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Published: July 16th 2023
Our flight to Puerto Montt from Santiago was scheduled to depart at 5:37 am. That’s the first flight of the day from Latam Airlines to Puerto Montt. That’s damn early! And now-a-days one needs to arrive to the airport even 2 hours earlier even for a domestic flight. From our Best Western it takes at least half hour to reach the airport in the wee hours. So, we had to wake up at least 1 hour to get ready, allowing 30 minutes each for Ryan and me to share the facilities. We just returned from a day trip of Valpariso last night. And we sure were tired, but we didn’t have a choice! Did we sleep at all? Well, you do the math! Hotel reserved a cab for us who came on time. We dumped our luggage in the cab and headed to the airport speeding through the empty roads of Santiago. The City was still sleeping.
Puerto Montt is the capital of Los Lagos region of Chile. If you see the map of Chile, it is sitting almost in the middle of Chile, may be slightly south. And it is the famous Lake District with waterfalls, volcano, rapids for
river rafting, Nature hiking, you name it. Mother Nature has emptied its treasure with open arm in this region. Our destination is Puerto Varas, approximately 30- 40 minutes car ride from Puerto Montt. Earlier, we booked a tour with Turistour in Puerto Varas hiking to the base of the Osorno Volcano overlooking the Llanquihue lake, the second biggest in the region. The tour also included a boat ride to the lake to see the Petrohue waterfalls. It’s a morning tour that starts from Puerto Varas at 9 am. Our flight arrives in Puerto Montt at 7:37 am. When I first booked it, Karen cautioned me a number of times.
“Tab, you may find traffic on the way to Pueto Varas from the airport. You may not make it by 9:00am”
“Karen, this is the first flight from Santiago; I am trying my best”, I told her
“The problem is the bus not going to wait for you if you don’t arrive by 9 am to our office in Puerto Varas”.
“Can you please ask them to wait just half an hour extra”, I was pleading to her.
“I suggest, please carry your hand luggage only
and head out straight for the cab as soon as you arrive”, Karen was trying to find a solution.
“We can’t do that Karen, we are checking out from our hotel. So we need to take our luggage”. I explained.
Karen sighed and wished us the best.
That’s the problem of my back to back tours. I wish we could come a day earlier. But it’s not all our fault this time. First, AA cut short our flight by a day; so we lost a day there. We needed to squeeze our travel plan to cover other interests in Chile. At the end, we could stay in Los Lagos only for a day. We were to head out to Punta Arenas next morning and we wanted to enjoy at least one of our interests – seeing the beautiful Osorno Volcano. Actually, there are so many beautiful places in and around the Lake District, One needs to spend a few days in this region. What my friend suggested earlier that we are damn crazy, is really an underestimation. We are actually nutcase!
***
Once we collected our luggage, we came outside the terminal looking for a
cab to take us to Puerto Varas. Well, we earned a couple of unexpected bonus during our trip. First, Latam Airlines upgraded our ticket to Premier Economy just free of cost! Yay! Second, our flight arrived in Puerto Montt earlier than scheduled. So, we were kind of sure we are not going to miss our Osorno tour.
It was all dark outside the terminal and not too many passengers traveled there so early in the morning. Perhaps the reason of our free upgrade! It was not difficult to find a cab. The cab speeded along the highway exiting the airport and soon left the main highway to take a secondary road leaving the town behind us. The driver could communicate through broken English and told us that it would take around 30 minutes to reach there. I was looking outside with the curiosity of a kid. Soon the street lights disappeared and the road entered a deeply wooded area. It was total dark and we could hardly see anything outside except the beam of headlight from the car. I must admit, I always feel uncanny in such situations fearing my own safety. I had similar feeling once traveling solo
in Java Sea to Komodo Island in Indonesia. If something happens to our transport, it will be difficult to get help. At least Ryan was traveling with me here this time. So, I brushed the thoughts aside.
Fortunately, my fear was unsubstantiated. No undesired incident happened on our way and the taxi dropped us to the heart of downtown. He had no idea about Turistour office and he dropped us to a supposedly busy point in downtown. Although, it is still early and everything was closed. Damn! Then why Karen was getting worried all about that we might miss the tour? Beats me! We started walking up and down the road to find the Turistor office. Puerto Varas is a small place of less than 40K people and the downtown strip is only a few blocks. Finally, Ryan located the place and guess what, it was open! We were the only tourists appeared through the front door that early and surprise, surprise! No one knew how to speak English. Thank God for my ‘dongle’ (portable wifi) and Google Translate. It appeared that the tour bus was going to come by 9:30 am. So, we had plenty of time to
kill in the morning.
Finding a coffee place early that morning was not easy; especially Pueto Varas is a small town. Fortunately, we located one. Then explaining to the girl about my choice of coffee was my next challenge. Anyway, after the mission was accomplished, we decided to check out the place. We walked just a couple of blocks and we were outside the downtown strip. Right in front of us was the Lake Llanquihue with Osorno volcano rising high in the horizon. What a beauty! It was a bit cloudy in the morning and the sun was just trying to break through the cloud behind the volcano. With the glitter of the morning sun, the volcano was a silhouette monument overlooking Lake Llanquihue – a silent piece of beauty. The sunray was dancing on the ripples of the water of the lake, a light wind was blowing over the lake. We crossed the main road and went to a park close to the lake. I sat down and observed the beauty of Mother Nature while Ryan was checking out the park. As the sun rose above the volcano, we slowly turned back. I checked my watch. We still
had plenty of time before the tour bus leaves the place. Restaurants and shops were just opening up. We grabbed some hearty breakfast before heading to Turistour office.
Jenny was a friendly tourist guide, fluent in all three languages – Spanish, Portuguese and English. The bus left the downtown core, snaked through some residential areas with scattered sleepy houses and soon hit the road. Our first destination was Osorno Volcano. It took us about an hour to arrive at the base of the volcano. In summer time, there are chair cars that take you to the mid-point of the volcano. As the winter approaching in Chile, the chair car options were closed. Once outside the bus, Ryan and I started hiking. Intent was to climb up as much as we could. It was windy and cold. Soon we climbed the slope of a highland, the wind was so strong against us, it was almost impossible to climb. The hill was getting steep as we moved forward and I couldn’t take any more chance. I remembered my accident in Tanzania in 2018. I have been still suffering from that and I sure didn’t want a repeat of the accident.
“Ryan, call it off”, I hollered at Ryan who was ahead of us.
“We don’t want an accident, do we?” I shouted against the wind. Ryan turned around and we climbed down the slope with wind now pushing us from behind. It’s a shame, we couldn’t climb up further, but better to be safe than sorry. I was sure it wouldn’t be easy to travel back from the volcano site to a medical facility if we had a serious injury.
From the bus, I glanced at the volcano, disappearing fast from our view as the bus climbed down the winding road. I planned for months to see her from close, and now we were done in just half hour? I was not a happy camper. God knows when I will be back in this part of the world; perhaps never!
“Jenny, can we just stop the bus for five minutes only on the roadside? I just want to get a few close-up shots of Osorno”, I was not sure if she would comply with my request. She talked to the driver and looked at me – “Just five minutes, ok?” I just nodded. She was a gentle
lady, but I knew we cannot hold back our tour because of me.
A few climbed out of the bus, and I took a short walk to the bush to get a close up view. An ice capped majestic Osorno was towering to the sky under a mid-day gloomy sun. What a grandeur! It was all quiet; a silent ambience around me even made me feel closer to her – a lone beauty kissing the sky! My lens clicked a few shots, but I knew in my mind that the real images will stay with me in my heart, forever! I came out of my trance when I heard Jenny calling for me. I made a run! “
Goodbye Osorno, my love! You will stay with me forever!”
Next – Puerto Varas, contd.
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Dancing Dave
David Hooper
Osorno Volcano
Fabulous pic Tab! Chile has to be one of our favourite countries...cracker views from all directions.