A Winter Vacation in August
I was back in Chile in August for work and this time Kirby came along! We flew to Santiago and spent one day checking out the city. We didn’t have a lot of time (or energy) so we rode the hop-on, hop-off bus, wandered some of the markets and walked up to the Japanese gardens (which were closed, like most things in Santiago on Mondays, just FYI).
And the next day it was time to take off again.
We arrived in Puerto Montt in the late afternoon, picked up our rental car (truck) and promptly got stuck in traffic trying to find our way to Puerto Varas. We did finally arrive at the hotel and sorted out parking and checked in then grabbed some dinner. We fell fast asleep that night and woke up to quite the sunrise.
Puerto Varas is stunning. I must have taken at least 50 pictures of that volcano (Osorno). After a quick breakfast we were on the road to see the surrounding countryside. Our first stop was Petrohué Falls with mount Osorno in the background.
The scenery and the colour of the water were incredible.
Our next stop was the Green Lagoon, which was aptly named.
We continued our drive around the lake through a lot of pastures. Kirby pulled over to take a picture of this old steam-powered farm equipment.
Back in Puerto Varas we stopped at the grocery store for dog treats to feed the local town dogs. Most of them were old and patiently waited their turn and would gently eat the treats right out of Kirby’s palm.
The next few days looked a lot like this for me:
And looked a lot like this for Kirby:
(Kirby here… my first day was at Volcan Osorno. Unfortunately, it started to rain as soon as I got on the lift and they only had one of two lifts open. Nevertheless, the liftie / ski patroller / lift mechanic let me hike-up the upper mountain, so I was able to find some really good turns.)
(Day two was at Antillanca with Gab’s kiwi colleague, Adam. We got well acquainted, as they had one chairlift and four t-bars. It wasn’t until the afternoon that we finally figured out that we were skiing in a huge volcanic caldera, which was a little unnerving.)
(The sun finally came out on my third and final day at Volcan Osorno. I’ll let the pictures do the talking. Chile is beautiful!)
Kirby left me in Puerto Varas to finish my meetings and I had one last day off while I was there. So I convinced three other people to rent a car and go explore. We decided to drive up to the ski hill on Osorno to get a better view and saw these little foxes on our way up (only one pictured here).
And we had a beautiful view of Patagonia.
And I got to enjoy one last sunset before heading home again.
gabandkirby 