Puerto Varas Eventually - 12/28/07

With airlines you basically have to expect that there will be some kind of complications at some point. Let's say there is a 33% chance....so given a 3 leg flight some part of it is going to be messed up and if it is the first then the other two follow.

Our flight into Santiago was delayed for mechanical reasons. I am glad they didn't put us on a plane whose doom could very well be in the Caribbean Sea but it did cause us to miss our third flight down to Southern Chile. Communication in the Santiago airport was rough. My Spanish was rough...an understatement...and the standby process isn't as streamlined as in the states. Finally after hours in the airport I decided to ask for hard tickets for the next day so we could step out of the airport and see the country a bit and then fly out for sure.
This first day was wild. Holiday Inn, this one being a surprisingly luxurious experience.....a ride in a cab with what seemed to have two broken axles and a determined driver, a sub-par first food experience minus the ice cream (note that every other food experience on the trip was amazing) and an overwhelmingly big city in a foreign country. It was a refreshing feeling yet a bit uneasy at the same time.
Morning came fast and we were on a plane to Puerto Varas, a city that turned to be much smaller in size on a large lake with snow capped volcanoes at the horizon. We dropped our bags at a wonderful place called the Guest House, owned by a friend, where we ended up basing out of for some of the trip. A walk around town revealed a wonderful place...a place we were really excited to experience.