Yet another early start as our hostel was inexplicably not on the list of 4/5 star hotel pick ups offered by the cruise company. Ahem. So 6:30am saw us shivering in the cold outside the still closed office, soon joined by lots of French people.

The itinerary is pretty longwinded. After a half hour journey by private bus to their nearby port we boarded the first boat of the day to cross Lago Nahuel Huapí. The crossing took around an hour and a half. This was followed by a short bus ride and the 20 minute boat crossing of Laguna Frias. We then crossed the border out of Argentina and took another bus for an hour or so to the small village of Peulla, and passed through Chilean border controls. After a two hour stop here for lunch we boarded the final boat of the day for the crossing of Lago Todos Los Santos. This took close to two hours and was followed by a final hour long bus along the coast of Lago Llanquihue to the town of Puerto Varas. There was a brief stop en route to visit the dramatic rapids of Rio Petrohue. Quite a journey, you can almost begin to understand the exorbitant price tag attached!

What to say? We had an absolutely beautiful day weather wise and so the views were incredible the whole way. It's hard to pick out highlights, although the Osorno Volcano was pretty impressive. As you are aware if you have been reading this, I have long run out of adjectives to describe the landscapes and so I'll let the photos do the talking if I ever catch up on uploading them. The guides were great, pointing out particular things of interest along the way and adding a bit of colour via background stories etc. Was it worth paying around 10 times the cost of the bus ticket to Puerto Varas? For us most definitely.

Something I found interesting were the lakeside houses along Lago Llanquihue in Chile. Many of them were spectacular, ranging from somewhat twee Swiss super-chalet in style, wooden Southfork ranch mansions, through to pushing the boundaries Grand Designs modern specials. Something for everyone, as long as you're loaded!

Puerto Varas is an extremely pretty small lakeside town, heavily German influenced due to large scale immigration in the past. Our French owned and run hostel was at the top of a steep hill, a bit of a challenge at the end of a long day but very comfortable and homely. Lack of availability and high prices meant we resorted to settling for a shared bathroom, argh!

All in all, an amazing day.