Patagonian Grand Adventure

Day Five – 17 February 2014

Weather: fog then sun, 13-16

I got to sleep in! My alarm got me up at 7:15 and my first thought was sunrise over Osorno!

I opened the curtains and no.

Fog over Osorno.

I went to breakfast where I found something better – Patagonian hot chocolate with hot milk. What a way to start a day. It was like a hot chocolate expresso for those of us that don’t like coffee

We were off at 9:30 and our first stop was a town ten minutes up the Pan American highway called Frutillar, which is German for Strawberry. We had a local guide who was aptly named Marcelo. So, we are being guided by Marcelo One and Marcelo Two…or just Marcelo Squared for simplicity.

Marcelo 2 told us that Frutillar was settled by the Germans whose presence was unmistakable.

When they arrived, they found the field full of wild you-know-whats. The strawberries are not there anymore but are grown in family gardens.

The town was founded in 1853 and a man named Bernardo Phillippi helped Germans move to the region. The only problem was that it was restricted to professionals and Catholics. So as the Germans boarded the ship destined for Chile, Phillippi would check off their profession and then ask their religion. Many said Lutheran but Phillippi said that for this journey you have been converted and were now a Catholic.

So, yes, there were a lot of Lutheran churches in the area.

These settlers were each given sixty hectares of land plus ten hectares for each child as well as wood to build a house, tools, a cow and a salary for one year.

Now, that’s the way to do it.

The population of Frutillar is 35,000 and it is a tourist town with a lot of handicraft shops and a nice beach. Houses and land run about $150,000 unless you want to be on the water and then the price doubles.

A lot of cattle are raised here but oddly enough, most of it is exported to China and Japan and to buy it locally costs almost $20 a kilo. Chile imports beef and it costs about $13 a kilo.

Am I the only one who sees something wrong with that picture?

Marcelo 2 tells us we have been very lucky with the weather because it rains 450 days a year here.

Yup. The Chileans import their beef and have their own calendar.

Rainy season is January to March/April.

Marcelo 2 asked the same question the Turis guide asked – where does the word Chile come from? Well, he shrugged but said he had two theories. The first was that the Spanish who got there first heard a local bird call that sounded like “chile, chile, chile.” He doesn’t like this theory. He prefers the second one – that the name is a native word for end of the world.

That seems to be the general consensus. Chile is the end of the world.

Marcelo 2 also said that the area had a lot of fast growing eucalyptus and pine which is harvested into wood chips and sent to Japan.

And Japan sends them back wood panels.

Yes, makes you want to shake your head.

Marcelo 2 gave us a driving tour of Frutillar’s two streets and then we stopped by the German Museum. It was a few acres of gardens and homes the settlers had built on.

We had about an hour, so I took a quick look at the museum then went in search of strudel.

It was a German town after all. And they all spoke Spanish. It was just plain weird.

But I found my strudel and sat by the beach to indulge. Then I checked out the handicraft shops and found a fridge magnet.

By noon, we were on our way to Puerto Montt via the coastal road where we could see the farms both on land and in the water. The main industry in the area is salmon farming. Chile is the second largest producer of salmon after Norway.

Who knew?

And yes, before you ask, it’s exported to Japan.

But they don’t send anything back.

The salmon are hatched in fresh water lakes like Llanquihue and kept there for a year and a half. Then they are put into tankers and driven to the nearby farms on the Pacific ocean where they are kept for another two years until they are six or seven kilos.

Besides the frozen salmon shipped to the Far East, some is shipped to the US and sold fresh.

Seriously! They put the live salmon in huge containers so they’re swimming around inside a ship all the way up to the US where they are processed. The industry is so large that the unemployment rate in Puerto Montt is only 3.2%.

Then Marcelo 2 smiled and said that lunch is salmon. Salmon appetizer, salmon meal and salmon dessert.

I raised my hand pretty quick to ask where I could find the closest McDonald’s.

He knew half the group were non-fish people.

Before going down the highway to Puerto Montt, we had to stop into Puerto Varas so that people could change money. This baffled me. Chilean money is available in Canada and the US and we all move through airports on the way down. There was ample opportunity to get some Chilean currency, but instead we lost a solid hour because of this stop. Even more interesting was that USD was widely accepted in Chile where almost all prices were given to us in peso and USD.

Perhaps TT should include in their “Know Before You Go” section that it would be a good idea to get at least a small amount of local currency for each country you will visit before you leave home. The rate of exchange at your home bank would be the best (even free for some banking packages like the one I have) and you wouldn’t find yourself in that panicked state as you enter a country.

We eventually got back onto the Pan Am highway and headed south to Puerto Montt, a city named after a Chilean president. On the way, Marcelo 2 pointed and said there was a six-star hotel.

We all looked.

It was a prison.

And it’s all inclusive, Marcelo 1 added.

Ever see the NatGeo program Locked Up Abroad?

Heh.

We got off the highway and went through some winding roads until we came to the coast

We pulled into a restaurant for our Patagonian lunch at two.

There was a gorgeous garden leading into the restaurant. Lillies and hydrangeas (which are everywhere and all different colours).

Marcelo 1 told the staff that he had six non-fish eaters, and I’m not sure they were ready for that, but we got this huge omelet that looked like a pancake and was full of cheese and vegetables. Pretty darned good.

Dessert was not fish. It was ice cream. A scoop of chocolate, strawberry, yellow vanilla and one made from a local fruit or berry that has a slight butterscotch taste. It was delicious.

We were done by 3:30 and headed for the Puerto Montt waterfront where there were three cruise ships sitting in the harbour. In case you’re wondering, that was about six thousand tourists. And I bumped into them all.

The waterfront had the fish market as well as a lot of handicraft shops, many selling the same thing. I opted out of the ten minute walk through the fish market.

I’m a Newfoundlander. I know what one looks and smells like. 🙂

So, I checked out the craft shops until they got back. They also sell cheese at this market.

Marcelo Squared returned from the fish market with the group and we got fifteen minutes to look at the craft kiosks. This was where the lost hour hit hard. We could have spent an hour there no problem.

I managed to find a cat figurine in a blue local stone called lapis. Expensive at $25 but a place down the road wanted $35 for a smaller one.

We headed back to Puerto Varas and arrived at the hotel just before six. The sun was out and Osorno looked beautiful.

I got changed and went to the beach area for photos.

It was kinda surreal watching kids play and swim with a volcano just across the lake. A year later, Calbuco (the peak to the right of Osorno) erupted. The photo below was taken from a similar vantage point (photo courtesy Diego López and Wikimedia Commons).

I walked around looking for a snack for dinner, but there wasn’t much available and I couldn’t find the supermarket. I went back to my room and then went out at 8:30 to watch the sunset on Osorno.