After spending three days at sea (including day 12, 3/16/23), we finally arrived in Puerto Montt on day 13.
We didn’t have much planned for Puerto Montt as there wasn’t really much to see. There was a waterfall (Petrohue Waterfalls) which was a popular tourist attraction but it didn’t look very impressive in the pictures and due to lack of transportation, we didn’t think it was worth visiting. The plan was just to walk to the bus terminal, take the bus to nearby city Puerto Varas, which was also popular, spend some time exploring, and take the bus back.
But again, there were tour companies at the port entrance selling tours. One of the tours would visit the waterfalls, Puerto Varas for $40 a person. It was more than the bus fares, but less hassle and reasonable. So we hopped on the bus. But there was another tour that would visit an additional town Frutillar for $10 more and most tourists opted for that. So it took forever for our bus to fill. At the end we decided we didn’t want to keep waiting and hopped off.
Further out, there were more people selling tours including some taxi drivers. One of them quoted us $100 to visit the same sites. While my sister was negotiating with them, someone decided to share the ride with us. That brought our cost down to around $34/pp. So we all agreed and got in the taxi. The girl that was sharing the ride with us turned out to be a crew member on the ship. She was from Philippines and worked as a waitress at the buffet.
The taxi driver first took us to a viewpoint for a view of the city.
Usually the tour companies would visit the waterfall first. But assuming everyone was going there around this time and it would be very crowded, I asked the driver to take us to Puerto Varas next instead.
After we stopped in Puerto Varas to take some pictures, the driver said he was heading to the waterfalls. I immediately protested because I expected to spend some time here exploring. He kept saying it would be a long drive and there wouldn’t be enough time. So I asked for 10 more minutes.
After he parked, I had to RUN to some sites to take some pictures. This was when I was grateful for becoming a regular runner in the last year and a half.
Unfortunately, when I was ready to take pictures, I found out that my phone wasn’t waking up. I tried to restart it but nothing happened. I had to borrow my sister’s phone to take some quick shots. Later I found out that my phone was working fine. But I accidentally turned the screen brightness to the lowest level so I couldn’t see anything under the sunlight and thought it wasn’t turning on 😂.
I was very disappointed that we weren’t able to spend more time in Puerto Varas. But it was too late to change mind about hiring the taxi 😂.
We visited a couple of more viewpoints after that on our way to the waterfalls.
The waterfalls turned out to be a disappointment as expected. Due to overcast, it was even less impressive. And they charged $7 per foreign visitor for this, while most waterfalls that are much more beautiful and impressive all over the world are free. it looked more like rapids than waterfalls.
It was a long drive back to the port and we finished the tour in about 4.5 hours.
Throughout most of the drive, we could see Osorno Volcano from a distance. It was mostly covered by clouds though due to overcast.
This was our last port of call before disembarking. We are going home in a couple of days.