9/19

After an early morning to pack up our bags and campsite, we headed to the bus station to grab some breakfast and check on our AirBnb in Santiago.

Unfortunately, we couldn’t check it since there was no WiFi available anywhere and we had to load up on the bus.

The bus ride through the Andes was gorgeous! We soaked up the mountains since we were about to leave them for a while.

The border between Chile and Argentina was one of the longest crossings we’ve had in a long while. They didn’t check for drugs, they checked for apples. One of the security guards asked if he could stick a tube in my bag to test the dog and it contained an apple scent! He got it.

After that, we finally spent a few more hours on the bus and made it to Santiago.

We ended up taking a taxi to our apartment, but it took a while since it was the last day of the weeklong celebration of Chile’s independence and the roads were all blocked off. 

After finally making it to our nice little apartment. We took the metro to a new part of the city. Unfortunately for us, literally everything was closed in the area we were in. It felt like an end of the world scene and it was kinda freaky.

We wandered over to another area where we were hoping to go up to the Cerro San Cristobal which has an entire view of the city, but the lines were packed. We decided to skip out on that and headed back to our apartment. 

On the way, we spent a good hour looking for groceries and beer since everything was closed.

We finally found some but also ended up finding a Chinese restaurant that seemed decent priced. 

We watched the sunset from the top of the building and played a Spanish card game since we had mistakenly bought a Spanish card deck earlier that day.

That night, we ended up ordering Chinese food and watching some Family Guy before going to bed.

9/20

We spent most of the morning and some of the afternoon on a walking tour and afterwards we ended up making some amazing friends with the other couple in the tour with us. 

We had lunch with them, tried Pisco sours and some lomo a lo pobre. All of it was delicious and with the company we had the afternoon was perfect!

Afterwards, we split up. We did the same round we did the day before only this time everything was just starting to close! We went by the famous Varga market to see all the fresh fruits and vegetables, stopped by the modern art museum and the classical art museum, and then we finally went up the Cerro San Cristobal to watch another pretty sunset.

It was pretty cold by the time the sun was down so we ended up heading to our apartment. We made quesadillas and soup and then went to bed.

9/21

We got up a little earlier than usual, made breakfast, and tried to see the other bits of Santiago before we left the city.

We stopped by the Pre-Columbian museum which was fantastic and then we went to the fish market to have some food at a restaurant recommended to us. Luke had the fried fish and I had the crab cake (which was more like crab dip). After eating that delicious meal, we finally went back to pick up our bags and headed to the bus station for an over night bus to Puerto Montt. 

9/22

When we got to Puerto Montt the next morning we quickly loaded up on a ferry to Chiloe Island and the city of Ancud. 

We had been hearing about all the amazing seafood in this region so after seeing the town’s museum we stopped by a restaurant and tried Curanto, which was clams, mussels, chicken, beef, pork, and 3 different kinds of potatoes all cooked together in an underground pit, and congrio, which is conger eel and delicious. 

After that, we decided to go find a campsite we read about that over looks the ocean. We hiked up and found one a great campsite for a slightly expensive $6500 pesos each. The view was worth it though. 

We set up and then left again to wander the town. Unfortunately, a lot of things were closed so we ended up heading back after buying groceries and then setting up our fire for our campsite. 

We made tea and sausages, potatoes, and onions and soon went to hide in our tent. It was so cold but we slept nicely in our warm little tent.

9/23

This morning, we decided to wander around the area we were in and stop by to see some of the beaches. We saw a lot of beautiful coastline and some wildlife – which we were hoping were penguins but actually weren’t.

We stopped by the information desk to ask more about the island and got a lot of information on where to go, which busses to take, and which areas were worth travelling to.

After getting all of that, we went back to our campsite and broke down our tent. Then, we grabbed some more seafood for lunch at this really cheap restaurant. It was so delicious! Since we wanted to go to the penguins, we took the bus at 4:00 to the area. It took over an hour for a 15 km ride because the bus took the long way.

When we finally got there, it looked like everything was closed or closing but we got really lucky as usual.

One of the owners of a restaurant had a spare room where she let us stay for only $16k. It had everything we needed included the tour run by her husband to go see the penguins – only at $7k ($10) each!

We quickly got on board since they were loading up pretty much after we dropped off our bags and away we went!

It was a good 30 min tour where we saw a load of different birds like 2 different kinds of penguins, pelicans, ducks, swans of the sea. We even saw one lonely sea lion!

Afterwards, we wandered around that little area and looked for a grocery store or something but everything seemed completely closed. 

Since we still had time before sunset, we decided to hike up to one of the cliffs overlooking the ocean. We were accompanied by a couple dogs and a very curious calf.

It was really cold and the sun didn’t set until about 45 minutes after so we tried to do some yoga to warm up but the dogs kept jumping on Luke!

The sun finally set even though it wasn’t a great sunset, it was still pretty.

We finally went down and hoped to find some food. Fortunately, we found the only restaurant that looked open. 

We got some seafood soup, empanadas, and some wine. After dinner, we went back to our room and hung out for a little before going to bed.

9/24

This next morning, we tried to hike to another beach a few kilometers away, but couldn’t really find the trail. The only road to the beach we wanted to see was an extra 15km out of the way.

We snacked at the mirador over looking that beach and then went back. Fortunately for us, a gentleman was driving to the location we were going so we hopped in and rode the rest of the way down.

Our host gave us free brunch, so we hung out there eating and drinking tea until we were ready to wait for the bus.

There was only one bus heading back that day and there were no busses available the next day, so we were getting pretty nervous that we missed it after waiting an hour for it to show up.

Some of the guys thought it had passed already, but fortunately some other travelers were told a different time – 3:30 vs 2:15.

So we finally got the bus back to town. When we got back, we decided to move on to a different town called Curaco de Velez. 

Luke had read about a campsite where we could stay, but unfortunately it was closed. After asking around, we discovered that there was nothing open since it was low season – not even restaurants.

Fortunately for us, there was a guy that let us stay in his backyard! After walking to his house and setting up our tent, we saw the beginnings of an amazing sunset!

We quickly hurried down to the lake in the town and watched that amazing sunset for a long while. Afterwards, we tried to pick up some groceries and stopped by a coffee shop in hopes of finding food, but had to resort to sandwiches and chips.

We soon went to sleep.

9/25

We woke up to find that our tent was soaked! After packing up early we headed to Achao to see the oldest church on the island. 

We accidentally walked to the wrong one but it was a nice walk! We finally made it to the old church which was very beautiful. Afterwards, we ate at a nice restaurant and had some more fresh seafood before heading to Dacalhue to check out their Sunday fair. There were a lot of neat products and we bought a few souvenirs to send home!

After that, we headed to Castro. We had an Airbnb that we waited for at the bus station but finally gave up and walked to the place at the top of the city.

We finally made it there and figured out we were both at different bus stations! We bought spaghetti and made dinner that night after enjoying some wonderful hot showers and washing some of our clothes. 

We were excited to be in a warm place and hung out there for the rest of the evening.