Friday – Sunday, Mar. 25 to 27 — Adventures of a less physical sort….

Travel day from Awasi was a lazy one by their standards. Just two or three hikes up from our villa to the main lodge — about 1/4 mile each way. After five days of real trekking, we were definitely ready for a bit of lazy before our 2pm departure for the two-part journey back to Punta Arenas. We bid adios to our guide Daniel in Puerto Natales and arrived in Punta Arenas around 7pm. What sounded good? A plain old pizza! With a little internet sleuthing, we found a recommended pizzeria with the unlikely name of Gyros Pizza about 8 blocks away. Delicious — with the cheese browned and bubbly and a crisp thin crust — and a definite switch from the elegant meals of Awasi. Our dinner timing was perfect for us to watch the money shot in a Spanish dubbed version of the 10 Commandments. Charleton Heston parted the Red Sea and we departed the restaurant for a well-deserved early bedtime.

The next part of our trip was completely planned by me and will be a car journey. Not a perfect combination for either of us. The first challenge was the GPS unit we got with our rental car in Puerto Montt….it only speaks Spanish. We did manage to get the keyboard and the screen info into English and then quickly learned to pick out the words “izquierda” (left!!) and “derecha” (right!!) as we tooled along. Alas, the GPS gave up the ghost after we arrived in Frutillar so we drove back to Puerto Montt early on Sunday only to learn that we cannot get a new one until Monday. This change throws a bit of a wrench into our travel plans to Saltos de Laja waterfall, but I am sure we’ll recover.

We spent Easter Sunday driving around Lake Llanquihue (ay-key-whey) getting amazing views of the water and the two volcanoes which dominate the scenery. There are estancias and haciendas and shacks and weird looking housing developments to be seen along the way. I would guess that he micro-climate here is something like Vancouver’s given the lush flower beds and abundan fruit trees we saw along the way. There are wind breaks along the fields comprised of ancient poplars and eucalyptus that are spectacular. A terrific way to spend a day.

We’d hoped to have lunch at La Olla in Puerto Veras — a long wait deterred us and we ended up stopping at a tiny sandwich shop immediately across from one of the official volcano viewing points on the lake. The restaurant featured llamas that you could feed for $1 🙂 The sandwiches were HUGE and a bit unusual. Cliff ordered our Spanish standby — queso y jamon — and I opted for an Italiano, which surprisingly consisted of sautéed beef chunks, smashed avocado, tomatoes and a bit of mayo. The most amazing thing about both sandwiches was their size — 8 inch rounds about 2 inches high! I think a VERY light dinner is in our future.

And my knees are nearly recovered, too.