Lake Hopping in Chile

After hiking our (now a bit smaller) asses off in Patagonia, we were on our way to the Lakes District. Rather than go the 36+ hours on the bus, we decided to spring for the $120 plane fare to get there in 2 hours. (A good choice I think...)

The aerial view of the Lakes District.

We soon arrived in the city of Puerto Montt, which is a city of about 150,000 people. All the modern amenties but a little anticlimactic after all the stunning scenery in Patagonia.

So we did what seemed like the right thing to do in the that case.... headed out for a pub lunch then spent the day as mall rats! Haha. No really, we did. We wandered around the enormous mall for a little while until the found a theatre. Score! I hadn´t seen a movie in ages and they had some in English (that hadn´t been dubbed). Mostly based on the time table, we ended up seeing Sweeney Todd, a rather odd musical with Johnny Depp playing a murderous barber in old London who teamed up with a lovely meat pie maker running the shop downstairs to make people meatpies. Interesting and gory to say the least!





We did as bit of window shopping, bought Kyle a new pair of hiking boots (see the "hiking boots saga" in the previous blog), hopped on the internet for a couple hours and finished it all off with a meal at the food court of KFC with a beer. As you do when you´re just hanging around in Puerto Montt on a Sunday afternoon with nothing to do for 6 or 7 hours...






After spending just 1 day in Puerto Montt, we thought it time to move on. We jumped on a bus to a town called Puerto Varas, a nice little port town just 45 minutes away. A bit nicer and very relaxed. We spent a few days there just relaxing, catching up on our sleep, reading and our blogging (a bit).

The view of the sunset from our hostel window.

Kyle´s highlight of Puerto Varas (and food of the week).... hotdog (pancho) completo.

After a couple days, we moved on to Ancud, a little town in Chiloe´, which is one of the spots where you can visit penguin colonies. (I missed seeing the penguins in Punta Arenas, but I wasn´t going to miss them twice! Must see the penguinas!)

We got very lucky with the timing of it all... arrived with a perfect amount of time to find our hostel, have a big lunch and hop on the shuttle to go to the penguin colonies at Peñihuil.

The biggest burrito in the world that I had at a little Mexican place in Ancud. (Could have fed a famly of 4!)

The view back on the beach in Puñihuil near the Penguineras.

The dodgy little ramp that the guys pushed out into the water so that we could get into the little zodiac boat.

Our first sighting of the little cuties....

Some of my favorite penguins...

And, again, I will apologize for the glut of photos of the penguins. They are just gorgeous!!

One of the cutest little guys, shaking off after he climbed out of the water.

The same little guy preparing himself to make the big leap off the rock!

And some other cute little animals... lots of ducks!

Quack, quack!

And last and definitely least... the ugliest bird I've ever seen...

But somehow he looks better in flight!