Wed, Oct 18 – Puerto Montt, Chile  was founded around 1853 during the German colonization of southern Chile, Puerto Montt, due to its position at the southern end of the Chilean Central Valley became a gateway city into what is now known as the Lakes District.   The original site of Puerto Montt  was covered by thick forest hills. It was selected as an entrance to Lake Llanquihue when its proximity to the open sea was discovered by the Germans.  In 1912, the city was connected by train with Santiago, making it an important point of entry to the Chilean Patagonia as well as increasing quickly the commercial and transport development. By 1950s it had a population of about 27,500 and was growing, but an earthquake in May of 1960 destroyed Puerto Montt, by collapsing the port, the train station and many businesses and homes.  It has grown significantly due to the rise of Chile as the second largest salmon producer of the world.   The city's cultural heritage mixes elements of spanish (chilean), indian and German heritage.

Today we are doing a Cruise Critic tour.  For all of you who do not about Cruise Critic it is a web site that gives you tons of information on your trip, reviews of excursions, connections with your fellow shipmates, and much, much more.  We found the tour on the web site along with several other tours that we signed up for before we ever got on board.

This tour was awesome.  We were tendering today, so all those that were on the Cruise's Shore Excursions got to get off first.  They opened up the tender tickets at 8:30 for all the rest of us, and we were able to finagle ourselves off the ship quickly.  Our tour is out to the Lake District.  

Our first stop was out in the country to see the Osono Volcano which is about 45 minutes from our ship, so our guide, Nellie, gave us a lot of information.  She told us that in this part of Chile it rains 238 days out of the year; it might not rain all day, but it will rain.  We got lucky on our trip and only had the rain on our way back into town.  Chile has over 2,000 volcanoes, a lot of which are still quite active; but the locals don't worry about the volcanoes erupting, but about the earthquake caused tsunamis.  Nellie told us that she has an app on her phone that alerts her when a quake hits and she does not even get out of bed and dressed unless the quake is 7 or better.  They consider 8.5 or better a bad quake - OUCH!

The economy around Puerto Montt is based mainly on agriculture and fishing.  They raise the world's salmon and if we recall right she said that they raise them in fresh water for nine months and then they are placed out in the ocean waters for nine months, then they are packed and shipped around the world.  We actually saw an ocean "farm" when we were going up the fjords - it looked like a lonely desolate area; kind of like being a lighthouse keeper out in the middle of nowhere.

We arrived at our first destination, the Osono Volcano and as we were driving up the it's top was coming out of the cloud bank.  We were the first bus there (even though the HAL excursion left long before we did).  It was a great photo op, and then we got to check out the Llamas at the farm behind us

Osono Volcano

We were just leaving as the other buses were showing up.  

Nellie was telling us that beef, lamb, pork and chicken are quite expensive so they eat a lot of fish.  She also told us that 80% of the areas homes are made from wood and nothing is higher than a couple of stories - make since if you have constant earthquakes.

Our next stop was the Petrohue Falls. These falls are a chute-type waterfall in the upper portion of the Petrohue River, a short distance downstream from the Todos los Santos Lake.  These falls are in a National Park and they are awesome - the power pouring out of them was amazing.  We were able to spend some time here before the rest of the excursions caught up with us.  The clearness and beautiful blue green of the water was amazing.  I wish we could have had a taste of the water, it looked so pure and clean. 

Our next stop is to the town of Puerto Varas, which is translated to the City of Roses because everyone grows roses in their yards.  It is located on Lake Llanquihue, which is a very pretty (picture a gorgeous alpine lake) lake, which has a platform built out into the water, with bleacher type seats around it.  We are thinking that this probably for concerts and plays maybe.  We didn't have a long to wander around, and since I was freezing, we hit a local market and I bought (my third) alpaca wool sweather - the clerk went to wrap it up for me and I said no thanks and put it on - the clerks smiled knowing it was chilly outside.  We got to walk around a little bit - you could see by the building designs and decorations that this is a typical german city.  It was quite pretty, just wish we had had more time here.

Our next stop was the town of Frutillar, which is known as the strawberry city.  Our guide told us that the largest summer music festival is put on in this town every year - the Strawberry Field Concert - which lasts for several days.  Now if you want to see Bavaria and can't make it to Germany this would definitely be the place to come.  It is set on a beautiful volcanic lake, with wooden houses like you would find in a small german village.  Signs were in German, although the people spoke spanish.   Again we didn't have much time, but after we had been given a short sight seeing tour around the city on the bus, we got off and headed over to the Cuckoo Clock building.  I believe it is a restaurant, but we didn't have time to check it out - just took pictures .  We also stopped and got some great looking chocolates and we basically slaughtered our way through the language barrier.  We pulled out the amount of money we wanted to spend and she gave us the amount of chocolates that it would cover.  Works for me; but we really need to learn Spanish.  There's no excuse not too.  We then walked over to the Concert house, where there was a coffee shop and restrooms.  We were running out of time so we didn't get to get any coffee, but did make use of the free restrooms and then headed back to the bus.

That was our last stop and then we headed back for ship.  We were lucky and only hit rain on our way back.  Thanks Kim for setting this up - it was a great tour.  We were dropped off at the Port Entrance and we headed on over to the Angelmo market place.  I had read about this market and was told not to miss it.  It was quite big, and right in the heart of town, so we wandered around it for a bit, bought a leather wall hanging and then it was time to get back to the ship.  Another great day!