Still enjoying Chile

Today we take a short drive out to the coast to the little village of Bahia Mansi. It's only about 60Km from Osorno. But they are busy rebuilding and paving the road so it's a rough drive at the beginning. 

Nice rolling hills as we get closer to the Pacific. Lots of campgrounds along the way. Chileans really love to camp! Mostly tenting in the many campgrounds. Where they have nice brick bbqs for cooking. Once we get to the small village of Bahia Mansa we find a spot to park near the pier. Here they have boat rides out to a small island where backpackers can go hiking and tent overnight. Not sure what else there is there because it is a small island. Doesn't seem to have any buildings on it by looking at maps.me. We see one boat load returning and all the passengers were loaded down with their big backpacks on their backs and another smaller one on their chest. I sure do love our Vanna! LOL!!!

We sit down to have a coffee and beer at one of the little restaurants along the dock. Lots of different empanadas are on the menu - here of course they have them filled with seafood. Seems we could get 12 seafood empanadas for only 6000CP ($10) But we can smell and see smoked fish being sold from a bbq so I go over and pick one up. Smells soooooo good :)  I take it back to our table and we both enjoy it. Can't believe the size of the bones in this fish - which is called Sierra, There should be no way one should be able to slip by and get stuck in your throat! They are big enough to be used as toothpicks! LOL!!!

Mansa Bay

Fresh seafood for sale

Not sure 

great smoked fish! Huge bones :) 

The smoker 

View of the bay as we drive away

After we finish we decide to drive as far as we can along the coast (only about 10km) to find a nice spot to spend the rest of the afternoon and tonight. We drive thru another small village where there is a nice beach and pretty busy. We could park here but we see them setting up a huge stage and there are lots of smaller tents around with vendors, so decide this will probably be pretty noisy area for tonight! 

Next bay has a beautiful beach 

Lots of wood carvings here of the natives, very similar to that in the west coast of BC - this guy was instrumental in getting land for the indigenous people

Carving of a women weaving

Another wooden carving with lots of animation 

So we keep driving. The road becomes narrow and we run out of pavement. Maps.me shows that this road should go to another beach so we continue. Only at one point do we have a standoff with a 1/2 ton truck where the road is to narrow. He backs up some so we creep forward, if only he would back up another 15 ft there would be lots of room! Dwayne drives as far as he can - there is a deep ditch on my side so there is no room to move over, the truck starts forward and Dwayne waits until he just gets by us! Dummy! Anyways after that we were at the parking area of the last beach on this road. 

Once we park we had another smoked Sierra that we picked up before leaving the dock :) Yup Vanna is going to smell like a smoke house now! Once finished Dwayne has a nap and I sit in front to read and people watch. One family came over and asked questions and were surprised we are all the way from Canada?! Explained as we always do that we put Vanna on a ship to Categena and have been driving thru all the countries from there and that we are going to Ushuaia. They wished us luck and went down to the beach.

We later walked along the beach, the waves here are pretty big and there is a sign up not to swim here, plus the water is pretty cold! The river that flows into the ocean here has created a small lake so lots of kids play in there. As the afternoon passes it clouds over a little so no sunset tonight.  It stays light here until almost 9:30. We watch a movie (Woman in Gold - true story) before going to bed. 

Nice big beach but cold with rough waves

Nice houses over looking the sea

It was a nice quiet night with a little rain. In the morning it was cloudy so decided to head towards Puerto Montt, the last city on the Pan-American highway before having to take a ferry across to Chiloe Island and continue on for another 200K to get to the end of that highway. But we won't be doing that trip. 

We take the side roads instead of the main highway, so nice driving in this area. We end up at another little German village of Frutillar which is on the biggest of all the lakes Lago Llanquihue.  Not many people on the beach on this cool windy day. We walk around the village looking for a nice little cafe for coffee and cake :) Just can't get enough of the kuchen cakes here! I know they don't have them in Argentina :)  We find a very small cafe, since most are restaurants here with a full menu, and we didn't want to have lunch yet. We prefer to have that in Vanna since their meals here are all pretty expensive plus we have food that needs to be eaten before crossing the border back to Argentina.  We also ordered one empanada since they are huge. Pretty tasty but the cake was better :) There is a lot of German influence in the Lake District because after WW1 Chile wanted immigrants to help with the economy so was offering each immigrant family a section of land for free. Lots of Germans wanted to leave Germany after WW1 so they came here.

So pretty driving thru the here

Restaurant in Frutillar

Love these :) 

Nice assortment of pies at the market

The Clock restaurant :) Waited for the BIG cuckoo bird to come out, but he didn't :( 

Can you believe Kimberley-Clark products in Chile??

Nice looking hotel with flower boxes on the windows

Then back to Vanna to head further along the lake and then to Puerto Montt, I've found a camp spot that is on the beach, though it's not on the open ocean, more in the bay with lots of islands nearby. When we get there, it's a huge beach and no waves because of the islands. It's still raining off and on, hoping this will keep the Friday night partiers away. As I'm checking out the water I end up talking with one of the locals, he's also retired, use to be a teacher. Told him about our trip and he was telling me about a trip he made to Norway, and how that was an awesome trip. I asked if there would be any problem spending the night where we were parked, and he said no, other then kids come to the beach to drink, but maybe since the weather is cool they won't show up.  But as it turned out they did come and party on the beach until the sun came up!! And that's not until 7am!! So not the most restful night. Guess we'll make sure to find something quiet for tonight.

Visitors looking for handouts! LOL!!

Ocean is calm in this area outside of Puerto Montt

We drive into Puerto Montt to see the ocean front park, but everything here looks terrible. Because of the riots last Oct/Nov most of the buildings downtown are stilled boarded up. Seems that they only keep their door open for customers but windows stay covered. Lots of buildings especially those with huge plate glass windows have metal sheets covering them. We went to the Plaza de Armas to see the oldest building which is a church built in 1856, but the whole front was covered in metal! Guess they wanted to make sure no damage or burning of the church was done. Online I've read that the people are tired of the government not listening (aren't we all!!) inequality in pay, high costs of education and healthcare. Seems there hasn't been anything that has really changed yet so more protests may happen again. The people want a new constitution written which is suppose to happen this year.

Just the door is open to Subway, windows are covered with wood

Lots of spray paint on walls of buildings

Of course this is usually just done by people who probably have nothing to do with the protests just use it as an excuse to damage property

After a short drive thru the city we head back north to the lake district. We head to Volcán Osorno where we are suppose to be able to take a chairlift and get close to the glacier. During the winter this is a ski resort. Wedrove the winding road up and once at the top is was VERY windy and the chairlift was not running. Being a Saturday I expected it to be operating but I think due to the high winds it was shut down. It was also cloudy so didn't get to see the top of the snowcapped volcano. 

Volcán Osorno covered with clouds

Road up to the ski hill of Volcán Osorno

View of the lake from the top

Where it is VERY windy!! We didn't walk around much up here!

Chairlift that is not running today :(

Then we drive back to the town of Ensenada to find a campspot for the night. We drove to one spot but saw lots of tracks made by vehicles doing "donuts" so figure this probably won't be a great place to stay since the rowdies will probably be back tonight!  We find another spot beside a small river not far from the highway. Figure this place should be quiet, other then some traffic on the highway which normally slows down by 10pm. This spot doesn't look like a party spot LOL!!!

Made pizza for supper to make sure to eat our smoked salami before we head back to Argentina in a couple of days. This time we know to eat what's in the fridge instead of giving it away :) 

Sunday - decided to head to another lake,  Lago Todos los Santas. Suppose to be a 2km walk to a waterfall I'd like to see. But first we head to the lake and go into a pioneer museum. Pretty interesting information which was also in English. Lots of info on the German family that explored this area in the late 1800s. The family continues to operate the hotel on this lake.  There is also a boat tour of the lake which takes about 6 hours with a few stops. But today it's to cool for that plus the cost is around $50 for both of us! And it's not a fancy boat!! 

We head back to find the waterfalls. After we get parked we walk aways to find out there is a charge - 3000CP for locals but we have to pay 6000CP each - not going to pay $20 for both of us to walk a short distance to waterfalls that may not even be that great!  Nice that the price is low for locals but charging foreigners double is a little excessive!  So we keep driving around the lake and will find another camp spot for our last night in Chile. 

Lago Todos los Santos

Private residence on the lake that looks like it's been there a long time - needs a little TLC

Boats that take you for a long cruise on the lake

Beautiful hotel run by the original family that opened this area to tourists back in the early 1900's. The hotel was renovated and added onto about 20 years ago. 

Walking bridge crossing the river before getting to the pay booth for the walk to the waterfalls

Finally as we are leaving the area we get a glimpse of the top of Volcán Osorno :)