February 10, 2023

Yesterday was a sea day, and I had a lovely spa morning. I had a full body hot stone massage, an eye treatment, a facial, foot and ankle massage and scalp massage. All I can say is “ahhhhh” wonderful. There will be more of those during the cruise for sure.

My sunflowers are on their last legs.  Time to look for a new flower market.

Last night was the Captain’s cocktail celebration, there is one of these at the beginning of each segment of the world cruise. Drinks are free and we get introduced to the senior staff on board.  So happy to see that the new captain (our original one will be back in 2 months) is a man we have sailed with twice before when he was staff captain.  Now he has been promoted to full captain. 

We were invited to dinner with the general manager, Claudio Melli from Italy and Cella, the Oceania Club Ambassador.  Two other passengers were at our table as well.  What a nice evening!  The Chilean wines, both white and red, were flowing all evening. 

Then the show – it was a singer who does impressions of all of the current women singers.  Her name is Tricia Kelly and I look forward to her next show.  Very fun.  She sometimes makes up her own lyrics and they are hysterical.

Leah, one of the casino dealers, had a birthday today so we celebrated as the others surprised her with a cake and we sang to her.

The fog was very heavy overnight, whenever I woke up, I heard the fog horn. So we were about 2 hours late arriving to Puerto Montt.  We had a tour that was supposed to leave at 8:30 and it was 10:30 when we got off the ship.  It was a tender port, so the lifeboats take us to shore.

Here’s the view on our sail in.

We met our tour guide, Andrea, and set off for our first destination, the lakeside town of Puerto Varas.  She told us that  Puerto Montt is a city of 250,000 and is known for raising Atlantic Salmon. In fact, it is second only to Norway.  The industry created 50,000 jobs and almost everyone in the city has some connection to the salmon industry. The salmon spend 6 months in the lake and then 1 year in the ocean before they are harvested and sold.

We arrived in Puerto Varas and had about 45 minutes to wander through the town, visit the craft market and spend time by the beautiful lake. This part of Chile is green and lush and is actually called the lake district.  Many lakes, towns and sites are named in native language.  This lake is Llanquihue.  It is the 3rd largest lake in Chile. It covers 338 square miles and is 1000 feet deep. This woman on a unicycle was juggling in the middle of the street, for tips of course!  Brave or dumb?  Your call.

While walking through the town, we spotted an authentic Chile dog…  (a little Chilean humor here!)

All throughout Chile, including here, we heard about earthquakes.  The last big one was in 1960, but small earthquakes happen almost every day.

After our visit to the town, unfortunately there was  a traffic issue due to an accident which the guide had been informed had been cleared – but then another one happened so we were basically at a standstill for an hour and a half.  She said accidents are quite rare.

We did see this funky museum!

Andrea was very knowledgeable and filled the time with lots of information and stories.  One that surprised me is that the length of Chile is the width of the United States!

We could see the Osorno volcano and the Calbuco volcano as we resumed our trip to the Vincente Perez Rosales National Park. The Osorno last erupted in 1835.  It is 8700 feet high and resembles Mt.  Fuji in Japan.  Chile has 2000 volcanoes, 100 are considered active.  This one has not erupted since 1835.

The Calbuco is 6610 feet high and last erupted in 2015. There are ski centers on the volcanoes and you can still see snow although it is summer here.

The scenery was really beautiful and we got much closer to the volcanoes.  The Petrohue Falls are surrounded by huge volcanic rocks.  We had time to walk around the park trails and take pictures.

By now it was late in the afternoon.  Due to the delay, we didn’t have anything to eat since breakfast.  We really enjoyed the bag of local potato chips!

Before we left the park, Norm spotted a local man wearing an Eagles shirt – and Norm had on his Eagles hat. The man shouted “selfie” and he took one, so then I captured them both as well.

We had dinner outside on the deck and Farid was preparing chicken fajitas.  The sail out was so pretty! And at 8:30, the sun was still high in the sky.

Tonight the show is an Argentinian Tango Show starring the Pampas Devils.  And, we don’t arrive in port tomorrow until noon, so I see they will be giving tango lessons in the morning. We’ll see!