Our stay here in Puerto Varas has been foreshortened considerably, and though our cabanas let us change the dates, it was only by one day more as they are full. We're not surprised. This is a great place and very efficient.

After not much sleep two nights ago and an early start yesterday, Kevin slept in till ten. Joan was up earlier and did the blog and then looked at UK news to find her home village of Whalley had flooded. Nephew Wayne and niece Maxine had been evacuated from Ribchester. So sad.

We had no bread for breakfast and as the cabanas like you to go out so they can clean, we decided to get out and buy some bread en route and have a picnic brunch. We also committed to trying to do two things in one day: the 192 km trip round Lago Llanquihue and a trip up Volcan Osorno.

We headed east towards Volcanes Calbuco and Osorno, both looming ever more ominously as we got closer. At the village of Ensenada we saw a kiosk selling "Pan amasado" – usually very fresh, home baked bread rolls. There were a couple of gents by the cabin. One told us there was a five minute wait as the bread was still in the oven. We said we would wait as this home baked bread is often delicious. He saw Joan looking up at Volcan Calbuco and offered to fetch binoculars. He ushered us in to what turned out to be his garden and told us about the four eruptions that happened this year. He said there had been no tremors or rumblings which normally precede a volcanic eruption. Just one night he was asleep in bed and Calbuco went up. He described pumice bombs and ash falling on his house and village. He showed us the ash which clogged up his garden. Then he got his phone out and showed us how part of his house had collapsed and the rest had drowned in ash. Still he lives here and the bread kiosk is run by his daughter-in-law. The volcano is now sleeping with only an odd puff of smoke.
We then admired his garden with plums, apples and a couple of raspberries which he gave us. He then told us that he had been in Santiago last January when there had been a huge earthquake. Even more than the volcano erupting, this seemed to shake him up. He described whole buildings swaying from side to side.

It was an honour to meet him and his daughter-in-law, they were so kind so we bought more bread than we needed, pieces of her home made yoghurt cake and sandwiches made with the hot bread. We asked for cheese only but perhaps she thought that she was being generous when she slipped a piece of ham onto both our sandwiches!!

It was only when we uploaded the photos that we noticed it was called Phoenix Bird Kiosk!


Then we headed up to the ski resort on the slopes of Volcan Osorno. We ate our sandwiches having stripped out the ham and the delicious strawberry yoghurt cake. There was a monument half way up to some policemen who had died rescuing people but it did not tell the whole story. Up at the ski resort, there were great views of the lake. As the day was already full, we decided not to do any of the walks up to, for example, the red crater.

On the way down we did a short walk through a forest to get to see some volcanic flows. The path was easy with the odd fallen tree to tackle.

Back down we continued anti-clockwise round the lake. The countryside is rolling here and at certain points you could even believe you were in England with cows and sheep grazing and some of the houses. We reached the community of Las Cascadas and saw a sign for La Cascada. It wasn’t in our guidebook but a town doesn’t call itself The Waterfalls for nothing. It was three kms over a very rocky road to the car park. We always hire a hire clearance vehicle in preparation for these types of road and even then these roads can be bad. It always surprises us how many normal cars drive these roads as it isn’t a comfortable drive with a 4WD truck!

At the end of the trail we headed in to the trees on a footpath that turned out to be up and increasingly narrow and deepening gorge. There were some very dodgy bridges to cross – held together by string and optimism. After about half an hour one could hear water crashing and then, there it was, a single waterfall leaping from the top of the dead-end gorge in to a splash pool. Small droplets of water sprayed everywhere and made rainbows. Braver and wetter young folk went and stood behind the fall and screamed a lot. It was lovely.

Back on the road we continued our drive round the lake, stopping briefly at Puerto Octay and Baja Frutillar to take photos. We went to Unimarc and bought vegetables for dinner: gnocchi with pistou and got back around 8 pm.