The City of Roses

We take the plane to Puerto Montt, then are driven to Hotel Cumbres, Puerto Varas, our hotel for the next 3 days. Here, we go on a couple of full day trips. Puerto Varas is on the edge of Lake Llanquihue, the second largest in Chile. From the hotel you could also see the Osorno Volanco, one of the most active volcanoes in the country, but thankfully not recently. This city was mainly settled by German immigrants as part of a government colonisation project in the mid 1850's and onwards. As we toured around the area, we could see the influence in the buildings and churches. The city is also known for its roses, hence the nickname, but we were here in their winter, so no evidence of that shrub on our stay! We had great weather for our first trip. Beautiful sunshine and quite warm in places, although in the shade very cold and we saw snow on this day. In fact, quite a bit, as we went up the mountain to the region's ski resort and it was pretty busy. In fact, so busy, on our way out of the place, the queue to get in stretched for about a mile! In the meantime, we had a great view of Osorno Volcano. We then head off to visit the Petrohue Waterfalls. Now, we have seen a lot of waterfalls on both this trip and other holidays, so we were not expecting much. And so it turned out - waterfalls it was, but hardly worthwhile the stop. However, there were some rapids thst were interesting There was a little boat ride on the Todos Los Santos Lake that was quite nice. That evening, we did have a delightful meal at a fish restaurant, Casavaldes, that was located on the edge of town overlooking the bay.

The next day, we visited Senta Nativa Romahue, a protected native forest just outside Puerto Varas. Basically, we were dropped off in the middle of knowhere, where there was a substantial wooden building sort of run by young, very enthusiastic youngsters who had a passion for nature. We spent all day, firstly walking through a Valďivian rainforest, that sits over a wetland; effectively a floating forest. In there, we saw trees over 750 years old. After a rustic, but lovely lunch, we then saw their conservation area, where they had a number of rescued birds, mink and pumas. It was also quite nice that our guide talked quite enthusiasticly about his girlfriend, who had cooked lunch and, after a bit of probing, they confessed she was a number of months pregnant. They both looked very happy and we did feel we were acting like their adopted Mum and Dad whilst chatting to them!

In the evening, we chilled in the hotel and were entertained by a local musician who definately would not have looked out of place at Woodstock, with pony tail and goatee beard to boot. He played music all pre 1975, so at least we knew all the songs!