After the hike we had planned to spend a few days just
chilling at the hostel in Puerto Natales – Yaganhouse had a nice living area
that when the sun was out was the perfect spot to kick back and enjoy not being
at work (sorry, don’t mean to be a smart ass).
Then came time to look at heading north. We decided we would
check out the island of Chiloé on our way to Puerto Varas.
We started looking into that dreaded 32 hour bus ride I have
previously mentioned, and lucky for us it appeared as if it was booked out for
at least the days we were looking at jumping on board. We then looked into
flights.
Every now and then you can’t seem to get out of a particular
place – it happened to us in Dublin a couple of years back. Buses were full,
credit cards wouldn’t work with flights or ferries – it seemed we were destined
to miss the Monopoly pub crawl in London and enjoy the wet weather of Dublin.
This was shaping up as another one of those times. No card,
or website we tried would secure flights, and the bus wasn’t available for
another 4 days. We did have time on our hands, and looking back we probably
should have just stayed down in Puerto Natales and skipped Chiloé.
After finally getting a flight booked through a travel agency
we then had to get to the flight – this involved a 3 hour bus to Punta Arenas
that we had hoped to catch the morning of the flight – but to fit in with the theme
of the day – that bus no longer ran.
We were forced get a bus that afternoon, cancel our accommodation
in Puerto Natales, find a place to stay the night in Punta Arenas and quickly
pack and actually board the bus we were now taking.
After all this we made our flight, got into the lovely
Puerto Montt (it was raining again here) and catch another 2 hour bus down to
Chiloe. Just to keep toying with us, we missed the 4.30pm bus by minutes and
would have the pleasure of enjoying Puerto Montt in all its glory (well we were
at one of its ‘top things to do’) for another hour.
After waiting around (and not realising one of the ‘restaurants’
in the station was televising Game 1 of the NBA Eastern Conference Finals) we
jumped on our last bus of the day.
What should have been a pleasant 2 hour journey turned into
about 3.5hrs after the bus broke down in the middle of nowhere and we waited
for a replacement bus to come and collect us.
Still it could have been worse – we both could have been at
work (again sorry for pointing this out)!
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| Iglesia de San Francisco, Castro |
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| Palafitos (stilt houses) of Castro |
Oh and yeah, Chiloé wasn’t too bad. Didn’t do much – checked
out the few sights there are to see, caught up on some HIMYM and just took it easy.
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| Cathedral of Ancud |
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| San Antonio Fort, Ancud |
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