ancud to puerto montt

quote of the day: "my legs are so hairy, jeans would hurt"

alright, so we survived the minivan ride back to Ancud where we had a few hours to kill before busing to Puerto Montt, where we would spend the night and fly out the next morning to Balmaceda/Coyhaique

first thing i do when i get to Ancud: buy raspberry liquor. this was a huge turning point in my feelings toward frambuesas .. not because of the liquor part, but cause it was the beginning of a string of events in which i can't stop buying raspberry products. in the U.S. i have never in my life bought ONE raspberry flavored thing, but in Santiago i now find myself buying raspberry juice, actual raspberries, and the strangest of all... raspberry jello. i thought i hated jello.

shout out to my UCSB gauchos! i was in our homeland.

Ancud was a funny stop because we didn't have enough time to do any real sight seeing, so we ended up recreating our boy band pictures instead.

it's baaaack.

our second album cover. because our first album was a huge hit and our fans wanted more.

and thennn i pretended to be a turtle stuck on my back:

hiding under our shells.

while also in Ancud, it started to rain. this is when i discovered my camping pack is waterproof. booyah!

*walking up a steep hill*

K: just say what you want and you'll feel a lot better! i want a hot body!

N: i want water, i want water, i want water

another odd thing i remember is that at 12:00 noon an extremely loud and obnoxious alarm sound went off in the center of town and all the dogs started howling for a good minute. apparently the alarm is used because a canon used to be sounded, which they don't do anymore.

 

i got really dressed up for the bus station

on our way to Puerto Montt - took this picture from the ferry (we had to cross the water again, which this time around i realized right away because even though Chiloe is quite magical, people still can't disapparate)

i have no shame in using harry potter references.

so! we made it to Puerto Montt and miraculously crammed all 5 of us, packs included, into one taxi only to arrive at this lovely address:

needless to say, i immediately began apologizing to everyone for booking the shittiest looking hostel ever. well, after first exclaiming that i must have written down the wrong address.

as you can see, this looks super sketch and there wasn't any official looking sign indicating that people can board here. we rang the doorbell anyway and a nice Chilean lady answers and we ask her if we are in the right place andddd we were! good news though because it might have been my favorite place we stayed the whole trip!



i now know that "hospedaje" does NOT mean the same thing as "hostel"... for any of you still confused, a hospedaje is basically somebody's house that has extra rooms rented out for travelers. it was very homey and comfortable, which was nice considering our only impression of Puerto Montt was that it was a shit hole - i'm sure some parts are nicer than others, but the area we saw smelled nasty.

these pictures don't really do it justice. the part of town we were in looked way worse in person.

since we weren't exactly feeling that Puerto Montt was the best place to take a stroll, we went to the grocery store and hung out at our hospedaje the whole night. i ate the best sandwiches (4...) i had ever tasted (at least that's how i felt at the time): salami, cheese, and delicious bread rolls

that night we watched a bit of chilean televison. the first thing that came on was a report on the current situation in Coyhaique, where we were going to be the next day. protests, marches, and stranded travelers. and what was our plan? walk straight into the fire. and that could have been literal. [more details on Coyhaique protests in the next post, get excited]

the breakfast at our hospedaje was FANTASTIC! bread with rhubarb marmelada. i'd never heard of rhubarb before but i guess it is some type of plant. that morning there was also bread + ham and cheese which i also was a big fan of.

the lady whose house we were in was super sweet and called us a van to go to the airport, where we all bought tons of postcards, ordered capucchinos and hot chocolate, and waited around because our flight was delayed.

on the plane we were all in row 13. which actually did turn out to be unlucky, if you're into that sorta thing.