Puerto Montt Here we..........Don´t Come

View across Lake Llanquihue
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We got to Santiago bus station armed with two one way tickets to Puerto Montt in the Lake District, 1000 km South of Santiago, to find that most buses leave at night, and that the bus station was packed with Chilieans and all their worldly belongings. The bus was comfortable although niether of us got much sleep. As day light broke through we couldnt see very much as there was a very heavy mist, which made visability hard, we could have been anywhere!!!

As we approached Lake Llanquihue and Mt Osorno, the sun was shinning which made it very easy for us to have a quick change of mind and get off the bus in Puerto Varas instead of our intended destination, P. Montt!! Much to the dismay of the coach crew!!

Mount Osorno- i think
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After mooching around, we found a lovely place to spend our 4 days, Compas Del Sur, it was warm and friendly and its where we met Liz and Dave, unbeknowns to us, they would be our travel companions for the next week or so!!

Tracey felt a bit dicky after the coach ride, but was ok ish as we went into town to buy some food at the supermarket. When we got back to the hostel, Tracey´s stomach took a turn for the worse and ended up with a 24 hour bug, causing unknown fluids to come out both ends, and Tracey was bed ridden. I went out for some dinner, steak for the poor man (Bife de Pobre) washed down with a few beers and a game of football on the TV.

the edge of town by the lake
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The next day Tracey started to feel better and I went out to bring back an empananda for lunch. In the evening Tracey felt mucho better and went downstairs to use the internet (free) and have a glass of wine??? I joined her realising Tracey had a whole bottle, and went to fetch it from the kitchen where I briefly spoke to a tall man with long hair and his girlfriend(I actually asked which bottle of wine was mine). They turned out to be Dave and Liz and we got talking to them over some wine that night.

The next day we went for a walk by Lake Llanquihue and took in the gorgeous Views over to the Andes and several volcanoes. After lunch we booked a bus ticket to Bariloche in Argentina, pretty much straight over the Andes from P. Varas, but an 8 hour ride through the nearest pass. We told Dave and Liz about the journey and they booked on the same bus later on. We had another ´meeting´with Dave and Liz that night, and got on very well with them.

We chilled out the final day, and got up at 0700 hrs on our departure day, and after brekkie walked to the bus stop with our new travel buddies....