Puerto Montt to Coyhaique

Soooo...

Justin arrived on Tuesday night -- as I should have expected it was much harder to catch a bus to the airport than from the airport -- and I completed my wing-and-a-prayer round-trip journey to the airport with more help from a nice Santiagoan. At the airport , we checked on the price of a flight to Coyhaique (as per the original plan) and found they had jumped to 230 USD from 196USD earlier that day and 65USD a month ahead of time, but I think the month-ahead-of-time price was really a lie, because we couldnt actually make reservations.

So Justin and I headed back to the hostel to mull things over. Zoey, my new Australian friend, convinced us to check out the bus situation because she and Alice had taken them for hundreds of hours over the past few months and found them extremely reasonable in price and accomidations. Justin and I booked a ticket 12 hours south to Puerto Montt the next morning.

The ride was an overnighter and left Wednesday at 9pm, so Justin and I headed out to see the one final sight that I had missed in my previous 4 days in Santiago: Cerro San Crystabal. Its a giant hill that pops up 800m from the middle of the city, where a 100ft tall Mother Mary looks scornfully down at all the sinners. A 27-yr old fellow Pennsylvanian joined Justin and I for the day. Yogi had gone to Pitt and played Wide Receiver behind and was roommates with Larry Fitzgerald -- and was an unwaivering Cardinals fan despite not liking their chances versus the Steel Curtain. He had worked the last 4 years under Pete Carol out at USC and was now taking 6 weeks to go travel South America. His upcoming job upon return is to market Coach Carol`s WINFOREVER saying. He already has endorsements from ESPN and Nike and some coverage on 60minutes to build from -- life is good when you´re a talented wide receiver with a winning smile.

After yet another day of seeing (the same) sights in Santiago, Justin and I hopped on a bus to head South. The seats were the Semi-Cama classification... and just fantastic. Despite some peoples need to rustle plastic bags for 30 minutes at a time at 6:30am, I slept pretty well in the wide chairs that reclined 45 degrees. We arrived at 9am in Puerto Montt and schlepted our giant backpacks (with daypacks haning off the front) down to the Ferry station to find that the Thursday boat had already filled. oops. It turns out that there is in fact no road that heads further south from Puerto Montt, so you must either cross the mountains into Argentina or take a ferry. We decided to fly. The flight set us back about 125USD but combined with the 35USD bus ride still saved us 80USD from Santiago-to-Coyhaique total. ... AAAAND we were able to go spend 5 hours hanging out on a beautiful beach overlooking the city with mountains in the background and cruise ships anchored out in the bay.


We´re now in Coyhaique. The flight was uneventful, but the airport is actually 55km away so we received a nice tour of the surrounding countryside. We catch a bus tomorrow at 9:30am toward Cochrane and get dropped off on the side of the road at Entrada Rio Baker. We´ll spend the next 6+ weeks there before picking up to go hit all the tourist sights again.