Hello from patagonia!

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Hello everyone!

we are in puerto varas, chile. it is considered part of the lake district in patagonia. i didn´t go back to check when i wrote last time but i think we were headed to valparasio. what a cool town valpo was! we stayed there for three days and had a great time! we stayed at a cute little hostel with stained glass windows and an iron spiral staircase. it was run by three chilian men who i am sure if you combine the length of their deadlocks they would reach from chile to canada. really warm and friendly people! valparasio is a neat town that is built into the side of a hill so as you can imagine there are staircases everywhere (which we took notice to as soon as we missed our bus stop to the hostel!) they also have "asensors" which are elevator type cars that help you get up the hills (google it, they are neat!)... we took these a few times but aly and i are convinced that the stairs will give us the booty that all the beautiful south american women have!... we are working on it! valparasio is such a colourful city too, every building is painted a bright colour and there is a strong bohemian feel to it, lots of artisan shops and street vendors. also they have AMAZING murals and graffiti art everywhere! we spent two of our days there wandering the streets taking photos and the other day at the beach! we took the subway to viña del mar, which is just a town over and tocar el sol (took in some sun). it was great! the beach was packed but it was so wonderful! we also did a harbour tour on our last day in valpo, saw all of the frighter ships and navy boats... also a few seals!!

we left valparasio a couple of days ago and caught a overnight bus to puerto varas. (we had to go valparasio- santiago-puerto varas). on our stop over in santaigo we for dinner and both ordered a corn pie... alas is was not what we were expecting it was two pounds of sweet corn paste... not as good as it sounds... with a GIANT piece of dry chicken, a rubbery hard boiled egg, a tsp. of ground beef and three olives... it was also burnt... it was a bit of a disappointment since the rest of the food we have had since being here has been awesome! lots of delicious fruit, veggies and seafood galore! we made the best of it and tried to eat as much as we could without making ourselves sick. anyway, the overnight wasnt that bad, our seats reclined a bit so i got a few z´s in. we got into varas early yesterday morning and found ourselves a hostel, "ellenhaus". it is okay, but we have discovered too late in the game that there is no hot water. we had our first " wow! that was refreshing!" as aly says, shower this morning (read: patagonia glacial fed). brrrrr!

puerto varas was a german settlement so there are alot of german named parks and hostels around... its a bit strange... it is also a well manicured town, with lots of flower beds and outdoor gear stores- reminds me a bit of a cross between banff and victoria. it is wrapped around llanquihue lake which is beautiful and across the lake is volcano osorno and volcano lanin, awesome!!

aly and i have decided to do some hiking here too, so tomorrow we are headed by bus to cochamo which will lead us to la junta area. we will probably spend 3 days backpacking in and around there. after that we will spent one more night in puetro varas before we headed to ancud on chiloe island. apparently you can visit penguin colonies there!!! (eee!) then we will head to castro, chiloe for more hiking. we have a bus ticket from castro to puerto montt and the puerto montt to bariloche, argentina! from there we will probably spring board to the deep south on an intense 30 hour bus ride to the el calafete area... but that is still to be determined....

so all is well here. aly and i are healthy and happy. we are picking up more and more spanish everyday. we seem to have a good realtionship going for translating and speaking... aly can understand what they are saying and asking us more and i can speak better so we translate for eachother and have managed to do okay so far! that is all i can think of for now... anyway wish us luck and send us good weather thoughts for our hike! thinking of you all back home. we miss and love you!!!

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Comments

[Neil L. Jennings]

thanks for the news
Monica - and Aly. Thanks for the update. I am sitting in Victoria with Linda and we are delighted to hear that you are safe, happy and enthusiastic about your travels. Turn lots of pixels loose. Look forward to future reports. Love, Papa J.