Puerto Varas (Chile) - Day 23 - 22/10/2012 (Monday)
Wake up
Early bus - you know the drill by now. 2 hours to the Argentina border, got stamped out of the country. Drove almost another hour to the Chile border and we had to get off the bus with all our luggage and let sniffer dogs run all over it. Luckily they didn't find the packet of ham we were smuggling into the country.
Another few hours and we arrived into Puerto Varas.
Mini bus to take us to the hotel but for some reason they had over booked the hotel we were meant to stay in so they moved us to another hotel. It's worked in our favour as it was nicer and we had great views over the town from our room. We went out for a late lunch and a wander around the town. We were recommended to go up to this big cross on the hill so took the path were we thought it was. We were walking past this house and all of a sudden this massive dog jumped up and started barking. It scared Sarah and Alice to death. The dog kept trying to jump to clear the fence but it clearly wasn't going to so I walked on. The others hung back a bit and then suddenly they ran past as fast as they could. We then found ourself on a train line and as they didn't want to go back past the dog we had no choice but to walk along it. We finally found the entrance to the park and started to climb. The girls then found a platform in the trees that was used for zip wiring and for some unknown reason decided to climb it. We finally made it to the top. Had a quick look round and then headed back to the hotel. We were meant to be meeting for dinner at 8 but after our late lunch no one was hungry, so we stayed in and had a restful evening.

Puerto Varas - Day 24 - 23/10/2012 (Tuesday)
We had decided to go on a trip to Chiloe island. It's the second largest island off South America and is bigger than Holland. We were going for one reason, to see penguins. We got on a mini bus from our hotel and drove an hour to the ferry. The ferry crossing took about 30 minutes and then it was another hour across the island to a bay. We had to get on a boat to head out to the rocks where they were. As the beach was flat and sandy the boats were quite a way out so we thought we'd have to get wet feet, but instead they put us on a weird trolley thing and pushed us out to the boat. The boat took us out and we saw a few sea otters and about 8 penguins and then headed back in after 20 minutes. It was all a little bit disappointing given how much we'd paid and how long it took to get there. Back on the beach we went to a cafe for lunch even though we were told to bring our own food. So we just brought a drink and waited for ages while the others had a meal. After that it was straight back to the ferry and back to the hotel.
We had some time to kill before dinner so we went for other wander around the town. Plus I wanted to go this this odd looking church we could see from our room. After that we walked along the lake front and tried to go into the Casino to put 10k on black (about £12 lol) but the security guard wouldn't let us in and as he couldn't speak English to find out what we needed to do we just left.
That evening we went out for a meal and to say good bye to the Dutch couple (Brother and Sister) who had been on the tour with us from Rio to BA but decided to come on the same buses as us this far before going there own way. After dinner a few of us went to a bar but it was way to smokey so called it a night.