Puerto Montt, Chile, 1/29/16

Puerto Montt, out last port of call before we debark in Valparaiso Sunday morning.

We discussed, researched and decided on our excursions before Christmas, so sometimes it's hard to remember what we chose and why. And so we found ourselves taking a tender to shore before 8 am (it's all a vast right wing conspiracy to get me up and at 'em every morning) and off on an eight hour tour!

With Gabriel as our trusted guide we set off to explore the Lake District of Chile. For a long, skinny country it certainly has a lot of variety. We first went to Lake Llanquihue and boarded a nice sight-seeing boat for an hour on the lake. The water is this strange milky aqua color, quite beautiful. The lake is in a national park but this being Chile there are some private homes along the shore. Gabriel indicated with a shrug of his shoulders that money changes hands and things happen. It reminded me of an uninhabited Lake Tahoe if Lake Tahoe had a soaring, snow capped volcano (Osorno) on one side! Very dramatic. At first the summit was cloaked with wispy clouds but slowly they parted. Just above the volcano was the moon. The cameras were clicking like mad.

Afterwards we went down the road to another part of the park to visit a waterfall. It sounded like a waterfall as we got closer but it was really the river spilling over a series of rocks. The water was that same gorgeous aqua color. There is river rafting downstream from the falls. We continued to drive around the lake to Puerto Varas, one of the resort towns on its shores where we had lunch at a very nice hotel. Since it's high summer there were oodles of kids swimming in the lake. That water comes from the Andes, it's gotta be brisk! A little time in the little town and then back to the ship.

Since it was a two hours drive TO the lake we figured a two hour nap FROM the lake. Gabriel said we'd spent too much money on the excursion to sleep so proceeded to talk about this and that all the way back! I must admit he was right; better to learn a bit more about the surroundings. We can sleep on the overnight flight home on Sunday.

Back on the ship we had dinner with two couples from northern Italy. One woman spoke English and her husband did, sort of. The other man understood some English but his wife neither understood or spoke it. Conversation was an adventure.