After a pretty choppy few days on the boat, with some waves topping 6 metres, we were glad to arrive in Puerto Montt harbour for a tender over to the mainland. The town is the gateway to the southern Andes and the many volcanoes as well as close to the Patagonian fjords, which we’re sailing later on this trip.

The area has quite a German/ alpine feel to it. A lot of the houses are Bavarian in style, some of them not looking out of place in a ski resort… or Christmas market. You can even buy decent Kuntsmann beer there as well as kuchen. The nearby town of Puerto Varas is on a lake and is surrounded by mountains, just adding to the alpine feel. Apparently, there has been 2 waves of german immigration to the area, the first one in the mid 19th century, when Chile offered free land out to Germans who were struggling with a revolution at home, the second one being after WW2, when several nazi leaders escaped war trials by moving here. In fact Erich Priebke, who led a mass execution of 335 Italians in 1944 became the director of the German School until was extradited in 1990.


We headed inland towards Orsono Volcano which at 2,650 metres high, dominates the skyline and is probably one of the most well recognisable Chilean landmarks. As we hadn’t been on a boat for a while (!) it seemed to be a great idea to sail on lake Llanquihue, killing 2 birds with one stone if getting nearer to the mountain without climbing it and scratching the surface of the Patagonian landscape.

We then headed down to Petrohue falls, which were more like rapids than falls. It was beautiful to wander round the trails close to the river and get a hint of my energetic holidaying! In the salmon spawning season, this place comes alive with salmon, I bet it’s a sight to behold. This is another place where climate change is chillingly obvious, as the force and volume of the water has diminished in recent years. There has been a drought here for at least 2 years, with rainfall dropping from 2800mm p.a to 1200mm p.a and temperatures rising from 20c to 35c in the summer.