puerto montt- the skaniest skankhole in the universe and the rest of chile

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From Puerto Natales we went to Puerto Montt. It took about 25 hours to get there, we had to cross the Chile-Argentine boarder twice as the countries are carved up so awkwardly at the end of the continent. Chile got a raw deal, its nearly 5,000km in length but only on average only 180km wide. Its an absurdly shaped country.

Puerto Montt (in Manjits words) is the skankiest skank hole in the entire South American continent. Its a real port town, so it takes little to imagine what the town is actually like. Only stayed there for a day (seemed lot longer) and blazed out of town on the next available bus to Temuco.

Temuco is a pretty city in central Chile. We went there because it has a really nice indoor market and its the home of the Mapuche (indigenous people of Chile) hoping to learn something about the indigenous culture of the country. We ended up shopping in the market.

Final stop in South America, Santiago. Natuarally, we arrived there on Easter weekend, so everything was shut and the city was deserted. We ended up walking through the centre of town, they have a replica of the BT tower (i'm convinced they copied that idea) called the entel tower. In all, Santiago is a plesant capital, unfortunately it is no Rio or Buenos Aires especially on a deserted easter weekend. Of course, we had not had enough of long bus journeys, just one more to Vicuna in northern Chile to visit an observatory. Manjit thought it took 2 hours to get there, it turned into a 16hour round trip!!! The observatory was cool, complete with Austin Power style revolving roof and we saw Jupiter, Saturn and for all you Harry Potter Fans, Sirius is actually the brightest star in the sky. It was really nice. On a random aside, we saw what must have been the most homesick Indian in Chile, because as soon as he saw us he said "your Indian" and then took a photo. His friend was mortified, I think we were just bemused.

That is the end of South America, one of the most fascinating and exciting places on the planet. Not many people can say they navigated an entire continent by bus with very limited language skills, on the other hand, not many people would want to.

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Photos

observatory
the observatory with james bond style moving roof and the incredibly powerful telescope we looked at the stars, planets and moons with!