{"id":94,"date":"2010-03-23T19:57:22","date_gmt":"2010-03-24T02:57:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lisaandtony.com\/?p=94"},"modified":"2010-03-23T19:57:22","modified_gmt":"2010-03-24T02:57:22","slug":"puerto-varas-chile-a-3-day-delay-on-lago-llanquihue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lisaandtony.com\/travelblog\/2010\/03\/23\/puerto-varas-chile-a-3-day-delay-on-lago-llanquihue\/","title":{"rendered":"Puerto Varas, Chile – a 3 day delay on Lago Llanquihue"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Puerto<\/a><\/p>\n

Total Miles Traveled:<\/strong> 10,126<\/p>\n

On a friend\u2019s (Joey L.) recommendation, we flew from Punta Arenas to Puerto Montt in southern Chile with the plan to do the Lakes crossing over to Bariloche in Argentina, but first staying in Puerto Varas for a couple nights. \u00a0Here’s a map of the journey:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Puerto Varas is the \u201cbeginning\u201d of the Lakes district, overlooking Lake Llanquihue and is flanked by two dormant volcanoes, Osorno and Calbuco (above).\u00a0 It\u2019s a pretty touristy town with brand names like North Face, Benetton, Orvis and other big brand name shops, a large modern casino with signs promoting Texas Hold\u2019em (too bad we\u2019re not really in to poker), and expensive restaurants lake side.\u00a0 You can see that it\u2019s definitely a summer vacation town because there is an abundance of lodging and restaurants, but when we were there, very few people.<\/p>\n

\"Puerto<\/a><\/p>\n

Anyway, it rained for 3 days so we decided to delay our trip in to Argentina.\u00a0\u00a0 Not unusual for the area though, because they get 36 inches of rain per year.\u00a0\u00a0 So, not much to report outside of a couple of dining experiences below.<\/p>\n

Before we get to that though, we\u2019ve decided that in writing this blog, we\u2019re going to be making some mundane notes about the places we stayed, just in case folks ask us about it later, because we probably won\u2019t remember the details after some time.\u00a0 Skim as appropriate!<\/p>\n

To keep costs down, we stayed at a B&B called Tradicion Austral, which was literally someone\u2019s house.\u00a0 That said, John and Teresa were gracious hosts – John is originally from Indiana and lived in Fiji and Tahiti as a horticulturalist before moving to Chile to start a cranberry bog.\u00a0 No joke.\u00a0 The business opportunity was there because Ocean Spray owned most of the market in the U.S.\u00a0 And he\u2019s been in Chile for 10 years because he met his wife, Teresa, a native Chilena, who is super nice and helpful with travel arrangements.<\/p>\n

As for food, we ate at Donde El Gordito one night, which was featured on Anthony Bourdain\u2019s show at one point.\u00a0 Here\u2019s what we tried \u2013 first we had the Camarones al Pil Pil, because we were craving seafood after having meat almost every night in Argentina.<\/p>\n

\"Camarones<\/a><\/p>\n

Then, because there\u2019s a lot of salmon (farming\/catching) in the area, we had salmon \u201cgordito\u201d style, which was super rich \u2013 poached in butter with a butter-based salsa \u2013 very representative of the owner\u2019s namesake, literally translated, \u201cthe fat one\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"Salmon<\/a><\/p>\n

The lakeside restaurant, Mediterraneo, while OK, was overpriced (U.S. prices, if not more) and I suspect many of the lakeside places were also.\u00a0 The other place we tried, Dominga, was a Japanese\/Peruvian fusion place tucked away on the edge of town.\u00a0 We had a couple rolls, which were kind of meh, and pricey for what they were.\u00a0 Maybe Chile\u2019s just more expensive than Argentina or maybe we went to touristy places.\u00a0\u00a0Here’s a fried pork, ham, egg roll with a creamy sauce of some kind:<\/p>\n

\"Puerto<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

Want to see more photos? Click here to see more on Flickr<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

Next up, we cross the Lakes district in to Argentina.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Total Miles Traveled: 10,126 On a friend\u2019s (Joey L.) recommendation, we flew from Punta Arenas to Puerto Montt in southern Chile with the plan to do the Lakes crossing over to Bariloche in Argentina, but first staying in Puerto Varas for a couple nights. \u00a0Here’s a map of the journey: Puerto Varas is the \u201cbeginning\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[20],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lisaandtony.com\/travelblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lisaandtony.com\/travelblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lisaandtony.com\/travelblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lisaandtony.com\/travelblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lisaandtony.com\/travelblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/lisaandtony.com\/travelblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lisaandtony.com\/travelblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lisaandtony.com\/travelblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lisaandtony.com\/travelblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}