Day 34: Puerto Montt

Fruitillar

So, the first month of our around the world tour has passed. There was a celebration at dinner where the servers paraded around the restaurant banging restaurant utensils.

As we entered the Pacific Ocean the weather changed, and we had to cancel the stop at Puerto Chacabuco, deep into the fjords of Chile. It was disappointing as I was looking forward to that part of Patagonia. The Captain took the ship through fjords to escape the rough seas and provide a scenic sail to make up for the missed stop. So far, both of our anchorage’s with Tender service have been cancelled.

Puerto Montt became our first Tender port, which means the the port doesn’t have a large enough pier for the ship, so it is anchored in the harbor, and passengers are shuttled to a small pier in Tender boats.

On the Tender

Puerto Montt is known as the gateway to Patagonia lake district, so we took an Uber up to one of the villages on Lake Llanquihue, Fruitillar, which is music-themed, and has a beautiful performing arts center right on the lake overlooking the Osorno volcano.

Travel through the fjords was breathtaking, and appears to be a common way to traverse Chile via ferry. Some of the ferry routes cover 100s of miles, and would seem to be a great way to see Patagonia.

Puerto Montt was a larger town, and the air quality was not very good. We saw a lot of smoke belching cars. We saw the Nazareth Mortuary, which looked to have a drive-thru, and we might have mistaken the use, but it looked like a quick way to dispose of corpses, which struck our funny-bone!

After we left, the staff threw an Antarctica party, complete with fake penguins and whales in the pool, and a huge spread of Sushi. The pushing and shoving to get to the sushi was just unbelievable.