Puerto Varas - Snow Capped Volcanoes

Just a quick update. I´ll try to do a bigger one with pics later on tonight.

We took a bus from Puerto Natales (beautiful) down further south to Punta Arenas (would be beautiful if they didn´t treat it like a rubbish tip) and stayed the night there before getting a plane (already booked from Hungary) back up north to Puerto Montt.

However, we heard / read that Puerto Montt wasn´t a great place to stay so we hopped straight on a bus to Puerto Varas. There´s only one bus from the airport into P.Montt but from P.Montt there´s about 20 minibuses all lined up beeping their horns trying to get your business. So the bus to P.Montt cost 1,100 each but then the bus to P.Varas which is further away cost only 700 each. Monopolies, terrible.

P.Varas is a town next to a big lake with snow-capped volcanoes in the distance. Though they were covered by cloud when we got in and it{s a bit overcast today.

Staying in a nice hostel place. Left our bags at the tourist info place then wandered around town checking out places to stay. Tried about 5 places before this one. All were either way too expensive or way too grotty. Here we managed to get our own room but sharing bathroom (but there´s only a couple of other people here). I think we´ll stay here for 2 or 3 days before moving on.

Cough / cold is getting better, slowly but surely. Just had nice breakfast with strong suggary coffee. Time to head off.

Updated with photos (29-Nov-2005) - Click for pics

Snow-capped Volcano



Compass del Sur, our wonderful hostel.