not your normal smokers on the bus kind of smoke. So all the locals that were sitting in the back came rushing to the front of the bus. I was seated around middle of the bus, saw and smelt everything. My god the stench was like burning plastic or something.. Anyways I think it was the heating on the bus that was causing the problem. The bus driver stopped the bus in the middle of the highway and started looking around to see what was wrong. Of course he couldn´t find anything wrong, by this time the smoke had already stopped pouring out of whereever as the heating wasn´t on anymore as the bus wasn´t moving. So we started off down the road again, again the smoke comes billowing out of the back seats. The conductor then goes to sort it out armed with a swiss army knife. Anyways after alot of fiddling the bus is stopped on the side of the highway again this time with almost everyone leaving the bus to the relative safety of the side of the highway.. A couple minutes later we were told to board the bus again and again we started off toward our destination. The emergency windows open full to ventilate the bus and get rid of the smoke that was still lingering. My god that was quite an interesting ride.
I thought a couple moments there that it would be like the stagecoach buses in Auckland that seem just to magically erupt into flames of fire. Anyways maybe that´s just my imagination at work. But we arrived eventually at a town called Valdivia and were told to change buses. Now this was a brand new bus I think it was much more comfortable and more like the price we paid which was 5,900. So that was the first bad experience on a bus in Chile.
As I said earlier I´m in Puerto Varas, it´s about 30 minutes by bus to get to the bigger city of Puerto Montt which is billed at the gateway to Patagonia which is where I want to go. So I went and checked out the prices from here to Chiloe, which is an island off the coast of Chile which is billed to have the most wonderful seafood and the most number of UNESCO protected churches anywhere in the world. There is a town called Castro, that where I´m going at a cost of 5,000 which includes a ferry ride across the channel. Not that it matters right now as it is cold and there isn´t anything to see. I hope the weather clears up or else I will be in Puerto Varas maybe for another day, which isn´t really what I want to do.
I checked out to prices for the ferry from Quillon to Chailten it was 17,500 for a 5 hour ferry ride then from there to bigger city is 18,000 I don´t know if it will be worth it just to see a glacier. I think I should see what happens but definately I´m going to Chiloe today or tomorrow and will sort of what to do from there if I do decide not to go any further south then I will go to Argentina and see what its like in Bariloche and then from there to Bueno Aires.
So not many dramatic stories these couple of days but then again I did get the best meat on a stick anywhere in the world yesterday outside the main bus terminal in Puerto Montt for 300 my god they were wonderful. Don´t know what the meat was but it was good. I want more.. Oh speaking of food, I had the most wonderful sourgrot outside of germany when I arrived in Puerto Varas which has aparantly a very large german population.. I don´t think it does some how from what I can see but there is definately a feel of being in Barvaria here as the architecture is very similar.
Ok I´ve written way too much photos are to come soon. Gotta get that stupid adaptor for 10,000 so not good. Stupid Sony cameras...
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