Puerto Montt,
Chile – We boarded the tender at a very
civilized late morning time and proceeded to the bus. Having experienced the
poor audio quality on these excursions for the last couple of weeks, we
sprinted to grab a front seat. That worked well and our guide was interesting
and very well-informed, with excellent English skills. We left Puerto Montt and
took a divided, very smooth toll highway to the lovely town of Frutillar (a
word meaning “strawberry”).
It’s a peaceful, pretty place on the shore of Lago
Llanquihue, with views of volcanoes on the other side. Its original European
settlers were German, which shows in the style of the buildings. It actually resembles
a Swiss town. 
There’s a lovely outdoor museum with amazing gardens.
The Theatre of the Lake is part of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network. We moved on to the larger, livelier city of Puerto Varas, on the same lake. Our mission was to buy some aspirin, which was only mildly challenging since the needed Spanish words closely resemble their English equivalents. Then lunch at a local restaurant, where we scoured the menu for words we were confident about and had a very pleasant lunch.
Back in Puerto Montt, we wandered around the port area and checked out some small, local souvenir shops. I arrived late for Trivia, but my team had saved 2 questions for me, that I fortunately could answer and we came second, our best result yet. After a very enjoyable Prime 7 dinner, we laughed ourselves silly at Darrell Joyce’s comedy show. He’s priceless.
Photos of the day
