Santiago

At last! Touch down in the hot mediterranean climate of Santiago, and nobody was sending us back. After 3 months without a familiar face I was excited to be in the company of very good family friends, or should I say my surrogate family in Chile. Renato was there to meet us and if disturbed by the volume of luggage he would have to fit into his car he didn't show it. We stopped by at Astrid's apartment for a beautiful evening meal, putting the less than sociable but tired out Leo down for his bedtime. It was wonderful to see them all, our families have known each other for years and we have witnessed each other growing up, so bringing Leo to meet them was part of the continuum. And what a comfort to be amongst friends again. We slept soundly that night, and looked forward to a restful time from here on.

And we were not proved wrong. Our friends played perfect hosts to us as we sprawled ourselves out in their territory, used their facilities and generally took over their lives for the following 3 weeks (thanks guys for everything, you are forever welcome in our little English home).

I think we were ample distraction for Paula who was sitting university finals and Maria Paz who bunked off her last week of school before the summer holidays to hang out with us. Leo especially busied himself entertaining with his consummate skills at crawling, bouncing and babbling. He even had a few dips in the swimming pool, by now a favourite past time. 

I was 19 when I last visited this ol' town, and I struggled to recall strong memories of the locations I had frequented. Maybe it's because I've done a good job of frying my brain over the subsequent 'university intoxication' years or maybe it's because the city itself has had a bit of a facelift. Renato told us that a great deal of construction had taken place over the last 11 years, much like the rest of the modern world I expect. But the general appearance was clean, new, sprightly, quite a pleasant modern metropolis. The other trick that played havoc with my memory was that my last visit was over the winter months, when everything had a more gloomy aspect to it, as the oppressive smog hovers over the skyline due to the lack of air current between the mountains that sandwich Santiago city. 

Inbetween naps and siestas we managed to fit in a little sightseeing, the city view from el Cerro San Cristobal, the Plaza de Armas, a lovely pre Columbian art museum and the colonial splendour of the church of Los Dominicos and the pretty arts and crafts market nearby.

And that's about it. After nearly 4 months of travelling can one be sightseeing'd out? I suspect so. 
But we had great fun just 'hanging with the kids' instead. Ari displayed his competitive streak when we were introduced to the Wii for the first time, who'd have thought that a game called Rayman Raving Rabbids could have caused a grown man to act so juvenilely? And I'm not even going to speak about Guitar Hero. I just hope Leo had his eyes closed at all times. We also learned about how 'da youf' live in Santiago and Chile in general, so you could say we had a cultural experience nonetheless. A veritable win win situation methinks.

The Lake District

A long drawn out journey by the bus and ferry back to Puerto Montt was followed by a relatively pleasant taxi ride back north to the picturesque location of the Chilean lake district. Here was our opportunity to head back to the area we'd passed through on the bus journey from Argentina, which was not something to be missed. Our cheery taxi driver took us for a supermarket pitstop in Puerto Varas, the largest town and popular base for exploring the lake Llanquihue before continuing on. As we drove along the lakeside we marvelled at the incredible view of two volcanic mountain crests, snowcapped and imposing. We'd chosen to stay in the tiny place called Ensenada, to be found at the last corner of lake Llanquihue under the gaze of the great volcano Osorno, and not 10km from the most beautiful lake in Chile, Lago todo los Santos.


We were introduced to our new cabana, which was just infront of the beach and the mountain itself, a truly spectacular location. And as ever, hardly a soul in sight. Not so impressive was the cabana itself, significantly less comfortable than our place in Chiloe, this cabana was a little tired and less equipped for holiday makers. None the less it was pretty cheap and with a little grocery shop nearby we were happy enough and settled in after taking a quick dip in the lake. Glorious. Soon we discovered the first peril of being in the country, how to aerate the room without letting in the swarm of little fruit flies into every nook and cranny. A tricky one. Obviously we didn't have the knack so before we knew it the place was swarming and each window was covered with a swarm sea of black. Nice. After a stifling night we were quick to get out into the open. After stopping for a few essentials like laundry and internet we wondered about the lifespan of the fruitfly and enjoyed being in this wonderful location. Peril number two of the country, allergies galore. Again we wondered whether it was our stuffy old cabana or the Chilean spring air that was the culprit, but swallowed the antihistamines down and hoped for the best. Leo had sprung out in a rash, and to eliminate all possibilities we rewashed all his clothes in the softest detergent we could find and doused him down in the shower frequently to make sure he kept cool, much to his great pleasure. Not. It would appear we were not as hardened to the 'great outdoors' as much as we would have liked.
To ease our pains we sought out a nice eatery for the evening. Ensenada is really a strip of road along the lakeside with various cabana sites and grocery stores on either side. Not much going on. Still we walked on unti we came across a sign for a restaurant within a lodge complex, and with grand statements such as 'best meal in Chile'(!) doing their best to entice us in we happily took the turning off the road to explore. YankeeWay lodge (ie LLanquihue for the Yankees) appeared a little plush complex for the rich middle aged tourist with a penchant for fishing. It's grounds were beautiful and it crossed our mind to enquire the price to take us out of our allergy misery for our last night. After enquiring we decided that our allergy hole was the preferable option (we don't even fish) but settled down for a sumptous meal. In the end we booked ourselves in for a night in Puerto Varas and contented ourselves with that.
For our last day in Ensenada we took the short trip to Petrohue, a port (of the smallest kind) on the Western bank of Lago Todo Los Santos. This lake was true to the word of the guidebook, beautiful, peaceful and again with the backdrop of the mountains, picture perfect. A guy with a boat offered us a little sail around the lake, but as we needed to feed lil Leo we were more interested in finding an eatery he kindly obliged us by taking us across the lake to someone's house (probably a family member) whose front deck served as a little restaurant.
The house was in a pleasant lakeside spot and the fish served was good. Though we baked in the greenhouse nature of the room we had fun showing Leo the animals in the yard, dogs (by now a definite favourite), ducks and a gobbling turkey, though I didn't explain to him that the turkey was probably a temporary visitor until his special guest appearance in the Christmas eve banquet.
Back on the boat we sailed around a corner of the lake and took in the view.

Blessed with yet another perfect day it was all we could do not to jump off the side and swim off into the horizon..! After disembarking we hung around the lakeside whilst Leo slept in the shade, and while Ari disappeared off to try and find somewhere to swim I moped at my inability to go swimming and busied myself by trying to keep the flies away from Leo. I had my chance later to have a solitary wander in the tranquility, considered swimming in my underwear but then noticed the boat guy sailing past with another group of tourists waving at me, and was grateful that I had not taken that moment to expose myself and merely contented myself with a paddle.
Back at basecamp we found the cabana free of flies! Someone had been busy with a can of something. But in aerating the room once more before we knew it the swarm was back, though not in full force thankfully. We took turns to take a swim in the lake, it's so big you have to keep reminding yourself that it's not a sea, that the water is fresh and clear and as ever at this time of year here in Patagonia, you feel like you're the only one in the whole place. It was one of those moments I really wanted to have ingrained in my brain, something to take back with me ready for the cold, dark and wet British winter. I hope I have succeeded, I'll have to wait and see.
The bus back to Puerto Varas was about a tenth of the price of the taxi so as we were travelling light (only a pushchair, baby sling, suitcase and two rucksacks holding us back) we did the obvious thing, hung by the side of the road like hobos waiting for the next bus. With no timetable or bus stop we hoped we weren't in for the longhaul but soon enough the bus turned up and we clambered aboard. There was another 9 month old baby on the bus who Leo greeted with interest, but soon we were thwarting his attempts at pulling the other baby's dummy out and grabbing indiscriminately at his ears and hair. I hope this is normal for his age..
We piled out of the bus once we saw by chance our hotel passing by and rocked up to the front door. It was so nice to be in a good hotel once more!


We spent the next day or so wandering around Puerto Varas, having a decent steak, wandering around the lakeside. The day that started out cloudy broke into sun, so while we lamented yet again forgetting our bathers Ari went for a swim in his boxers and I contented myself with the knowledge that I would go early the following day whilst playing with Leo on the stone beach. As it was the weekend the whole town was out in full force and people were out in their boats, windsurfs and beachtowels.

The following morning we headed to the beach with all our our neccesary equipment in tow. Unfortunately the sunshine of the previous day was hidden behind a vail of clouds, making the mountain backdrop invisible and more of more relevance the water freezing.
So this is me having my 'swim'. Yes we wussed out, but there's no point having an unpleasant experience for the hell of it. Just as we were preparing to leave Puerto Varas to head back to Puerto Montt, the sun came out again and we left a trail of sunbathers in our wake.

So we were back in Puerto Montt to be reunited with our mountain of luggage, have a repacking frenzy and get set for our next and let's say final leg of our adventure, Santiago and the middle district of Chile. From here on in we would be back in the arms of friends and family, and so I lamented our last days of being 'just us three' and yet looked forward to familiar faces and lively company once more.

Just a small problem of getting there. We arrived at the airport in plenty of time to be informed that there were problems with our tickets, that the only one valid still was Leo's and that we had to wait until they investigated the problem. In intricacies of the problem are far too dull for these musings but suffice to say that an earlier missed flight meant they had effectively cancelled this one too. Aghhh. Never has a call been so close. I was at the point of tears, and with baby in arms and sufficient persuasion eventually they let us on despite really resolving the issue, LITERALLY 5 minutes before the plane was due to take off they gave us tickets for the flight. We flew through the airport and boarded all a fluster. Thank God it was a small airport. I was convinced something else was to go wrong and did not think us safe until we were airborn. But at last we were, and on our way to Santiago

Leo's Crawling!