Thursday - onward south we go

Woke up in our quiet oasis of a campground to two men walking past our tent, talking loudly and joking with one another.   I looked at the time and it was 7 am!  I yelled out from my tent in spanish, but having just awoke my spanish was worse than usual.  A literal translation is " no talk near my tent...it is sleeping". They got the idea though, as I didnt hear much else.   People are generally quite quiet im the mornings it seems, but not in the evenings.  It seems to be very latin american to stay up when camping until 1 or 2 am.   Couldnt help but think how much this would drive Lindsay insane.  

  We hit the road and headed south once more.  A few hours into our srive we stopped at Puerto Varas.   We missed this town on our previous trip and instead stayed nearby in Puerto Montt.  Varas was anothe nice stop, similar to Pucon but a little bit more for everyone, also with a volcano but this time across the lake.

Volcon Osorno, across the lake from Puerto Varas.

The beach in Puerto Varas

After a short stop, we continued on south past Puerto Montt and on to Chiloe.   Isla Chiloe is the second largest island in south America and you catch a short 30 minute ferry to get there.  Again, just like our last visit, just South of Puerto Montt it clouded over.   Shortly further south the rain began.   We drove on to Ancud, founded in 1767 and at one point an incepredibly important sea port.  We found ourselves a nice little hotel right in the heart of town with a fantastic view of the harbour.  The hotel shares its site with towers of a fort build when the town was founded. In the late 1700's Ancud was not only an important military base but also huge in commerce.  After Chile gained independence, Ancud was the only part to remain loyal to Spanish royalty.  After a few wars Chile gained control of Ancud as well.   In the 1830's Charles Darwin visited here.  The economic collapse of Ancud was similar to that of  Valparaiso, when the Panama Canal was complete, all the ships that used to come to port no longer came and the city fell into decline.  This is common amongst many Chilean port towns.

This is attached to our hotel, one of 4 fort towers on the site

Cute place with porthol windows.  Our room is right above the word "galeon"

The view from our hotel

The view from the window of our room.