Monday and Tuesday couldn’t have been more different. Monday was our day to slog through car repairs, bad directions, even worse meals and Ann’s decidedly bad humor. After awaking to a glorious sunrise in Frutillar, the day went quickly downhill.
On a positive note….
Off we went to Avis’ downtown Puerto Montt location — no easy feat the find without a GPS. We’d discovered that our GPS problem was the result of a faulty 12volt cigarette lighter connection in the car. After getting completely lost trying to use the map Avis provided, Cliff hailed a very nice man to assist us. We were nowhere near where we wanted to be though the man couldn’t pinpoint exactly where we were on the Avis map.
Twenty minutes later, Cliff ran after three uniformed lady carabineros (complete with serious looking guns) on a busy street. They immediately asked for his identification papers (yikes!) and somehow assured him that they would help. Eventually, they called the downtown Avis location where there was no one who spoke sufficient English to assist. After about 10 minutes and several phone calls to God knows who…..with hand signals and smiles, we were directed to make a right hand turn and get to the waterfront. From there, we were back to the Avis map, but we at least had an idea of where we were and, happily, found the right street without too many false turns. Avis confirmed the problem, did not have a replacement car, but said the lighter could be fixed in 30 minutes.
We took the opportunity to make lemonade out of lemons with a walk along Puerto Montt’s waterfront, a stop for a cup of coffee and some photo taking at a mosaic filled fountain on the way back to Avis. Hooray! Car is ready to go when we get back 40 minutes later.
And we’re off!
Not exactly. The GPS does not recognize Salto de Laja (our next stop) as a point of interest. It does recognize a street by the name of “Salto Laja” in Los Angeles, the nearest town to the falls. Unfortunately, the street and the town are not really near where we want to go. After many u-turns and much grumbling (Ann), we look at a tiny map in a guide book and see that the falls are quite a bit north of Los Angeles. We get back onto the main highway and promptly get into the wrong toll lane which requires some sort of auto-pay card (which, of course, we do not have). The truck driver behind us generously offers his card to us — but the logistics of using it and then returning it to him seemed difficult. Eventually — again with hand signals and smiles — he backs up and we are able to get into the correct lane. Whew! A few miles later, Cliff sees a red exclamation point light up on the car display. Not good. A message appears on the center display (in Spanish of course!) and quickly disappears before we can figure out what it says. We decide to continue to the next gas station exit. As we drive, the message re-appears and Ann deciphers “estanciamiento” as one of the words. Aha! She’d earlier figured out that a big “E” with an arrow meant there was public parking nearby. Parking! Parking! What could it mean? The parking break was slightly on — having been triggered as Cliff was dealing with being in the wrong toll lane.
I’m not even going to give you the gory details of an earlier attempt to find “the best French fries in Temuco.” We settled for a not too bad meal of grilled chicken breasts at a gas station. This was not as bad as it sounds — but definitely NOT what we had in mind!
We, at last, arrive at Hotel Salto de Laja and, as promised, our room has a perfect view of the falls. They are disappointing. The room is disappointing. The bath mat is not large enough for Cliff to place both of his size 13 feet on it. The restaurant — and especially the waiter — retrieves the day from abysmal to “we’re on vacation.” We order the smallest dinners they have (grilled fish — delicious!) and a nice bottle of wine. A woman nearby hears us and comes to our table, asking if we are Americans. She is an American married to a Chilean and has lived in Chile for 41 years. She said she noticed that Cliff had ordered a nice bottle of wine:-)
Turns out that her husband is related to Sara Braun, a prominent name in Punta Arenas. She was his grandmother and he had fond memories of being at the mansion in Punta Arenas which is currently used as some sort of civic club with the sunroom now an ivy-lined pub open to the public.
You’ll get the compare story in the next post!